Six years later and the boarder is still as tight as a sieve, the President still thinks invading Iraq was a good response to the attack, and most of us have moved on as if it never happened in the first place.
I was working in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in September of 2001, shooting photos for The Infantry and Cavalry School. At least I think that was the place. There is more to Leavenworth than prisons, but not much more. I had worked at the Military School for a couple of years, the Fort was a fun and easy place. No guards at the gate, no feeling that it was a military operation at all really, other than the people in uniforms running around here and there. So I was shocked on Sept 10th when we rolled up driveway and were met by a group of MPs asking what we wanted and why we were there. We told them we were going to take photos for the yearbook and they checked and list and make a couple of calls and let us in. It was an ok first day, but not great.
Next morning I call the numbers in to the office, they say something about it being very bad, but I don’t have the TV on yet and don’t know what she is talking about. The wife’s first thought is ok, we get the day off. So I ask about the day’s shooting being canceled, and my boss says, “No one’s called in to cancel their appointment.”
This needs to go down in history as the stupidest thing ever said. So we hang around the motel, waiting to hear that the shoot is canceled. Which it was. Seems when the country is under attack military types have more important things to do than have a portrait taken.
We watched the news like everyone else for a while, and then head into Kansas City. It is a ghost town, the streets are empty. We go into a mall and there are people working in the shops, but no one is shopping. We eat at an empty restaurant. It’s like being in one of those movies where your the last person on earth.
A few weeks later we are shooting in California, we have a day off and go to Disneyland. The staff easily outnumbers the visitors. We wait in no lines. We are ask if we want to go again when the ride stops. It is the same at Knox’s Berry Farm. And Universal Studios. But the Magic Kingdom as a ghost town was the oddest experience.
It wasn’t until I looked at Google Trends that I remembered today was 9/11. I lost no one that I knew. For the two years afterwards that CCN re-ran the day, I sat and watched and cried. But now it is just becoming a distant memory. Like all those statues to fallen Confederates and Union soldiers that litter the Eastern United States, they are pretty and interesting, but also pretty meaningless. People die all the time, that’s what people do.
It’s that whole attack thing that is pretty rare to us now. We like to think we are safe, it makes wasting our time going to work and going to movies more fun. But even if we knew it was all going to come crashing down, what could we do different?
