Where Were You?

Monday night, September 10, 2011 I was a shift lieutenant at the Detention Center south of Natchitoches, LA. I worked all night and got off after my relief shift counted the jail at 5:00 a.m. I went home and went to bed. My phone jarred me awake at about 7:45, a friend of my fiance. "Get up, Dennis, we're under attack."

"Yeah, right," I mumbled and hung up the phone.

Five minutes later the phone rang again. "Seriously, get up. They're flying planes into buildings." I got out of bed and stumbled in to the couch with a blanket and a pillow, turned on the TV. I was shocked to see smoke pouring from one tower of the World Trade Center. Thinking it was an accident, I walked to the kitchen to make coffee, then walked back into the living room just in time to watch the second plane hit the tower at 8:02 central time (9:02 EDT).

I stood there in shock. "That was no accident."

Our house was under three major flight paths. It was common to walk outside in the morning and see criss-crossing contrails from the myriad aircraft flying from Houston to Atlanta, Dallas to New Orleans, or Dallas to Atlanta, not to mention the north-south flights of the regional carriers. Twenty minutes after watching the second plane go in, I walked outside and looked at the sky. Totally clear, no contrails. Nothing. It was as if aviation had ceased to exist.

I lay on the couch the rest of the day, knowing we were at war. When I got to the jail that afternoon I could tell that the shift I was relieving was visibly pissed-off. So was I. I locked the jail down early that evening and told the control center to restrict the TV channels to CNN only.