From the Mountains to the Prairies

Hey there! Hi there! Ho there....
No- I'm not talking about the Red Light District-
Just have some Kenna Sketches backlogged up from
my Procrasterdamned Travel Blog...so rather than wrap up
my story, I'll just post a triple done sequentially to fill up
the lull between posts.
9-11- Hard to believe that was five years ago.
It was such a gorgeous morning (not unlike today) in NYC....
I remember getting to work and the receptionist said..
"A plane just hit the Trade Towers" and I went to my desk thinking
it was a Cessna or some other small aircraft.
Then I went into a meeting with my design team and get a phone call
from my wife. She was in the Queens county courthouse for jury duty, and had seen the
plane hit on a television they had in the auditorium where you wait to get called.
"Do you know a plane hit one of the Twin Towers?"
"Yeah, babe I'm in a meeting right now..." (I still had no idea how big this was...)
"Uh...O.K. listen call me AS SOON as you can alright?"
Just then someone walked into our meeting and said-
"Another plane just hit the second tower."
Meeting over.
Then a scramble to the roof of our building where we had an unobstructed view
right down 6th avenue. We could see both Towers in flames. People were crying-screaming- taking pictures.
All cell phone service was shot. The only TV reception we could get on the set in the office was
a Spanish cable station so we could see the images but had no idea what was being said.
Then both Towers fell. People were dying. We worked right across the street from what
was now the tallest building in the city- The Empire State Building-could it be next?
The radio stations were saying there could be as many as five more planes in the air.
Panic was setting in....Should we leave?
We'd looked around the office and our bosses had already left!
I called my wife and told her I was coming home.
Mass Transit was completely shut down. No Buses-No trains.
I walked across town and with tens of thousands of people.
Walked over the 59th Street Bridge back to my house in Queens watching the smoking ruins
of a building my Dad had worked at for 2 decades. The madness of the day finally settling in...
I picked up my two year old daughter from daycare, went home with my girls and cried for days.
So much has changed since then...
God bless us, everyone.