EDITOR'S COMMENT — March 2002
Note: Because of our production schedule, I'm actually writing this one week after the fall of the Twin Towers. I was in New York for the Tattoos & Hot Rods show in Plainview, Long Island.
I woke up on that Tuesday morning, pulled open the curtains of my hotel room on Houston Street and wondered about the crowd of people on the corner of Sullivan. It took me a half a minute to spot the gray cloud rolling out over SoHo. I phoned my sister. The way she strung words together, I thought I woke her up. She said something about turning on the TV. The rest you know.
It was a terrible time, that September 11 morning, that fall morning with the humidity finally gone and the promising blue sky. I live in California, but I consider Manhattan my second home. It's where I lived during difficult transitional times in my life: when my mother died and after a divorce. New York has always been there to lean on, to occupy my mind with its nonstop sideshow. It was there I discovered myself. It was there I attended the classroom of life.
During the four days following the terrible explosion, it was seven cancelled flights and two hotels. When I did get a standby seat on Saturday, FBI agents stormed the plane, plucked two suspects out of their seats and pretty much petrified everyone aboard. Ten minutes later, the Feds returned for the luggage. Then once more for the pillows and blankets.
For me, it was five days of feeling trapped. But nothing compares with the pain and loss so many suffered. I write about this now, with images still fresh in my mind of firemen covered in ash, a young woman holding out a photo of her missing husband to strangers, a stewardess sobbing in her comrades' arms in the galley of the plane that took me home.
It may seem strange, but I never wanted to be anywhere else. Sure, it would have been better, more convenient, less traumatic to be back in Pasadena, hearing about the disaster on the radio while I worked at my desk. I could have avoided breathing those toxic fumes. Avoided the wail of ambulances on the way to St. Vincent's. Avoided the deep, sonic rumble of 85 dump trucks parked and waiting outside my window. Avoided dialing a number 20, maybe 30 times before I'd get through to call home.
But even though the horror of that second plane being swallowed up by the building is burned into my memory, I was proud to be there. Proud to share that cataclysmic event with those amazing citizens. My current address may not be SoHo or the Village or Battery Park or the Lower East Side, but my heart is there, and so are my thoughts. I feel privileged that I was able to share the pain, breathe the air and stand a few short blocks from where those dedicated policemen, those courageous firemen and those noble New Yorkers lost their lives. Being in their proximity made me realize just how lucky I am. Lucky to be among those great heroes. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to be an American.
Pray for peace, and may God help us all.
September 18, 2001
–Bob Baxter
Editor in Chief