Coming home from Louisiana

This day began with a bang at 5:30 CDT when the next door neighbor to my wife's aunt and uncle began his lawn mower and began to mow his yard. What he could see of it. I must admit that I remained asleep. However, Cindy and her uncle heard the lawn mower and sprang out of their beds to eat breakfast and discuss the heritage of the next door neighbor.

I awoke around 7:00 and took a shower, packed my belongings and joined Cindy and her uncle in the breakfast room. Uncle Ray made the traditional morning invitation to join the hogs at the trough. I did. I ate a light meal of cereal and apple juice. I then exited the table and began to put our luggage in the car.

On one pass from bed room to car, Cindy's Uncle stated that the last time we were leaving their house something terrible occurred. What he was referring to was the hijacking of the planes on September 11, 2001. We had been in Louisiana for the funeral of Cindy's grandmother. On the morning of our return to Georgia, we were eating at the breakfast table in Aunt Joan and Uncle Ray's house, when the television began showing footage of the first plane flying into the first tower of the Twin Towers in New York. We left the breakfast table and began to watch the coverage in their living room. Suddenly the second plane hit the second tower.

After watching the coverage for awhile, we left their home and headed down I-10 toward Mobile. That was the eeriest drive I have ever driven. There were very few cars on the road. Every radio station, no matter what their format, was playing news coverage of the hijackings. We stopped in a gas station/convenience store in Southern Mississippi. The clerk behind the counter, who was at the end of a long night shift, didn't know what was happening until we informed her.

[It is now 10:00 o'clock p.m. EDT. I am going home if I have enough gas to get me there. Both figuratively and literally, both petroleum distallate and desire.]

Having gone home on fumes, parked my car, removed the essentials in my car, gone inside, said hello to wife and dog, made myself a tall glass of orange juice and cheese quesadillas (my 'orange' meal), ate same, watched the last of a television show Cindy was watching, was persuaded by retreating wife to go upstairs to bed, slept soundly, and then woke up. I now return to complete the blog I began yesterday.

As we drove through Mississippi and Alabama, we passed many places of interest. We were almost alone on the highways over which we travelled. We stopped at another convenience store in Alabama for gas, only to witness several pickup truck loads full of National Guardsman returning from hunting trips to fulfill their military duties. We drove past the airport in Atlanta to suddenly realize that the place was deadly silent; no planes were being allowed to land or leave.

This was the first historical moment in my lifetime to supplant the assassination of John F. Kennedy in my imagination. In many ways, the moments after the hijackings had more effect on my life than that moment in time.

Four years later, the meteorological events of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita slamming rain and wind into the gulf coast from Mississippi to Texas once again posited a moment in time which left quite a gash in the memories of American culture. In 2001, it all began the day after placing my wife's grandmother's ashes in a marble box, above ground, in a New Orleans cemetery on the edge of Metairie, where Cindy and her family grew up. That moment, so strange to someone not born or raised in New Orleans, began the chain of events which would end with a diminution of real estate closings in my business, when the economy stagnated after the acts of terrorism.

Now there are three dates in my lifetime that I remember with specificity: November 22, 1963, September 11, 2001 and August 29, 2005.