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Need to replenish your underwear? Here you go.
Need to replenish your underwear? Here you go.
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Until September 11, 2001, there were two great pylons that held up the sky in downtown Manhattan. They formed a gateway of commerce. A symbol of economic might and financial power. To some they represented global economic unity and freedom. But to others they represented global economic domination. To me they were something that was just always there.
At 10:00AM Central Standard Time, I was set to read the top news stories on WWSP 90fm radio in Central Wisconsin. The first story: about 15 minutes ago, a plane had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. At first I thought some pilot had simply drifted off-course and crashed his Cessna into the building. I knew that in 1945 a B-25 bomber accidentally crashed into the Empire State Building. I also knew that the World Trade Center towers were engineered to withstand an impact from a Boeing 707 or a DC-8, the largest aircraft in service in the late 60’s. I was astonished as I read the report that the plane that struck the North Tower was a commercial airliner, and not a small private plane. During those brief moments, the reports coming off the newswire were confused. Most said it was an accident. Terrorism was the farthest thing from my mind.
About three minutes later, another plane struck the South Tower. And everyone knew that this was definitely not an accident. The news coming in off the wire now included claims of responsibility by little terrorist groups no one had ever heard of. I read them all in a state of quiet distress. I have always been an outsider in New York. My family is from there, and we visited just about every summer. I was a timid boy, and never got to know the mass transit system, but wherever I was in Manhattan, I knew I could always look up and see the World Trade Center towers, and they would point me in the right direction. They were strong and made of steel. They had withstood the impacts of two incredibly large airliners. They were still on fire, but steel is fire proof, right?
I didn’t read anymore news. I hadn’t counted on the burning jet fuel that drove temperatures up to 1500 degrees, and sparked other fires that burned even hotter. Temperatures like that were incomprehensible. No wood fire I had ever built could even approach that. And after more than an hour, even mighty steel bows to the power of fire. As I watched on live TV, first one pylon fell, and then the other. I remained glued to the TV for the rest of the week. I wanted to know what was going on, but mostly it was just because one of the solid things I knew, one of the only places in Manhattan that I was familiar with, was gone forever.