The Silence 2

Perhaps what I remember most about this date 20 years ago is the silence.

Someone heard the news of the bombing in New York and a number of persons watched bits and pieces of the coverage on the lunch room television if their duties allowed. My workplace at the time was in New Jersey across the river from Philadelphia International Airport.

The main runway at Philadelphia International Airport runs generally in a west-south-west/east-north-east orientation. In easterly winds, airliners from the west would commonly fly by Philly to the north, turn right, fly south over New Jersey, then make a sweeping U-turn back across the Delaware river for their final approach to the main runway; otherwise, airliners headed north would take the reverse course, taking off in a generally WSW direction, then swinging back over New Jersey to head north or to take the great circle route to Europe. They didn’t fly right over my work place, but we could hear them and see them in the east, especially if we were outside in the smoking area.

We heard no airliners that day.

And then America lurched its way into twenty years of pointless, misdirected war.