Eleven Years Since The Day The World Stopped Turning

My brother lives in Mankato, Minnesota but his work mean't he traveled all around the upper Midwest.  Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa and South Dakota.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001 he happened to be coming through Sioux Falls and called to see if I want to have breakfast with him before he headed off to another town and I headed off to work at the radio station.

The world we lived in when we went into Cracker Barrel was different than the world we lived in when we came out.

We had sat down and ordered our food.  I told him I had heard on the radio as I pulled into the parking lot that a place had apparently hit the Trade center in New York.  We both thought it was a tragic accident, probably a small plane that had flown off course.

Our waitress heard us talking and said yes, they were talking about it on television back in the kitchen.

That was it.  Nothing more.  We got our food and visited about things I don't remember.  Probably work, family, our parents who were in a Nurshing Home at the time.  Just the usual stuff family members talk about.  Everything was normal.

Except of course it wasn't normal.  It wasn't normal at all.

We left the Cracker Barrel, I got in my car and turned the radio on.  By then 2 planes had hit the World Trade Center Towers.

I drove to the radio station and listened and watched with the rest of the world as the tragic day unfolded.

It's been 11 years ago.  In some ways it seems like yesterday.  But since that "Day the world stopped turning", I have 5 Grandchildren, ranging in age from almost ten to almost one.  So actually the world didn't stop turning. But it sure gave us all pause.

I'm old enough that I would never have thought anything in my lifetime would impact my memory more than the JFK assassination.

But something sure did.