TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: "WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE WORLD STOPPED TURNING"

by Grant McGee

            I’ve been meaning to write a nice letter to the country singer Alan Jackson for a while now.

            It would be just a fan letter, letting him know how I think he has been blessed with a great songwriting talent.

            I thought about writing that letter when I first heard his song “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).” 

            Jackson has written a lot of good songs, but to me, “Where Were You…” captures the essence of the first initial feeling many of us probably felt as the events of September 11, 2001 unfolded.

“Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day.”

Where were you?

I was living in Bisbee, Arizona. I had two dogs, I walked them every morning before I went to work in Tombstone.

As I came back to my house a neighbor stuck her head out her door.

“Check out the TV, a plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

Inside the house as I stood in front of the television wondering how a passenger jet could be so far off course and hit the building, a second plane hit.

“This is no accident,” I said out loud.  I was stunned.

“Did you stand there in shock at the sight of

That black smoke rising against that blue sky.”

We all know the rest:  the incredible tragedy, the collapsing of the twin towers, the ominous cloud of dust raging down the concrete canyons of New York, the crash at the Pentagon, the crash in western Pennsylvania.

I couldn’t get enough news that day.  There was no television at work.  I left the radio on, tuned in to a Tucson station.  I felt like I was moving through molasses.  A co-worker stayed away from my office, she didn’t want to hear what was going on, she didn’t want to know any more than she did.

The boss walked in and wanted to know why we were behind schedule.

“The planes, the World Trade Center,” I said.

“Oh, THAT,” she said.  “That doesn’t affect us, what’s the problem.”

“Someone has attacked our homeland,” I said, verging on getting outwardly angry over her incredible indifference.

“This will be taken care of, it doesn’t affect us, now let’s pick up the pace here.”

Unprecedented things kept happening:  All air traffic in the United States was grounded, the New York Stock Exchange would be closed the next day.

The next day I found a swatch of black fabric and wrapped it around my left bicep.  I couldn’t see just going about my business as if nothing happened.  I felt something deep and jarring inside as it was revealed that our homeland had been deliberately and maliciously attacked.

Tombstone is a tourist town, so American flags were a common sale item in the shops there.  I bought one for my car.  It was the last one in this particular store.

“There was a barrelful of those yesterday,” said the store worker.

We all know the rest of the story from that day and the days…weeks…months…years afterward.

On a bus to Little Rock, Arkansas the following spring I sat beside a Marine Corps sniper.  He told me about his work, why he thought he had the best job in the world.

“So you’re on your way to Afghanistan?” I asked.

“No, home on leave, then we’re off,” but he declined to say to where.

“So where were you on September 11?”

“We were in Okinawa, we stood there in front of the television for about two hours, none of us saying much,” he said.  “Then one by one we walked to our bunks and started packing.  We were sure we were going somewhere.

“Then our commanding officer came in and told us to unpack, he understood our feelings but they had other plans for us, we ended up going to the Philippines.

“I wish we’d gone right after them instead,” he said, looking out the window.

I thought about how differently I’ve felt about this aggression as opposed to the big war of my youth, the Vietnam War.  How different things would have been had the Viet Cong caused such destruction upon the American homeland.

“Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day.”