Sunny, blue skies- a genuinely gorgeous late summers day.
And then hell came to town.
CC
I was sitting at the dock at Exxon Chemicals in Lynchburg, Virginia getting unloaded. My wife called me and told me a plane had flown into the WTC. I got the local broadcast station and their national news department was on.
There was a construction company doing expansion work on the plant and construction workers were crowding into my truck for hours watching my little TV. Not much work was getting done.
The guesses as to who was responsible were all over the map. When the Pentagon got hit everyone was sure it was the Russians or Chinese.
The rock band RUSH was to come out with their Vapor Trails album that fall, but postponed it until the spring of 2002. The album was the first in a long time after the drummer (and lyricist) Neil Peart suffered losing his daughter in a car crash and then his wife to cancer six months later.
The album is mostly about pain and loss, and eventual recovery. I have never heard them talk about it, but with their delay in the album I wonder if some songs or lyrics were changed a bit to reflect on the hell that was 9-11.
“Fear - Part IV” excerpted lyrics:
The city crouches, steaming
In the early morning half-light
The sun is still a rumor
And the night is still a threat
Slipping through the dark streets
And the echoes and the shadows
Something stirs behind me
And my palms begin to sweat...
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“Vapor Trails” excerpt:
Stratospheric traces of our transitory flight
Trails of condensation held
in narrow paths of white
The sun is turning black
The world is turning gray
All the stars fade from the night
The oceans drain away
Horizon to Horizon
memory written on the wind
Fading away, like an hourglass, grain by grain
Swept away like voices in a hurricane
In a vapor trail