re: #16 First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

The only thing (not very) noteworthy about my personal 9/11 experience is that, at the time, I worked at a place very close to DFW International airport. There was air traffic overhead at all times, very noisy. But eventually you just got used to hearing it, and it became part of the background scenery.

But when all the fuckery happened and the FAA called a ground stop, the lack of aircraft noise suddenly became very noticeable and somehow made the whole situation seem more immediate and dangerous to us just a mile or so away from the airport. The quiet was just creepy as hell.

Our building wasn’t quite as close to Sky Harbor at that time, but we were in the east flight path (the same flight path which would stop Mesa from putting up a proposed domed stadium a few years later) and the hard stop was fucking EERIE. That Thursday night my boyfriend and I were at a gas station in Tempe southeast of Sky Harbor and I started crying when I saw the lights of a freight plane landing at the airport.

Two days later (September 15), Balbir Sodhi Singh was murdered at his gas station a few miles away from where I’m sitting, part of a rampage by a fucked up guy wanting to kill “turbanheads.” en.wikipedia.org