On September 10, 2001 I started a miserable temp job at a meat processing plant. I was the guy who came in at 9 PM to clean all of the slop off of the machinery. By 5 am on September 11th, I was embarrassed that I had to do this job, I was miserable, and I was very absorbed in self-pity. I slunk home and crawled into bed, dreading having to wake in 8 hours, just to think about my second night at this job.
Shortly after noon, the telephone rang. I considered ignoring it and going back to sleep, but thought better of it. It was my mother, and I was the first person she called on her lunch break.
"Are you watching TV."
"No, I'm sleeping. Why?"
"The Twin Towers are gone."
I was stunned and confused. I think she had to repeat it to me a couple of times as I tried to grasp it, and she was struggling a bit to find the right words. I turned on the television as they replayed the first tower fall and then the second. I don't remember much else in the conversation except for making sure that I told her I loved her.
The rest of the afternoon was a confusing attempt to understand what was happening. Even then, hours after the attacks, understanding exactly what had happened, and what may still may have been happening, was difficult. My only personal tie to what was happening half the country away was my Uncle, who we thought might have been at the Pentagon. It would be three days before we knew he was safe.
I went to work not exactly knowing what to expect. This was a job that some say that regular Americans don't take. To a certain extent, they were right. A lot of the people on my shift were recent immigrants, and some of them, including my trainer, were Eastern European Muslims. I wasn't really sure what the environment was going to be like, because there were also some rural white Americans on my shift. I was very proud of what I saw. The Eastern European Muslims seemed to be very nervous, scared even. The Latino employees were very quiet. With a lighthearted statement here and a pat on the back there, the rural white employees put them back at ease. That night, my fellow country folk coworkers very easily could have made life miserable for these recent American immigrants, especially the Muslims. Instead they reached out to them, included them, and made them feel like they really were Americans.
I don't have any poignant stories of being at Ground Zero. So many people were in pain that day as they feared the fate of loved ones. What I do have is a memory of a terrible day for all of America, a day when "traditional" Americans, born and raised in this country, could have easily ostracized people who had recently come here to earn their right to be Americans. What I did see was the very generous spirit of America. Despite their own fears of that day, naturalized citizens reached out to new citizens, making them truly feel like they were as American as the rest of us. Many people showed extraordinary courage on September 11th, and for that they deserved our eternal gratefulness as a nation. There were countless other small displays of the goodness of the American heart that day, though, and I considered myself privileged to have witnessed some of that myself. Through the tragedy of that day, I became convinced of the unique basic goodness of the American character.
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