Just a Couple More

If you're like me, you're probably "Nine-Elevened Out" and overwhelmed by the number of remembrances that commentators have been offering up in recent days. The History Channel in particular has been wall-to-wall with 9/11 for some time. (If you watch just one program, make sure you catch their "102 Minutes that Changed the World." It is phenomenal.) But if you'll indulge me, I'd like to offer just a couple of quick memories of my own.

By way of background, we'd just moved to our first farm, in Illinois, from California, a month and a half before 9/11. We were still figuring everything out, and hadn't even ordered our first batch of chickens. Our house was a couple of miles outside a town of 420 people, and about 7 miles from a town of 4,500. We'd met a handful of people, but still didn't have many friends. We'd decided not to hook up satellite TV, and were so far from the nearest broadcast tower that we couldn't even get signals from the antenna. We had dial-up internet, which was pretty slow.

I'd been in Washington, DC, on business the previous two days, speaking at a conference. I'd flown back to Chicago the afternoon of September 10th, and driven two hours home in my vintage Italian project car as the sun set over the prairie. Everything seemed perfect. Only after getting home did I discover I'd left my sports jacket on the plane. I called United Airlines, asked them to look for it, and went to bed late.

Tuesday morning I slept in, and it was lazy. Mrs Yeoman Farmer and the kids had gone to town for something, and I enjoyed having the house to myself. Sometime in mid-morning, I got around to signing onto AOL for the first time, to check email. I was puzzled by the welcome page, which said something about America under attack and the World Trade Center no longer being there. It seemed so outlandish, I dismissed it as some kind of speculative "what if" scenario. But after a little more browsing, I figured out what'd really happened. And was shocked to the core.

And I'd never so badly wished I had a TV. I switched on the radio, and tried to get some news, but even that reception was pretty bad. I then called Dish Network, and arranged to have satellite service hooked up. Something told me we were really going to want it in the coming days and weeks.

When MYF and the kids got home, we called one of the few friends we had in the town of 4,500 (a family from our parish). We asked if we could come over and watch TV, and they said "absolutely." We sped into town, and spent a couple of hours glued to the footage while our kids played with theirs. Particularly striking was the reaction the husband of this family had to the events. He was an auto mechanic, and about as strong a guy as you'll meet. He'd come home from work for lunch, and watched the news with us as he ate. As he was preparing to go back to work, even he had tears in his eyes.

Anyway, I'll cut right to the biggest thing that struck me about being in a rural community that day. The town of 420 had a Catholic church so small that it didn't have its own priest. The pastor from the larger town drove out twice a week to say Mass: once on Sunday, and once on Tuesday evening. I'd attended that Tuesday evening Mass pretty much every week, and there were usually about four or five other people in attendance. But on Tuesday the 11th, I counted fifty-five people in that little white frame building. It looked almost like a Sunday morning. Somehow, as the events of that day unfolded, a lot of people were getting the same idea: I need to get to church. I need to come together with other people. I need to pray. It was nowhere so pronounced as in that little town on that night. The sense of "togetherness" in that building was palpable.

Then, after Mass, as we began driving home, I spotted something strange: a long line of cars at the one gas station along the highway that cut through the town. There were so many cars, they were backed up for a long distance around the block. It looked like pure panic-buying of gasoline, but I couldn't help thinking if maybe all these people knew something I didn't. Would gas soon become scarce? Would prices go through the roof? I decided it'd be better to be safe than to be without gas, so I got in line and waited a half hour or whatever until I could top off my tank. All the employees were working to get people through quickly, but I had a chance to chat with one of them as our gas was pumping. "You could probably raise your prices and make a fortune," I commented. "Supply and demand, and all."

"Oh," she replied, almost taken aback, "we would never do that. We're just going to pump until there's nobody left or we run out of gas."

As I drove home, I reflected on how strikingly different this place was from Los Angeles. How much the community had come together. How much people seemed to be looking out for each other. And how very glad I was to be living here.

in the closet, I gave the pockets a closer inspection. And found that, in addition to my business cards, I'd also left my boarding ticket there. The date was printed right in the middle, and jumped off the paper at me: September 10, 2001.

I stopped and shook my head. September 10th seemed like an entirely different country, in an entirely different world. Everything, it seemed, had changed. And I was deeply grateful I'd be getting to spend the post-9/11 world in a rural community like the one we'd found.