Schenk Pool came to our house to close the pool for the Summer a bit after 9am and I went out to tell them about it. 

Of course I spent as much time as possible watching the news like everybody else.

In those days, I would have always spent that entire time following the markets. September is always too late in the growing season to trade grains on weather and too early to trade natural gas based on cold but I still (would have) spent the entire time following all the markets.

Not that day or the rest of that week because everything was closed. Some markets were closed longer than that.

I don't need to look up what day of the week it was. It was Tuesday. 

My sons had piano lessons on that day after school.

I picked up the younger son, Mac at Scott elementary, then the older one, Quinn at Oak Hill Middle school for their 3-4pm piano lessons.

After the lesson, I couldn't get out of the driveway because cars were backed up for a couple of blocks on the street and its not a main street.

What the heck?

I looked closer and realized that  they were lined up for 2 blocks from the gas station on the corner.

Wow! People were panicking and scared that gas supplies would be cut off. That's nuts I thought. So I called my wife and asked what her employees were doing. She said they all left work to fill the gas tank in their cars up. I told her, DO NOT DO THAT! This will NOT affect gas supplies. People are overreacting.

Then I called my 75 year old Dad(at the time) and told him NOT to get gas. Go tomorrow, I said and you won't have to wait in line because everybody else will have filled their tanks and there will be plenty gas left.

I was coaching my younger son, Mac's soccer team at the time and we had a game at 5:30 pm.  A few boys did not show up but both teams had enough to play.

There are very few Muslims in Evansville, IN but that year, I had 2 Muslim boys on my team(brothers). The older one was Muhammad, our best player. The younger one was like 80 lbs overweight and walked instead of ran on the soccer field and hated it. I felt horrible that his parents were making him play soccer.  I think we called him Rami. I got to know their family a bit and thought they were very nice. The dad, actually spent the month of September back in his home country in the Middle East, so he wasn't even there.  It might have been Iraq.

There was alot of mistrust and discrimination of good Muslim Americans after that event that lasted for over a decade in some cases but not by the kids that I coached in soccer or chess. No Muslims on my baseball or basketball teams.

I got to know another Muhammed's family as a chess coach a few years after that.

The dad was a college professor teaching in California of all places and they moved for him to take a position at the University of Evansville because of discrimination related to 9-11 and people stereotyping fundamentalist families following Islam. They were extremely strict Muslims.

 I had some wonderful discussions with their Dad about commonality of key people in the Christian and Jewish religion/bible who were also significant in the Islam religion. 

During that time, many Americans thought that many Muslims were terrorists or were anti American and did not trust them. 

When you get to know their families, you find out otherwise. Of course I grew up in Dearborn, MI, a block from the Detroit city limit.

Dearborn has the highest Muslim population in North America. More than NYC.  So it wasn't like I haven't known any Muslims .......like is the case for many rural Americans.

              Previous threads on the anniversary of this date. The archives from the old forum before 2018 no longer exist.

                Remembering September 11, 2001            

                            6 responses |              

                Started by metmike - Sept. 11, 2020, 7:39 p.m.   

         https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/59035/

  September 11th, 2001.            

                            3 responses |       

                Started by TimNew - Sept. 11, 2019, 6:55 a.m.  

          https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/38724/

 September 11, 2018 This day in History            

                            6 responses |                

                Started by metmike - Sept. 10, 2018, 7:40 p.m.        

    https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/12684/

I remember.

 I was working alone installing a kitchen in an un occupied house. About 1 PM i went to the truck to eat lunch and  listen to the radio- the morning guys were still on and " Oh sh#t something must be wrong".

They were talking about the previous basement bombing of the tower and how lucky we were that the damage wasn't sufficient to topple the building and my first thought this time it DID fall down. I had no idea at that time planes had been involved and both towers had already collapsed. The other two planes were unknown to me also.

Thats when a neighbor approached and filled me in.

I continued to work that day knowing nothing would happen via the news medias  for the duration except repeat and repeat of the same old stories. I always hated that numb nuts staring at the TV.

 I didnt have anyone I thought needed calling cause for some reason this event didnt shake me up like it should have. Guess I was a bit numbed due to other stuff going on around me! Seeeesh-when I think about it now

 John

Thanks John!

Actually John, I’m proud of you for acting that way.

After the event, when people were panicking and lining up at gas stations, I was thinking “what’s the matter with you people!! This is exactly what the terrorists want!”

They wanted to make us afraid. Being afraid was a win for them. Killing over 2,000 people was one thing but making 200,000,000+ people afraid was a bigger target.

Hate is the most destructive emotion of all. I totally understand why Americans would hate these terrorists and any other terrorists that were determined to destroy America. They were and still are our enemies and deserve death or prison for their crimes or their planned crimes. 

However, hating ALL Muslims by Americans was a win for the terrorists.

 Hate is usually the most destructive to the hater. They got some of us to hate fellow American Muslims that were good Americans but of Arab nationality. They got people to stereo type and profile and distrust other Americans because of their race.....Arab.

That hurt the haters and it hurt those who were  discriminated against  for being Muslims all of them from both sides were Americans. 

All because the terrorists sowed the seeds, planted fear and hatred in our heads. We did the rest to ourselves in that realm.

There are guys  like Jesus and MLK that I greatly admire because of things  like teaching us  to love our enemies .

However, in this case, when the enemy is trying to kill us, the correct, fully justified response is to annihilate them!!

I was looking at a gold futures chart on the monitor.  It was trading around 300/oz and typically had a 3-4 dollar daily range.  It shot up $25 right before my eyes.  I knew something had happened.

I remember the fear amongst the general population.  Talk about "sleeper cells" ready to commit terror attacks was everywhere.  I honestly didn't know myself.  But within a year or 2 I came to realize that 3 million Muslim Americans were by and large decent law abiding citizens who were playing by the rules to take care of their families just like the rest of the country.

It seemed such an obvious conclusion to make.  And yet, Fox News and others peddled xenophobia for the next 20 years.  Shame.

Thanks joj!

We had a teachers inservice day, thankfully we didn’t have students that day.

A good friend of mine and fellow teacher was a National Guard member, he was very shaken and I believe he knew what was to come. He eventually did get deployed and returned safely. 

In my history class the next day we dropped early American history and went right to the history of the middle east and the conflicts with the west. I gathered all the materials I could find overnight. These were 12-13 year old students, most had never heard of the countries involved, where they were, their religion or the basis for their hatred of the west.

We started with the time of the crusades, and went trough British occupation and the creation of Israel and the Palestinians. A very quick summary.

I have seldom taught a unit were the students paid the kind of attention those kids did during the approximately 2 weeks we had this “short course” on Muslim relations with the West. 

Most kids that age don’t form many of their own opinions, they parrot what they hear at home or on the TV. Bomb them all was a pretty standard opinion. Bush using the word “crusade“ to describe the response was bone chilling, had we learned nothing ?

Many of those kids went on to serve in the military.

Good topic.

Thanks mcfarmer! Great to read you again too.

That would be a wonderful topic for an expansion of the topic that would result in tremendous learning by all of us(especially me).

If you lead the way, I will be at your side contributing. 

I turned on the TV, after somebody told me about an airplane crash in NY… and then I watched the whole thing.  On the top floor of one of the towers was the headquarters of a firm I had worked for, for many years. I had frequent phone contact with the people up there… I knew their voices, and they knew mine.  One of them, I knew personally.  When the towers collapsed, I knew they were all dead.

Yes, on every anniversary of 9/11,  I take the time to remember those who perished… and I remember the images I saw…. and the large number of questions that are still being asked about this event.

Right after this attack, most people in the US were eager to go after Bin Ladin (a former CIA asset) and his gang, and kick his butt.   So we started the “war on terror”.

Somehow, this invasion turned into the Iraq War and a never-ending occupation of Afghanistan. This 2 decade Afghanistan occupation has now been brought to a bloody end.

Yet, it’s not quite over… just 2 days ago one of our drones killed a suspected ISIS agent, who was observed unloading bags of explosives from his car, near Kabul. As it turned out…. He was not ISIS… he was a pro-USA aid worker who brought containers of water to his home. The drone killed him, 3 of his sons, and 4 other kids. I wondered, will one of his surviving sons learn to hate the USA and turn to extremism?

During these 2 decades of war in the ME, we have killed 10,000s of innocent people, woman and children. Are the people in these countries considering us to be the “terrorists”?

Thanks for sharing that personal story Gunter, along with additional great points.

Getting ready to go to work. After picking off a trade in the corn market. I still worked as a roofing contractor then. But the first tower crash captured my interest. And I watched everything until the end.

What also captured my attention, was W's emotional response after being informed that it had happened, while he was sitting in a 4th grade classroom in Florida. He knew it was coming. That was why he was on an impromptu visit to a 4th grade classroom in Florida that day. And all of Congress were "out of town" that day.

Nothing major ever happens without the government's knowlege beforehand. And if the people suffer, so what?

Thanks Mark, even if that's an odd belief.

I guess the Colonels, Majors, Commanders, Captains and Lieutenants at the Pentagon didn’t get the memo. 

Maybe just Generals and Admirals were in the loop huh?  

Empty skies after 9/11 set the stage for an unlikely climate change experiment

https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set-the-stage-for-an-unlikely-climate-change-experiment/

The southeast of the United States is crisscrossed with jet contrails in this image from NASA.   NASA

9/11 research challenged: contrails aren't turning up the heat

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/05/911_contrails_study_challenged.html