9-11 is a national day of remembering for us. New York City, Washington DC and Pennsylvania are far far away from my Kansas farm and I knew no one injured or killed in any of the attacks, but they were Americans(and people of other nationalities as well) killed in a sneak attack that was carried out to kill as many people as possible, the attack left all of us bleeding inside.
2001 was pre internet for me, almost every morning I watched the news, but not that morning. Had I been watching in the central time zone I would have known about it much earlier than I did, and probably seen live the second plane hit the twin towers. Almost every morning I listened to the radio while working, but that morning I did manual chores with no machinery, and did not hear anything. About 11 am, well into the entire ordeal, I climbed into my pickup and headed down the road, every station had a newscast on it, I didn't pay alot of attention, kept hitting buttons looking for music until I heard these words come over my radio......"where the twin towers used to stand". I will always remember that phrase exactly as it was said. I turned around in the road and headed for home, rushed inside and turned on the TV. I stayed glued to the television for at least 3 hours. I managed to plant some alfalfa later that day, then stayed up late into the night, way past midnight watching television. We were fearful of further attacks, and fearful the death toll was going to be in the 10000s, it was widely reported at first that 50000 body bags had been ordered.
While we knew no one killed, the grounding of airplanes left plenty of people I did know stranded. Our nation went into a period that was surreal, watching the frantic search for survivors play out many miles away, a sky that was completely devoid of any airplane for days, save an occasional fighter jet. Fear of new attacks turned to anger, and even to hatred of those involved.
Most Americans today believe that another attack will come, and will be much worse. We do not know what we can do individually to stop it, and simply live our lives. For me anyway, I am surprised another attack has not already taken place on our soil, and no matter what anyone thinks of Bush, I attribute the fact we have not been attacked again to his dogged war on terror.