(EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was first published Sept. 11, 2006, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. It was published in what was then the Featured Columnists section of AccessWDUN.)
It seemed like a dream. Sitting in a Canadian hotel room five years ago today, watching our homeland being attacked. So far away from home - not knowing as the events unfolded on the TV screen before us how or when we would get back home.
It was something of a hopeless feeling.
A Niagara Falls vacation that had been planned for about three months was suddenly caught up in a nightmare of fire, smoke, death and destruction.
Sandra and I returned to our hotel room from breakfast that fateful morning and sat glued to the TV set for the next three or four hours watching like millions of others of our countrymen as the White House and Capitol were evacuated, the Twin Towers fell, the Pentagon burned and a jetliner crashed in a ball of flames in the Pennsylvania countryside. A day trip to Toronto was postponed until the next day. We did finally get out of the room, but the last thing on our minds was sightseeing.
"What does all this mean?" we wondered. "Are more attacks planned? How and when will we be able to get back home?"
Everywhere we went during the remainder of our stay in Ontario, we saw Canadian flags lowered to half-staff in a show of sympathy and support for Canada's neighbor to the south.
For a time the two bridges that connect Niagara Falls, New York, and Niagara Falls, Ontario, were closed to all traffic but by the time we got ready to leave on Thursday, Sept. 13, one bridge had reopened.
Our problem was we had flown to Buffalo and the rental car we had was one that could not be taken out of New York State or Ontario. So, with all airplanes grounded, nationwide, indefinitely, we began frantically searching for a car that could get us home. We finally located one.
When we crossed into Canada Sunday, Sept. 9, we were waved right on over by the Canadian border guard almost nonchalantly: "Where are you from? Where are you going? Got any liquor? Got any cigarettes? Have a nice stay in Canada."
But crossing back into New York two days after the attacks, the U.S. border guards practically took our car apart - pulling out and looking under the back seat, taking all our luggage out of the trunk and going through it.
Soon, though, we were in our new rental car and headed south.
What was to have been a two-hour flight home turned into a two-day drive back to Gainesville.
Through Erie, Penn., Pittsburgh, Charleston, ,West Va., and scores of much smaller places - it was all anyone wanted to talk about. We met other people in the same boat we were in - driving back home when they were supposed to be flying. We got back to Gainesville on Friday
Our journey was over. Our vacation seemed a blur. The whole week like a dream, a bad dream.
A bad dream from which you couldn't awake.
(Ken Stanford is Newsroom manager for WDUN NEWS TALK 550, MAJIC 1029, SPORTS RADIO 1240 THE TICKET, and AccessNorthGa.com.)
