This is America

This is America

A single popcorn kernel falls out of the bag and spirals to the ground as Dale Nacke prepares to watch his brother die.

We are more than four years removed from this object plunging out of the sky into a green field near Shanksville.

The idea of falling preoccupies. “United 93” was the first time I had to write the story of 9/11 since I was hired.

I had avoided, dodged, declined, and ducked anything that even came close to thinking about it.
For me 9/11 was always the day I woke up to a phone call from my now ex-girlfriend, turned on CNN, and saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center just moments later.

It had been a rare day off for me. I had intended to sleep for 10-12 hours. The second plane shocked me irrevocably awake. I was no longer on the phone with the ex. She had starting calling family in New York. I was alone, as always.

When we learned some time later a plane had crashed in Somerset County it had seemed distant and impersonal compared to New York.

That night, I stood out in the dark yard and stared at the sky as Chris and her family huddled around the television inside.

The midnight sky was filled with stars and for the first time in my living memory, I could not see a single man-made object competing for the space.

The first time I visited the crash site it was almost dark. I had driven down from the wood line from another story. The cool woods had been alive with late summer crickets and insects buzzing about.
The soft light was green and diffused by leaves.

Out in the flat fields, the shadows were sharp and the wind cut hard across the tall grasses.
The constant, angry sound of flags snapping overpowered the crickets.

The hard wooden benches were empty. Even the caretaker had left for the evening.

I sat in the long shadows feeling the empty space wash over me.

People had left notes to the families of the passengers and even to the passengers themselves. They were held down by small rocks and gifts. A Teddy Bear. A policeman’s badge.

Notes scrawled in permanent marker ran from the top to the bottom of a metal guide rail coming into the parking lot.

“Thank you.”

“God bless you.”

“Mrs. Simmons Grade 5.”

The shadows stretched out long fingers, covering the markers but failing to soften the hard noise of the wind through the flags.

The sun was falling.

Dale Nacke’s brother Louis “Joey” Nacke II died that day, and now he stands in a theater lobby with the smell of butter wafting through the air.

The movie is shot in real time after a short expository sequence and drags you, the viewer into it with relentlessly deliberate pacing and hand-held camera techniques.

Not only does the camera rarely have a firm base-view but its focus is constantly being racked. Combine that with the many shots emulating the seat backs of the darkened theater combining with the long-view of the hi-jacked cabin, you have a sucker punch from the movie.

To be honest, I am still somewhat emotionally wasted after seeing this movie. Interviewing these people. Seeing their pain.

What a bold and painful thing is life.

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*Minor funny. I’m sitting down to watch the movie and, of course, there are reporters everywhere. I’m next to (a seat away) from a stringer of ours and her fiancé when the TV people from five different stations show up.

The other paper has a girl three rows up from us and she’s interviewing an old lady before the movie starts (I harassed her with complimentary text messages until she had to turn off her phone {the stringer almost peed herself laughing})

the Associated Press is there, The Philadelphia Inquirer is there.***

The first TV person in, I’ll call her Katie, scans the entire crowd and comes up to me in the middle of the theater and asks me for an interview after the movie.

Well, I almost laughed out loud because one of the great things about my job is that you can use it as an excuse to talk to ANYONE YOU DEEM HOT.

Think about it, while on the clock, you can walk up to the world’s hottest model (they aren’t really that great, btw) and talk to them while saying you are doing a story. This, this, is how Natalie Portman and I will date.

Anyway, this is exactly what Katie was pulling. Unfortunately, you can’t be interviewed as a member of the press. So I politely identified myself, but, feeling mischievous and knowing the stringer would die from funnies, I leaned up to her and said, “You know, Katie, I have to say that seeing you in person is so much different than on the television. You’re just so much more beautiful in person.”

And then I leaned back and gave her an embarrassed and shy smile. She turned five or six shades of red and mumbled “thank you,” got awkward and ran away. She didn’t come back into the theater for maybe five minutes. I did get a little wave from her when I left after the movie.


**I did a mean and funny thing while writing this. I was at a coffee place and these four people sat right on top of me and proceeded to complain about every little thing that crossed their minds. The temperature, the coffee temperature, the coffee, the coffee at another place, the other place altogether for like half-an-hour. I finally stood up next to their table and called a friend, leaving a message on the machine that went something like this. (Talking directly at the table.) “When you get this, give me a call back, I wouldn’t mind hanging out for a beer, I spent all day yesterday interviewing the families of the people that died on Flight 93 (which I did). It was just an emotional day. I think about the sacrifice they made and how everything is put into perspective after that. I mean how can you not think of how great life is when you approach it from there? Anyway, talk to you later.” They shut the fuck up. Sorry, I can’t be surrounded by negative anymore…ughh a Phish song just came on, how the hell did that get on my computer? Speak of the devil.

***Today, my story was the best one. It’s not bragging. It just was.

****It would in theory be one of the great things about my job if, in fact, I ever got to cover events and meetings that were not only attended by old, ugly guys. I have locker room flashbacks almost constantly.