Suddenly, Football Seemed Unimportant

Suddenly, Football Seemed Unimportant
Small-town America takes in an atrocity.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Thursday, September 13, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

PENN YAN, N.Y.--For Americans living far from ground zero, Tuesday's horror was a dissonant, sickening mix--distant but immediate. It was terror striking many miles away, but addressed to all of us; a series of shocks broadcast live and then replayed, hour after appalling hour, in mounting, awful detail. Transfixed, in schools, barbershops, cars, restaurants, workplaces and living rooms, people tuned in. It was eerie. Their own surroundings were intact. But they felt violated.

That's how it was when I made the rounds Tuesday in this upstate New York village, population 5,248, a slice of small-town America some 300 miles from the devastation in Manhattan. Traffic was scarce. By midmorning, most folks had gone home to watch the TV reports of the attacks. Those still out and about could talk of nothing else. They were sad. They were angry. And they were fiercely certain that America must fight back.

At Kevin's Donut Shop, just off Main Street, the day had begun with the usual lively crowd and much banter about the Buffalo Bills' recent change in quarterbacks. Then, around 9 a.m., from the small TV set perched atop a refrigerator case behind the counter, they got the first news flash. A plane had hit the World Trade Center.

Suddenly, football seemed unimportant.

Hours later, neat rows of Kevin's donuts and eclairs were still lying unsold in their trays. "My traffic has been almost nonexistent since 10:30, because everyone is home watching this," explained owner Kevin Corby, pointing to the late-afternoon TV images of smoke choking what was left of lower Manhattan. The only two customers still at the counter, 61-year-old Ora Peacock and 60-year-old Jim Castner, were watching the TV replays of the collapsing towers and the flames at the Pentagon. They were calling it worse than Pearl Harbor. They were saying how they thought America should treat terrorists.

"We should go get them at any cost, even if it takes a world war or something," said Mr. Peacock.

"This unites everybody," added Mr. Castner. "It touches everybody."

How did they feel about the attacks?

"Angry," they both said.

Defiantly, Mr. Peacock suggested Americans could better defend themselves against plane hijackers if we gave innocent civilians a fighting chance by issuing them each a gun: "You mess with me, you're going to have to mess with my six-shooter."

"Or issue everyone on the plane a Louisville Slugger baseball bat," suggested Kevin, the owner.

Around the corner, at a tavern equipped with three TV sets, two young men with Harley-Davidson tattoos on their arms sat at the bar, clutching beer bottles, staring at the footage of fire and rubble and the surreal jumble of captions scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen, such stuff as: all airplanes grounded; all after-school activities cancelled; Disneyworld and Disneyland closed; Mount Rushmore closed; thousands feared dead.

"You hear about it in other countries. You just don't think about it happening here," said one of these young toughs.

"The one good thing that can come out of this," said the other, is that "when they find out who did this thing, there's going to be a lot of countries behind us. It's not going to be that everyone hates us anymore."

At the other end of the bar, 34-year-old Dave Havens, a landscaper, intent on another of the TV screens, said that "probably in our day-to-day lives it's not going to change much," but "everybody's mad. Everybody that cares about this country's mad."

"Hit the terrorist groups" said another guy drinking his beer nearby.

"And hit 'em hard," said a third.

"What you see," said Mr. Havens--staring at the TV footage, playing yet again, of the second airliner slamming into the second World Trade tower--"that's what you're supposed to see in black-and-white on the History Channel, not in color. It feels like an act of war."

At the village stationery shop, Long's Cards & Books, which has recently been doing brisk business in books on World War II, owner Jim Long was locking up after a day in which the news had "killed business--we open at 8:30, but around 11 it got very quiet." Saying "this is not just about America, this is about the world," Mr. Long headed home to join the nation's vigil in front of the TV set.

At a local supermarket, there was no panic buying--just a subdued mood of shared crisis. "Everyone's kind of quiet, and everyone's kind of nice," said 17-year-old Leesa Yerkes, an 11th-grader who after school works as a grocery cashier. She said folks all afternoon had been wondering "whether we're going to war or not, and whether we're going to have school or not, and who did it." Ms. Yerkes said she was planning to give blood in the drives being organized locally to help people hurt in New York City.

At the Penn Yan chapter of the American Legion, a small crowd gathered early Tuesday evening, incredulous over the day's events. "Seems to me you're not safe anywhere anymore," said a former Legion post commander, 45-year-old David Blauvelt. He was revolted by reports of Palestinians on the West Bank waving flags to celebrate the attacks on America: "It's unbelievable how parents could raise their children to cheer about this."

"We are sad and totally devastated," said 55-year-old Joyce Koss, listening in from a nearby table.

Whatever President Bush decides to do, "I think the country's going to rally behind him," said her husband, 58-year-old Joe Koss.

And in the office of the local weekly newspaper, the Penn Yan Chronicle-Express, 58-year-old circulation manager Robert Corey summed up his view of the long day: "You think of Adolf Hitler. I think it's the worst thing that ever happened on U.S. soil. . . . I don't think anyone's going to escape the effects." America, he said, has to act. "When they bombed Pearl Harbor, we didn't just sit back and twiddle our thumbs. People just can't believe something like this could happen. They want revenge."

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."