9/11

 Andy and I were in Paris when America was attacked. We were staying at the Lux Hotel where we had two rooms, one for packing the antiques we came to buy and one for sleeping.  Andy was in the packing room busy doing a good job of securing the antiques for departure day which was Monday. He came into the sleeping room wide-eyed and said I think something terrible happened in America. I went with him and saw the plane. It was surreal, we thought maybe it was a movie but soon learned the fate of America. The impact on those who were in America at the time was much greater than we felt. First of all can we get home?  Since the flight was Monday we thought things would be sorted out by then...foolish I know, but actually we did take the one and only flight out of France on that Monday.  We arrived at the airport where armed men walked us to the check in site.  Now, we had bought big for two weeks and had fifteen boxes and trunks full of china...and a chicken weather vane. The long stick of the weather vane was wrapped in bubble wrap and the chicken was too but separated from the pole.  Well, the pole looked like a gun and the people in our line kept moving to the other line when they looked at the wrapped pole and when they noticed our driver was Middle Eastern.  They really scurried away to the other line then, so we got up to the desk pretty fast and we kept telling Hassan, our driver, that we were safe, but no he had to load the trunks and boxes to be sure we were well taken care of.  It was a circus. Finally, when he saw us going through he waved good-bye.  There were only 75 passengers on that flight to America and we were treated like nobility.  We arrived, I think in New York, and then had to change planes but did not, for once, have to unload everything to be check in then reload it back up for the last leg of the trip.   We, again, were met with armed military and walked to our destination.  Being the only flight in, the areas were dark and gloomy. It was like a bad movie and we were walking into big trouble.