October 1, 2001

'We're all New Yorkers now'

Through A Glass Darkly, by John Myers, Internet Photojournalist

Back in the olden days of newspapers, type was set in lead blocks. (I'm old, but not that old. We used lead type once in a journalism school class back in the '70s, and I haven't seen any since.)

The largest size type in the editor's type box was 72 points, which is the size of headlines used only for really, really big news events. Something like Pearl Harbor called for breaking out the 72 pt. type.

Facade of the World Trade Center in New York City left standing after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But there was a still larger size of type for end-of-the-world headlines, which was kept in dusty box way in the back. I've never seen this cataclysmic-size type, only heard about it. It was called "Second Coming type," meaning it was reserved for the Second Coming of Christ, and for any other events of similar magnitude.

If newspapers still had any Second Coming type, they would all have broken it out from the dusty box in the back on Sept. 11.

We had a Second Coming all right, but it wasn't Jesus. It was more like the Second Coming of Satan himself. Not since he used a serpent to deceive Eve in the garden has he pulled such a dastardly deed, or at least that's the way most Americans feel about the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001.

I quoted some mind-staggering statistics in my previous column about the millions upon millions of innocent civilians who were slaughtered by some of the worst murderers of history: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the Japanese leader Tojo, who we hanged after WWII.

But still there seems to be no comparison to what the terrorists did to us, the slaughter of some 6,500 Americans, mostly civilians.

Our previous yardsticks of slaughter on American soil go back to the Civil War nearly a century and a half ago, when men generally died one musket ball at a time. But there is no one alive today who can recall the slaughters of Shiloh, Gettysburg or Fredericksburg.

And what took days of battle to do back then was accomplished in one hour on Sept. 11, when evil visited New York and Washington.

My great-grandfather, John Shepherd Myers of Anson County, was a Civil War veteran and lived with my father when my dad was growing up. Daddy often said he was 21 years old before he found out "damn Yankee" was two words, and may not have been joking.

And perhaps that is the most surprising outcome of our greatest American atrocity. Could it be that the Civil War has finally ended? William Faulkner commented, "in the South, history isn't past." But maybe Osama bin Laden and his evil henchmen have done what nearly a century and a half of time could not do, erase the boundaries between north and south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Perhaps the most extraordinary comment I've heard in the post-attack discussion was a southerner saying, "We're all New Yorkers."

I'm a writer, and writers are supposed to write about current events, but I have been unable so far to express how I feel about the current state of affairs. I heard another writer say we're all feeling three things: numbness, constant sorrow and reflexive anger.

I am certainly feeling all three, but other feelings have also begun to seep through. Pride in America. A throat that chokes up when I hear a crowd singing "God bless America." A heart that brims over with optimism when I see how Americans are pulling together.

Hockey fans in Philadelphia did an extraordinary thing Thursday night. They came to see the New York Rangers and the Philadelphia Flyers play hockey, but when the arena put President Bush's address to Congress on at half-time, they demanded it be left on the screen when it was time for the hockey players to return to the ice. They cheered the appearance of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the screen. And after the speech, they cheered when the teams decided to shake hands and call it a night, without finishing the game.

And these were hockey fans in Philadelphia who normally hate New Yorkers, especially New York hockey players. If Philadelphia hockey fans can lay aside their hatred of New Yorkers, then what's an old southern redneck like me to do?

I was born and raised here in the South, and have previously subscribed to the following definition: The difference between a Yankee and damn Yankee is the first is merely visiting the South and the latter moves here to stay.

But now, for perhaps the first time in my life, I can say, "We're all New Yorkers now." For that, I suppose I should say, "Thank you, Osama bin Laden."

But I shall still cheer when his day of reckoning comes, and do what I can to support my country's efforts to bring it to pass swiftly. It's the very least all of us New Yorkers can do.