Wondering What ‘Normal’ Will Be

They are voices of fear, of defiance. Voices of confusion and of pride. They are the voices of Americans fumbling to find a new normal, in a world that’s not.

The season has turned since the terrorist attacks, summer edging into fall. It has been nearly three weeks. Sitcoms are back on TV. Barry Bonds is once again chasing the home-run record. A few airports have resumed curbside check-in. But normal is not back--not yet, and perhaps not ever.

Phil Benoodt’s voice is brash. “Them punks ain’t changing nothing I do,” he says. “You can quote me on that.” He’s mowing the lawn on a spectacular day in this little town on the Mississippi River. He is all swagger, all brisk life-is-normal.

But then he mentions that he works as a carpenter across the river in St. Louis. Nearly every union contractor he has heard of has started laying people off. He mentions too that he and some buddies from his Army days in Vietnam called up a sergeant at Ft. Bragg the other day to volunteer.

Benoodt is 51. He has four kids to toss baseballs with on the lawn. Yet here he is, trying to enlist. “If there’s going to be a good fight, I want a piece of it,” he says. The sergeant at Ft. Bragg said he’d be in touch.

The “punks” have changed Benoodt’s life. They’ve changed Olga Rodriguez’s life, too, out in California.

She lives in Garden Grove with her husband and nine children. Since Sept. 12, she has kept a cardboard box by her bed filled with emergency supplies: Del Monte corn and El Paso tomato sauce, diapers, canned peaches, instant soup.

Mother’s Worries Domestic, Not Foreign

The emergency she envisions is not another terrorist hit. It’s inflation. Or worse, a layoff. Her husband earns $350 a week in manufacturing. She cannot imagine how they would get by if he lost his job. “I’m really afraid,” she says. “I’ve lost all my confidence in this country.”

Rodriguez has cut expenses every way she can to save some money just in case. She won’t buy her kids new clothes. They go to school in pants that are too short. She won’t buy her infant daughter baby wipes. She cleans her with moist paper towels.

Every week, she puts another can or two in that cardboard box.

Voices from across the country:

“We’re just beginning to get the staff meetings where they explain how many people are going to be gone in your department.” That’s Julia Phillips, 64, a research librarian at Boeing in Seattle. Boeing, its aircraft business reeling, plans up to 30,000 layoffs.

“My grandmother keeps telling me to look at life differently, don’t take it for granted.” That’s Michael Lumpkins, an Illinois high-school sophomore with diamond studs in both ears.

And from 29-year-old Paul Dennis, an executive in Kennesaw, Georgia: “The whole country has been tilted.”

Since terror hit, the Dow Jones industrial average is down 8%. Consumer spending is way off. Despite the rare bright spots--defense contractors and the security-guard business are booming--the economy suddenly is looking alarmingly fragile.

People are so afraid to fly that the airlines, their bookings plunging, have laid off 93,000 employees. The effect of travel cutbacks shimmers throughout the economy: The men who shine shoes at Lambert Airport in St. Louis are standing around now, idle. Flight attendants, many of them single moms, are wondering how they’ll pay the rent. Hotel bellmen and waiters, hot-dog vendors and janitors at tourist resorts are being ordered to work fewer hours--or being fired straight out.

The Universal theme park in Orlando, Fla., cut the hours of 1,500 part-time workers last week. Disney World has taken similar measures. By one industry estimate, up to 625,000 airline, tourism and travel jobs in this country may evaporate because of the terrorist strikes.

Words of Defiance From Every Corner

The situation is so dire that the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Assn. International plans an “industry in crisis” conference in New York City next month. Civic leaders in Irvine are planning their own small-scale but heartfelt intervention: They are recruiting volunteers to fly to New York over Veterans Day weekend to spend money in the Big Apple.

“In this time of crisis, most of us can’t lift a pick and shovel to aid the rescue effort. We can’t shoulder a gun to fight the enemy,” said Chris Mears, an Irvine attorney leading the campaign. “We view this as an act of economic patriotism.”

That voice, the voice of defiance, resounds. It comes from Susan Pan, a 41-year-old mother of three, who speaks from the front seat of her minivan as she drives her brood from a matinee in Ventura.

“We should do as our leaders said,” she advises, “and carry on as normal a life as we can.”

It comes too from Derrick Bartholomew, a window washer clinging to an office balcony high above the Seattle waterfront. He is 33, a single father, three kids, and he tries to shove away his fear. His motto: “We have to go on.”

Many people are struggling to do just that.

Retiree Eileen Cassen is attending her homemakers club meetings in Grafton, Ill. But even when the topic is supposed to be flower bulbs, talk somehow slides to Afghanistan. John Salwitz still took his two daughters on a long-promised trip to Disneyland last week. But he canceled their flight from San Francisco and drove.

Grace and Danny Lee of Tustin tried going out to dinner the other night. It was the first time they had ventured into a restaurant since Sept. 11. They felt, oddly, guilty.

An Ohio amusement park, not wanting to offend, has removed the fake corpses from its Halloween display. In Marietta, Ga., the billboard in front of a swank hair salon no longer advertises styling specials. It now reads: “God Bless America.” Auto dealers across the country, desperate to woo buyers, are offering zero-percent financing.

Los Angeles is retooling a promotional campaign that was aimed at tourists nationwide. The new target audience: stressed-out residents of the San Fernando Valley, or Orange County, or the Inland Empire, who might want to drive downtown for a getaway.

Many Questions With No Answers

Police Officer Rodney Williams, who patrols the streets of St. Louis, says citizens of all ages keep flagging him down, walking over to tell him thanks, he’s a hero. The lobby of his police station is decorated with cards from kids, again calling officers heroes. That’s welcome. But it’s not normal.

More voices from around the country:

“It’s been a pretty tough year, and I expect it to get tougher.” That’s Paul Huntsman, an executive from Salt Lake City.

“Everything is now in God’s hands.” That’s Daniel Van Allen, 45, a painting contractor from Ventura.

“I think with everyone, there’s a silent fear.” Karin Dentinger, 41, says that as she sips a glass of wine at a hip restaurant in Seattle. She is a trauma nurse, so she is not worried for her job. In fact, she figures grimly that she’ll now be in more demand than ever. Dentinger is not afraid of flying, either. In fact, she flew into Seattle just last week, on vacation from her home in Sacramento.

But though her job is safe and she trusts the skies, Dentinger nonetheless echoes the national unease.

“As parents, you have to ask, what’s the future of my children going to be?” she says. “Everyone’s come to the realization that things are never going to be the same again.”

Back to Julia Phillips, that Boeing librarian in Seattle. She is waiting for two friends in the lustrous downtown symphony hall. And she is discussing the agonizing calculations she’s been making since the hijackers struck.

Her retirement portfolio, in stocks, has plunged. It’s worth barely 40% of what it was. Phillips turns 65 later this year, and had been planning to retire soon. Now, she’s not sure she can afford it. On the other hand, she hears the talk of massive layoffs and thinks perhaps she should retire, to make room for a younger employee, a young mother or father with children to support. An employee, in fact, like her own daughter, who works at Boeing too--and who is likely to lose her job.

‘Nothing Can Stay Horrible Forever’

Retire, stay on, make room, make money? She goes back and forth.

“I’m an optimistic American who thinks nothing can stay horrible forever,” Phillips proclaims. Then she shrugs. Nothing, these days, is sure. Maybe that is the new normal.

“Maybe,” Phillips says, “we just don’t have the experience to know how bad it can get.”

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Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Mike Anton, Marla Dickerson, Walter Hamilton, Meg James, Greg Johnson, Terril Yue Jones, David Kelly, Jennifer Mena, Jesus Sanchez, Richard Verrier and Times researcher Edith Stanley.