Unbelievable , livre ebook

First Edition Design Publishing - Arne Knuithof

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

83 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

The story of Arne Kruithof, the boy from Rotterdam who taught the hijacker of United Airlines Flight 93 to fly. This book describes his journey through life. He sets up a flying school in Venice, Florida. On 9/11 it happens. Arne does not know that he has trained a hijacker till the FBI and Police are on his doorstep.

Informations

Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	05 décembre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781937520427
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Unbelievable
The story of a boy from Rotterdam who taught
the hijacker of United Flight no. 93, how to fly.

by arne kruithof
ISBN 978-1-937520-42-7
Published by First Edition Design eBook Publishing
December 2011
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

Copyright, 2011 by Arne Kruithof

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other – except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without prior written permission of the publisher and author.

The comments, opinions and viewpoints presented here are solely those of the author as derived from his personal experiences.

Text Copyright ©2011 Arne Kruithof
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN-13: 978-9088420542 ISBN-10: 9088420548 (PRINT)
Dedication

This book is dedicated to my loving father, Otto Kruithof, who always politely stayed in the background. He sometimes gave the impression that he didn’t care much about the upbringing of his children. But at important moments he was always present and made sure we grew up in a safe environment and went to the best schools. He taught us how to play musical instruments and made sure that we learned to speak many different languages. Most importantly, he made it possible for me to learn how to fly and because of this I was able to become an airline transport pilot and flight instructor. Sadly, my father never got to know my children, Sebastian and Raphael, before he passed on. It is unfortunate that my children only know their grandfather from stories I tell them.

Many people have suggested that I write a book about September 11, 2001 and the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon, and the crash of United flight 93 in Pennsylvania. Of course the tragedy of the day itself is indelible, but the years prior to those events have importance as well because those years had a large influence on my life and impacted my decision-making process. The events of 9/11 became an extraordinary addition to the thirty-seven exciting years of my life up until then. My life, then and now, is filled with unexpected twists and turns, irony, coincidence, humor, sadness, and surprises.

As a professional aviator and flight instructor as well as a father, I always look into the eyes of people who harbor a dream of flying. In many cases, this dream is being squelched by others who tell them, “Stop dreaming and be realistic!” or “You are not cut out of the right wood for this!” or “You don’t have the right schooling for that!” My advice to these dreamers is; don’t listen to the naysayers! These judgmental types may still be around but in fact they are already half-dead because they have given up their dreams and try to influence others to do the same. It is never too late to realize your dream as long as you dare to believe in it. The stories in my book may seem like dreams, but they are all true. I hope that those who read this book will receive a little push to help them realize their own dreams and believe in the future. Enjoy!

Arne Kruithof Nokomis, Florida USA
Table of Contents

-Adventures in Europe and North Africa
-To America
-Prelude to 9/11
-Impressive Business
-Epilogue
-About the Author
Chapter One - Adventures in Europe

Like many young boys at about sixteen years old, it was important to me to start making some money of my own. This is something you would most commonly do during summer school vacation. To have money to be able go out with your friends was important; plus, I was collecting albums of hard-rock bands which, of course, were not free. The school was closed and I was off for twelve weeks. After asking around, I found out the company DROST in Schoonhoven needed vacation help at their swine slaughterhouse.

As a child, I always had great respect for animals. One day, after I had finished playing with one of my buddies in a neighboring village, I was biking home and saw a sick bird on the side of the road. I jumped off my bike and frantically ran from door to door, ringing doorbells, asking for an old shoebox. I laid the bird inside a shoebox and biked home as fast as I could. After arriving home I opened the box and saw that the bird had died. Crying and deeply shocked, I dug a hole, made a wooden cross, and buried the dead animal in my mother’s backyard.

In my spare time as a youngster, I would often go into the meadows fishing, sometimes alone, or, if my grandfather had come over from Germany, together with him. My German grandfather was not allowed to use live fish as bait when I was around. If I caught a fish, I would always remove the hook very carefully from its mouth. But sometimes the hook would be so deep or pierced so close to the eye that I saw no other possibility than to cut off the head of the fish. This was so the animal would not suffer needlessly. These were the fish I would then take home, clean, and ask my mother to bake for us.

Despite this early and intense love for animals, I took the initiative and applied for the job at the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse was divided into four sections. One section was where the pigs were disembarked from the double-decker transport truck and put into fenced enclosures. The second section was where the pigs were killed, the third was where the carcasses were graded and stamped, and the fourth was where employees would stand and wait to remove the bones from the flesh. My job was to keep the whole slaughterhouse clean. This meant that I could come and go everywhere within the facility, and because of that I learned how everything worked at the processing plant.

Throughout the day, trucks would drive up in front of the building, filled with pigs. The trucks had two levels that were often loaded with far too many animals. Usually the process of unloading the animals went without too many problems. But sometimes, one of the pigs had broken its leg during the voyage, or was sick. These animals would then get pushed out of the truck from the second level of the truck onto the concrete below, sometimes by the driver or sometimes by employees of the slaughterhouse. The animals would scream in pain. The sick animals would go in a separate slaughterhouse section where the meat inspectors would check to see what portion of the animal was salvageable. The other healthy pigs would await their fate inside the fenced area. It looked like the waiting room of death. Sometimes a guy walked among the pigs with a cattle prod; he reminded you of a village fool. With his prod he could give the pigs small electrical shocks and after he poked one of the animals with the prod, you could hear them screaming far from the slaughterhouse.

After the trucks were emptied, the animals were herded in the direction of the room where the “knife-pusher,” as I called him, was located. The animals were shoved through a door and forced into a V-shaped steel rack. After the animal was stuck by the knife-pusher, it couldn’t go anywhere anymore. Immobilized, it could then see how its predecessors were being pulled up on their back legs with a steel chain attached to their back hooves. The rack was electrified and would cause the animal to lose consciousness. After this process, the cutter would put the knife in their throat. Occasionally I would go to this section of the slaughterhouse but then quickly leave after having looked into the pig’s eyes, because you could clearly see the fear of death in its eyes. I had a hard time dealing with this. The animals that were bleeding to death went via a motorized rail to a hot bath where they were washed. They were put into a machine where their hair was removed and then through an oven with big flame-throwers that would singe off their skin. Finally, the animal would be cut in half lengthwise. On a kind of podium there were several butchers who would cut out the kidneys, heart, liver, loin, intestines, ears, and head from the split-open carcasses. After that, the feet were cut off. Then the meat would be graded, stamped, and pushed into cooling chambers.

A large number of employees who worked in the slaughterhouse had been in prison previously for one reason or another. After prison, the slaughterhouse was one of very few places they could find work. Because of what I saw, my respect for animals increased, as did my respect for the people who had to work in these kinds of businesses to earn their daily bread and butter. But I remained cautious. Sometimes one of the more sinister types would make a sexual remark. I made sure I always stayed near other people. Every now and then you would hear that two co-workers had attacked each other with knives and sometimes even cut one another. Fortunately, I never witnessed any of these occurrences.

All of these things made a big impression on me. I ate meat less and less frequently. I had so many vivid memories in my mind. One especially disturbing memory was the day I had to clean the putrid-smelling room where they kept the trash container. The entire floor was filled with intestines, ears, eyes, and even, sometimes, embryos. One time a dead dog was in amongst all of this.

At the end of a workday, I would arrive at home and immediately wash my clothes and take a hot bath. But nevertheless, I would still smell the blood and the dead meat. The day I began getting big sores on my hands, I decided to stop working at the slaughterhouse and I never returned. Altogether, I had worked there for only three months. Sometimes, even now when I do eat meat, I still hear the screaming of the pigs and see the fear in their eyes. Fortunately, soon after my slaughterhouse employment, I found a much different kind of job—distribution of newspapers in the neighborhood where I lived. Every day before I went to school I