09/11/2026
I can define the story of this business and its almost 40 years by 3 events that made seminal changes. 9/11, when my father Buddy Glance, the original Old Grouch, passed away and Hurricane Helene.
25 years ago I was eating breakfast as the first plane hit. I saw the news first on a web forum I was browsing (social media was not a thing then and that was where everyone talked) and turned on the TV. It wasn't clear what was happening until the second plane hit.
It is easy to sit back with the benefit of hindsight and see things in the perspective of knowledge we didn't have in that moment. All we knew was that we were being attacked. We didnt know who it was. We didn't know if there were more planes. We didn't know if that was just the first wave. We didn't know if there were dozens or hundreds of thousands more in the country about to attack more in other ways.
We only knew that our world was different now.
I called my parents. I called my Platoon Sergeant of my USAR unit and then all the members of my squad. I called some close friends. I opened my safe and grabbed a rifle because today I was taking it to work with me and went to open the store.
Like everyone else I was glued to any information I could find. The internet was young, you didn't have mobile access, so it was radio and TV. At work I dug out an old 6" portable black and white TV that was 20 years old, it kind of worked enough for use to get live updates. We couldn't see anything but we had audio.
All day it was somber people coming in. A mixture of fear, panic, anger, and everything else. A few people were panic buying. A lot of people who just didn't want to be alone and wanted to know anything they could about what was happening.
That afternoon they called from my Army Reserve unit. They were told someone needed to be there 24/7 to man the phones- remember in 2000 most people didn't have a cell phone- and asked if I was available. I went from work to there. The building was locked down- all the entrances blocked and concertina wire all around the building. Our full time civilian there, a Vietnam vet and E-8, had a cot set up for me in the office and had me sign for an M-16 and the only 30 rounds of ammo kept in the arms room for guard in case of emergency. Of course I had a full basic load in my bag, pistol on my hip concealed, and my rifle in the truck. He knew I would, it was one of those things we all knew and nobody said because even in that case it was against the rules.
This was less than 12 hours after the first plane hit. We still had very little idea what was happening or what attacks may still come, so there was real fear that a government building like an Army Reserve Center may be a target.
I spent that night and every night for the next week on that cot, only going home long enough to shower in the morning before going to open the store. I got calls from everyone from reporters looking for information to unit members asking for updates to just scared people who opened the phone book and saw the numbers for anything military and just wanted someone to tell them they were safe and that someone was doing something.
As a business things changed too. First change is that we were selling stuff to people actually going to war, not just surplus to people using gear made for war in other ways. We saw rapid changes in gear as it evolved and that made changes. The difference in the surplus business and military gear between 2000 and 2005 was huge. The vets coming in were no longer mostly Vietnam vets and a few Desert Storm vets. They were younger and had more recent experience and for most of them they knew they were going to be going back again, it wasn't just a memory of a thing they had experienced but one they would again.
9/11 changed the world for all of us. Where were you, and how did your life change that day?
