Northwest Wild Country Radio Station

ARLINGTON, Wash. - Joel Blog Mug There’s a picture that hangs on my wall at home. As a piece of art, it’s really nothing special. Taken with a little snappy Kodak disposable camera over 10 years ago by my brother Dan, it’s taken from too far away, over-exposed and so undersaturated it looks like a sepia print from the Wild Wild West.

It’s a simple little 4 x 6 print, sitting side-by-side in a wooden frame with a picture of my oldest boy Chris and I sitting on top of a stack of hay we had just loaded for my dad's horses. As plain as that photo is, though, it means more to me than any of the thousands of HD photos I’ve ever taken in 20 years in this business.

That picture has hung on the wall at The Pink Apartment, the Train Crossing, the Duplex, the Brown House, the Golf Course House … everywhere my nomadic life has taken me. And it’ll hang on the wall anywhere I call home as long as I live.

The picture you see, is of Chris and I, crouched on an Eastern Nevada hillside, Thanksgiving Day of 2000, on Chris’s first chukar hunt. Chris was just a cute little towheaded 7-year-old at the time – he’s now as tall as me, driving his own car – but was keenly interested in hunting, and had badgered me incessantly that day to coming along on Dan & I’s Thanksgiving-Day bird hunt.

This is something my older brother and I have done for years, whenever we’re together on Thanksgiving.

We cook, we eat, we hunt. It’s as traditional as our Turkey Day pumpkin pie.

In the picture, I’m crouched on one knee, my great uncle’s 16-gauge in my right hand. Tucked up right next to me, cradling a Red Rider BB gun that was given to him that holiday by his Grandpa, is Chris. We’re both staring off into the distance, trying to figure out where the giant covey of chukkar we had just flushed would finally land.

I didn’t even know Dan was taking the picture at the time, and I didn’t know about it until a box arrived at my house a month later. It was a gift from Dan: a hand-made frame, with the picture inside, labeled simply “Thanksgiving 2000”.

I love that damn picture.

“What’s wrong, Dad?"
Ten years ago today – Sept. 11, 2001 – I stood in my living room in Lake Stevens talking to my friend Dave Landahl in Chicago, my eyes transfixed by what I was seeing on TV. It was early in the morning – around 6 a.m. West Coast time – and I, like the rest of America, was glued to CNN as one of the most mind-numbing events of my time played out.

Flight 11 had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center roughly 15 minutes earlier, and as Dave and I chatted and newscasters scrambled to explain what I was seeing on screen – the Twin Towers, side by side, smoke billowing out of the middle of the North Tower – a black blur came rocketing into the picture.

Flight 175, going over 550 miles per hour. Impact: the 77th floor of the South Tower.

Dave and I’s reaction was identical: “What the f*ck was that?!? Did you just see that?!?”

Chris and his younger brother Connor had camped out with me the night before on the living room floor, so the TV was turned down so they could sleep. As I scrambled for the remote, though, and crouched in front of the TV to try to understand what I was seeing, Chris woke up. In a sleepy little-boy voice, he asked “What’s wrong,Dad?”

My answer was the same answer all you parents have given 1,000 times when asked that same question: “Nothing, honey. Everything is okay.”

It wasn’t okay, of course.

What does it mean to you?
I don’t know anybody who died in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. I’ve never even spoken to a 9/11 survivor. I have no direct connection to anyone who lived through the World Trade Center attacks, yet, this day MEANS something to me. I can’t even put it into words, really. It just does. And it should mean something to you, too.

You might never suspect it if you turn on the TV and tune into Northwest Wild Country on Saturday mornings, but the big dude who sits directly in front of me in the Wild Country studio – Duane “Big D.” Inglin – is a lifesaver by trade. He’s a career firefighter, a captain at Pierce County Fire & Rescue.

He doesn't talk a whole lot about it, but the fact is that Big D. is a good guy to have around when things get a little crazy.

Duane has a little experience in the disaster realm, too: he was deployed to Northridge, California after the earthquake of 1994, and spent nearly two weeks in Oklahoma City after the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building there in 1995. He wasn’t part of the recovery operation in New York in 2001, but you can damn well bet that Sept. 11 means something to him.

Duane's post this morning on Facebook says it pretty well: "Today is obviously a day of rememberance. I would not want to be anywhere else but at work with my crew."

Capt. Duane Inglin will honor the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 by smoking fish. He and his crew – in between the much-appreciated well wishes of the general public that will undoubtedly flow deep and strong today – will fire up the Little Chiefs and put the alder smoke to a gaggle of humpies that Duane has been catching this summer.

I couldn’t possibly think of a more fitting way to pay tribute to the 2,819 people who lost their lives that day 10 years ago, because they did so while doing what every one of us does every day of our lives: going to work, making a living, being free, making their own decisions. Being Americans.

What does it mean to me?
Here’s how I’ll commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Linnea and I will grab a little breakfast and we’ll walk down the street to Firehouse 46 here in Arlington, where there’ll be a brief ceremony to unveil an artifact from the World Trade Center. We’ll say a little prayer and offer our sincere thanks to the firefighters at Firehouse 46 … and then we’ll go to Linnea’s first soccer game of the year, and probably to ice cream after that.

Well chat with her brothers Connor and Chris, we'll maybe go to the river, and we’ll be joyous that we're able to play soccer, and choose from 31 flavors.

Sometime during the day, I’ll undoubtedly look at that picture on the wall, too. I’ll think back to that chilly Thanksgiving Day when Chris was just 7 years old, and I’ll remember exactly what the day means to me. It means that I have choices, you have choices, my babies have choices, and so do yours.

Please honor those choices today, in remembrance of the men, women and children who didn't make it out of the rubble 10 years ago.

I will never forget. I hope you won't either.