BUILDING BRIDGES TO CROSS OVER AND OVER

Some people say building bridges is the most important thing in the world.

And they are correct.

But for me, the most important thing is getting across them safely once they’re built.

I’ve been crossing them all my life, for better or worse.

My Portland pick is the Hawthorne Bridge.

I crossed it twice a day for years.

First I lived on the Westside and worked on the Eastside.

Then I lived on the Eastside and worked on the Westside.

I never got it down to living and working on the same side, which makes the Hawthorne my ‘Most Crossed Bridge.’

In 1980 the pedestrian walkway was made of wood that was rotting in place.

It was okay riding my bike, but walking it felt like I might drop into the Willamette with my next step.

Rotting wood was replaced by metal sheets that warped in the heat, or may have been warped from the start.

The bike ride had the feel of a swooping carnival attraction.

Eventually the city figured it out. Now it’s cement, level, and even.

Over and back, day after day without end, felt like a carnival.

Why a carnival? Before my Portland commute I rode the Broad Street Line subway in Philadelphia.

The RR was my New York train.

I looked around back then and saw faces used to the ordeal, the drudgery of the whole thing.

Not me. I saw it for the carnival ride it was, like It’s A Small World in Disneyland.

 

I saw my first Hit and Run accident on the Hawthorne that sent a pedestrian cartwheeling up in the air, land with a thump, then get revived enough to try and fight the police and EMT’s on the scene.

I saw an accident on the inside structure where a driver was thrown from their car and skidded across the steel grate on their knees. Raw knees.

Sometimes the river ran high, sometimes low.

 

Rising from the ashes of the original Madison Bridge (which was destroyed in a 1902 fire), the Hawthorne Bridge

I’d heard a rumor of huge sturgeon lurking around the bridge’s foundation.

Has anyone seen people fishing from the old ferries that crossed the river?

 

North Bend Bridge Over Coos Bay

This the competition for ‘most crossed bridge of a lifetime,’ the North Bend Bridge.

 

Despite being built in a time where bridges often had built-up beams with lacing and lattice on the members, this bridge was built of solid steel members, drawing the eye to the appearance of the bridge as a whole, rather than detailed built-up parts of the bridge.

Virginia Bridge and Iron Company of Roanoke, Virginia was the general contractor for the bridge. The American Bridge Company of New York fabricated the steel for the bridge.

 

Like everyone who crossed this bridge before me, and everyone after, this was the way out of town.

Get on Hwy 101 north, turn right for Hwy 38 up the Umpqua River, then I-5 north or south to the rest of the world.

Turns out it was a big world out there.

I rode a motorcycle across the bridge going 70 mph on a Honda 100 with a front wheel shimmy.

The bridge was part of training runs during wrestling season.

One evening it was caught in the tail end of a wind storm, some called it a hurricane, and we still ran it.

Steve Prefontaine crossed the North Bend Bridge on his training runs to Horsfall Beach, which is nice memory of a local legend.

 

Sometimes I ask myself if crossing that bridge was the right decision.

These days I’m less adventurous.

We cut firewood under the bridge to finance wrestling trips to national tournaments.

If Coach Abraham asked you to cut wood, it meant you were on the right track.

We jousted with driftwood poles under the bridge. (Hey Mark)

We raced our cars across huge mud puddles under the bridge, which was how I discovered holes in my floorboard.

The only bridge memory from Philadelphia is crossing the Walt Whitman Bridge over the Delaware River on the way to Fort Dix on a weekly supple run.

No memory of a bridge in Brooklyn because the subway went under the East River to Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge was out of the way.

And I wasn’t a tourist.

 

Bridging The Present To The Future

I’m not the first blogger, the first observant writer, to see a problem brewing.

I was a freshman in college from ’73-’74 when Watergate bubbled over.

Six years later Ronald Reagan was elected on the promise of ending the Iranian hostage crisis.

 

Almost from the moment Iran free the U.S. hostages in 1981 just minutes after President Ronald Reagan took the oath of office, there have been suspicions about a deal between the Reagan campaign and Iran.

 

By the year 2001 I was a grown man with an inquiring mind when yellow cake uranium was used to start the Iraq War.

I am today years old now, listening to the drums beating around the world and hearing one man say he can end war within five minutes.

For all the crackpots of history, we’ve got quite a few getting voted into office not based on their understanding of foreign policy, domestic policy, or how laws are made.

Instead we see adults gobbling up spoon-fed campaign advice on abortion, women’s health, guns, sexual and gender orientation.

We see Ivy League educated politicians resort to their understanding of hillbilly virtues to garner votes.

What is sadder than seeing a Harvard man, a Yale man, feign ignorance, portray intentional stupidity, to their constituents instead of helping them understand how to make a better life.

I want them to want a better life, clean water, clean air, and live in a safe environment free of random violence and accusation.

Here’s the future:

Babies want to crawl, then walk.

Toddlers want to run, then read.

Mothers want to guide them and teach them. Same with dads.

Teachers want a calm classroom conducive to learning.

Business owners want competent workers.

Call this list the Big Five Of Family.

How are families affected by the call in some circles to replace civil service workers?

The federal government is our nation’s largest employer with more than 2 million workers.

It may sound cute on TV, but it is not building bridges to the future.

Neither is a group of geezers past their reproductive shelf-life telling women what to do when they are pregnant.

Neither is a group of gun lobbyists who are convinced there’s nothing they can do about gun violence except promote more guns.

The next time you’re walking across a bridge think about where you’ve been and where you’re going.

If you’ve been given a good life by caring parents, why not do the same for others?

Show them how to walk the walk of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

If Superman can do it, so can you.