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Ode To The Bridge

The Source

I suppose it sounds a bit odd to write an ode to a bridge. Lovers need odes. God needs an ode. Maybe even your dog..but a bridge? I’ll do it anyway. I think the year was 1967. My buddy Jack Pool from Chambersburg had picked me up to go check out the women on this side of the river. I guess that’s what we were doing since I know we spent many Sunday afternoons doing just that. Years later both of us moved to the other side of the river so we must have found something appealing about bridge crossing. Jack had a Plymouth Barracuda…green and mean and the very definition of “muscle car.” We’d seen the sights east of the river and were headed west back across the bridge …three of us in the front seat, Jack driving and me in the middle. Jack was forever the daredevil and the 383 engines suited his temperament perfectly. As we were nearing the crest of the bridge shouted “Roll up your windows! I’m gonna let ‘er eat!” (Jack thought that the open windows would somehow give us draft and he wanted maximum speed.) Unfortunately Jack rolled up his window while my hand was still in it. I yelled, jerked my knee up, knocking his gearshift into reverse. Barracudas do not like to be shoved into reverse at 60 mph. The green monster slid to the left and we went down the Dosh bridge sideways. Sideways. I’m not kidding. I know it doesn’t sound possible, but it is. They’re making plans to tear down the Dosh bridge and replace it with a more modern structure where sliding Barracudas would be no thrill at all. A lady from Chapin told me that she met her husband on the Dosh bridge. Actually, it was the railroad bridge and Meredosia was having a festival to celebrate its opening. Carnival stands, lemonade, a real live Ferris wheel. …all crowded into the Dosh park. She said that she met this handsome young fellow who’d asked her to ride the wheel with him and somewhere at the apex of the thrill ride he asked if she’d like to cross the bridge with him. They were taking passengers back and forth across the bridge on a train. That was it…the train simply crossed the river to Pike County then reversed and brought the giddy riders back to Dosh. She accepted. She married Charlie and they stayed that way for many decades until his death a few years ago. A bridge has a soul. It deserves an ode. My father tells about crossing the bridge driving a John Deere 45 combine with a 14-foot grain head. This allows but just a few feet clearance if you meet a car. I don’t know much about statistics, but what could be the odds of meeting another John Deere 45 combine with a 14-foot combine at the very top of the bridge? It happened. Dad said the other guy was towing a grain wagon behind him so it was dad who had to hold up traffic while he backed down. When I used to work for Burrus Seeds we used the “rule of 47” on the bridge. When you drove one of those long-legged personnel carriers across the bridge there was absolutely no room for another vehicle to pass, so we’d unofficially stop traffic to allow the monster to cross. If you were driving the machine you’d send the flagger across the bridge in a pickup truck and count to 47…the exact number of seconds it took a flagger to drive across the bridge, get out, and stop traffic. I have no idea how the Burrus brains came up with 47, but since they had everything else down to a science, I supposed that this too was exact. And I have memories of purchasing a new Pontiac Firebird then driving to my Dad’s home in Perry on the day they were painting the bridge. Technical note: rubbing compound will take paint specks off Pontiacs if you work at it. Now that my summer job allows me to pass under the bridge while playing the calliope on the Spirit of Peoria riverboat, I’ve been able to study the structure’s underside as well. We cruise under many bridges on our Peoria-to-St. Louis journey, and the passengers no doubt regard the span of steel and paint as just another bridge, but for me it’s always a sentimental journey as I look up at the place Jack, the Barracuda and I were nearly killed, where Wilma met Charlie, and where farm machinery had the right of way. A bridge like that needs an ode. The new bridge will no doubt be safer and thus take up a lot more acreage with long, luxurious approaches on both sides and with a roadway wide enough to accommodate two sliding Barracudas at once. Yes, that will be progress, but yes, we shall surely miss the old bridge. A bridge needs an ode.