Trapped!
The Source
Trapped!
You can’t blame for feeling a bit trapped. When Transportation for America released their June report stating that 66,405 bridges in the country were “structurally deficient,” I find that I’m nearly surrounded by them. One is the route 67 bridge in Beardstown which I must cross to hop on my riverboat job in Peoria each week (then pass under the darned thing as we float toward St. Louis), another is the Meredosia bridge that lies between me and my hometown of Perry, and a third is in Jacksonville. Yikes! Every time I leave town I’m taking my life in my hands! According to the survey, 11% of the bridges in the U.S. fall into the deficient category. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said, “fall into.” I still have to cross those bridges. And we’re not talking about wood plank bridges on the back end of someone’s farm. These spans carry the load of 260 million trips a day, and it’s interesting to note that the bridge that collapsed into the Sagit River in Washington state last month was not considered “structurally deficient. Double yikes! Since I signed on as piano player for the Spirit of Peoria paddle wheeler I’ve found that getting under bridges is a much more ticklish situation than going over them. Our boat stands 47.5 feet out of the water and when the Illinois and Mississippi rivers are showing off, passing under some bridges becomes an adventure. Our smoke stacks are glorious and the serve as the boat’s trademark, but the rascals do not tip down to accommodate a low bridge at high water. If we can barely make it, the captain asks the passengers to please come to the front of the boat to lower our bow. If we can’t make it at all, he calls for the Peoria Bus Lines to come pick up the passengers and plop them down at their night’s lodging. And in the rare cases when we think we can make it but we guessed wrong, we just tear the heck out of things. Such things have happened to other boats, but our captain says he’s so far avoided an all-out bridge crash. His usual modus operandi is to send a deck hand up the smoke stack with walkie-talkie in hand and we suck in our cruise-bloated stomachs. If you think the top sides of our local bridges looks treacherous, you should get a view of their bottoms. The bridge at LaSalle has actual scars from riverboats that didn’t have walkie-talkies. The first bridge north of Peoria has nicks in its wounded side. I’ve seen no such battle marks on the belly of the bridge at Meredosia, but still I can’t help worrying as I drive across the highest point, “Duh. I’m sitting on a structurally deficient bridge! What am I doing here?” I was taking lunch at the Approach restaurant in Dosh a couple of years ago when the nearby bridge got its first flunking grade. My party was seated next to a team of inspectors and I asked them what shape the bridge was in. The neon-coated fellow said, “Not bad for its age.” What was that supposed to mean? He said, “Everything over 65 years old is labeled ‘deficient’ so I guess that’s how you’d rate it.” The two guys with me were about my age. We looked at each other, wondering if indeed we only had a few more years before we too got that rating. “It’s still safe to use,” he said, “but it won’t be long and it’ll need replacing.” Dear God…he described us perfectly! Maybe it was the report of the TFA that caused it, but I’ll admit to having developed a certain fear of bridges in recent years. It actually has a name: Gephyrophobia. If you panic thinking about crossing New Yorks’ Tappan Zee Bridge rising more than 150 over the Hudson, you can call the New York State Police and they’ll haul you over. The Mackinac Bridge in Michigan offers a similar service, and if you can’t cross the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge the authorities will send out a tow-truck to lug you across. So far no such services are available in Meredosia or Beardstown, but both of these bridges are flanked with drinking establishments where I’m sure you can find someone to zip you over the span at no charge. I once rode a horse across the Mississippi River via the bridge at Fort Madison, Iowa. The horse was not a fan of bridges and she skittered nervously, ears laid back, eyes wide, from Illinois to Iowa. At any moment the horse could have panicked and we’d both have been carp food. What was I thinking? That settles it: the next time I cross the Deficiency Bridge at Dosh, I’m taking a car.