Bridges, Spanning From One to Another
When they stand, where they fall, running over them, driving across them, and sometimes jumping off them when it's (mildly) safe.
Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: bridges, when they stand and when they fall.
Ingredient List
🎵 : What I’ve been listening to this week: “Blizzard of ‘77” by Nada Surf, “Get Out” by Frightened Rabbit, “Under The Pressure” by The War on Drugs, “In Yr Head (1818)” by TOLEDO, “Enough For You,” by Wisp, “Me and Magdalena” by The Monkees, and more
Listen to the playlist on Spotify
📖 : “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing” by William Blundell: There are four writing books, that– if read– would save any writing major $120,000 in college debt and still put them light years ahead of their peers, if put into practice. This is one of them. I reread parts of it often and have found it to be an indispensable well of knowledge.
Other than that, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor
Apologies for any errors in the below menu. Haven’t had time to proofread. It’s been a week, for sure.
Course 1
A Word of Gratitude: Key Brewing
I wrote a piece this week for Washington Monthly about the Key Bridge collapse and what it means to Baltimore. You can read it here. The city will survive, against all odds, as it ever has. It meant a lot to be able to write it, because I care deeply about Baltimore and love it so much as home. I especially appreciate my friend Alec MacGillis, who may be the best writer in Baltimore and someone I admire a great deal, for recommending me to write it.
And for that I am grateful.
Course 2
Appetizer: Glowing Fish
My band played a show once in Saginaw, Michigan, a town that seemed to more ghost than town. We had an hour to kill before the show an iPhones didn’t exist yet, so we went on a walk. It was a good way to distract ourselves from being hungry. We were on some random bridge, looking down in the water, when someone joked about jumping in. Everyone had their backs to me, so it seemed like the perfect time to do something weird.
I said nothing, took off my t-shirt and put my wallet and cell phone on the sidewalk, and just went for it, jumping over the railing and into the Saginaw River below. I freaked out some people fishing underneath the bridge, and obviously had to walk back to the venue soaking wet, but it was worth it. The waterway, it turns out, was pretty polluted– it was the former dumping grounds for Dow Chemical and General Motors.
Fingers crossed that someday I’ll glow in the dark.
Course 3
The Main: Walnut Slushee
Bridges, like dams and seawalls, are one of those things where we think: sure, we can conquer water. It began with a felled log across a creek, and from there it was off the races. Fast forward a few millennia and we, as humans, have made the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, a viaduct span that stretches 104 miles from Shanghai to Beijing. Most of the time they work, sometimes they don’t, and when that happens, towns die and landscapes are reborn.
But even when they work, they’re always under siege. Water, the persistent eroder of all things on earth, is always at the front door, trying all the windows, the call coming from inside the house. Water and the things carried on it, agua and all its friends: wind, sand, salt, gravity, sunlight, tectonic plates. Every force of nature and the second law of thermodynamics is working overtime to bring down what we build.
And let me tell you from firsthand experience, to see something fall to a force of nature is a powerful thing that will never leave you.
Every parent has a “When I Was a Kid” legend pack squirreled away in the shuffled deck of their lived experience, each card just waiting to be pulled and referenced any time their children speak. Snowstorms are ace cards, followed by the face cards of gas prices and the iconic when-we-were-kids-we-played-outside which can be supplemented with a bored?-just-figure-it-out booster card.
All that to say, when I was a kid, we really did have that blizzard. A rare foil card pull, every nineties child in central PA remembers the ‘96 blizzard. That’s because we had an entire week off school, which is saying something; where we grew up, anything less than six inches of snow wasn’t even delay worthy. I’ll spare you the meteorological details about why and how it happened, but it snowed at least two feet and the wind created immense drifts that looked like ocean waves frozen in time. This was shortly after Christmas break, so it felt like the kids were winning to start the year. The snow hung around for quite some time as a deep freeze entombed the Mid-Atlantic.
That is, until the warm weather and torrential rains came. Everything melted– fast. Runoffs poured into creeks, creeks poured into rivers, and rivers had nowhere to go but up. And when rivers go up, grown men go: “Let’s check this thing out.” As such, my dad thought the best way to spend a Saturday in late January was to take a field trip to downtown Harrisburg and walk on some bridges to see how high the water was. This type of activity would later lead to my obsession of going outside in rain gear for every major summer storm, just to see which streets are flooded, take a few photos and dutifully report back to my wife. And just so you know– water can get pretty high when all the Baltimore trash blocks the drainage grates (see below).
Back to 1996, there we were, on the eastern span of the Market Street Bridge, and sure enough– the water was high. So high, it was almost touching the bridge we stood on. It was, in fact, the largest volume of water and flow rate ever recorded in the Susquehanna, with the Harrisburg level rising from 7 to 22 feet in just 14 hours. If you drive over the bridge or any adjacent bridges now, it seems absurd to even think about.
Because the river was previously frozen over, the entire Susquehanna was just a mass of broken ice floes, an arctic torrent of absolute wreckage. Just 10 feet below us, the brutal power of the river surged north to south as far as the eye could see, engulfing everything. We were talking it all in, walking down the bridge towards City Island (an island in the middle of the river) when we heard something loud, the unmistakable noise of a large thing breaking.
We ran towards it, and just beyond the leafless trees of City Island was a shocking sight– an entire section of the parallel steel truss Walnut Street Bridge had broken clean off. It was now floating on top of the ice chunks towards the bridge on which we stood. We were far enough away that we weren’t in danger, but it was mesmerizing to watch– this large piece of forged metal, drifting on a bed of frozen water, towards a bridge of cement. A battle royale of solid matter.
A minute later the severed span met its match with the Market Street Bridge, as the full force of the mighty Susquehanna pushed one into the other. Within seconds, the metal beams of the broken bridge folded beneath the flood, the awful wrenching of steel giving a last gasp before it went under. And then there was nothing. It was simply eaten up. News crews came, someone on the other side caught video of the whole thing, and I had a story to tell all my friends at school the next week. Luckily nobody was on the bridge at the time, so the loss was minimal.
The bridge was never repaired, though it remains a pedestrian bridge to this day, connecting downtown Harrisburg to City Island. This weekend, I visited a friend who lives in downtown Harrisburg, the Susquehanna River right outside his front window.
The water flowed far beneath the bridges, so silent and still that you could imagine setting a saucer on it overnight, only to find it in the same spot come morning. You’d almost be forgiven for thinking that something so peaceful would never rise to destroy the work of men who labored over a century ago, whose hands built a place for our feet.
Course 4
Dessert: Cherry Pie
Some of my favorite bridges, in no particular order:
Brooklyn Bridge | Probably my favorite bridge I’ve ever been on. I ran over it during my first marathon training cycle, in the early morning when only a few people were out. It’s still one of my favorite long run memories. The views of Manhattan are sweeping and breathtaking, like a painting of a model city.
Chesapeake Bay Bridge | Another bridge I got to run across for a 10K, and another one I had to drive over every day when I was cleaning boats. However, it usually means you’re going to Ocean City, and that’s a whole feeling of summertime nostalgia.
Golden Gate Bridge | Its reputation precedes it, mostly thanks to Full House. Getting to run across the bridge on a fogless morning with the Believe in the Run team was pretty special.
Hanover Street Bridge | Another Baltimore bridge connecting Port Covington to Cherry Hill, an absolutely terrifying span to walk and run in adverse conditions, filled with potholes that could swallow small children. Crossing it in any way feels like an accomplishment. But if you can get it on a calm morning with the college rowing teams gliding through the water, it’s actually pretty nice.
Pittsburgh | Too many bridges to name, but coming out of the Fort Pitt Tunnel at night and spilling onto the Fort Pitt Bridge, the entire city bursting in panorama– there’s no better way to experience a city view. There’s a reason it’s such a meaningful scene in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and the quote still stands: “When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really fun scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder.”
End of Menu
Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.