Well, I suppose it had to happen but it was a bad time for the bridge to get stolen. The Astoria-Megler bridge was, if anything, over built. On the sky line it’s very imposing, unless it’s raining and unfortunately it’s almost always raining, but normally it is very grand. It doesn’t go anywhere. It was billed as “the bridge to nowhere” which seemed great at the time all six miles of it spanning the great Columbia River from Astoria Oregon to the very grim Dysmal Nitch.
The pylons of the bridge are big and green. Steel beams (again, unnessarily well built) spike up high into the air to make two beautiful crescents on the sky line. The bridge soars higher and higher into the air to allow even the tallest freighter ship to pass underneath it. The bridge has been undergoing an effort to repaint it for some 35 years officially although unofficially the day after the launch they began to repaint it and have never stopped. One can only guess how many layers of sturdy green paint coats its surface.
It was during a rare hot bright summer, that two weeks at the end of the tourist season, when the weather is bound to be absolutely perfect that the bridge begin to be stolen. A cool sea breeze blew in. A sun that no one had seen for almost a year shown proudly all day. That is when the workers on the bridge who paint vanished inexplicably. One can only guess they were on one of the nearby beaches, maybe riding the Glam Tram, or eating tacos from a truck. It was a beautiful outside, the very best moment to be alive and every single window in town was open.
The warm sunny days stretch out like being suspended in time, a honey that lulls one to sit and stare at it all and soak it up. Not one dog. Not one Cat had a single worry those two weeks. Offices emptied out of hollowed eyed paper pushers and uptight school teachers dug out their bikinis from the bottom of a forgotten drawer.
Tourists piled along the waterfront and kept calling the Columbia River the Pacific Ocean and the weather was so nice no one even cared.
American steel is worth some money. I’m telling you. It’s worth a lot of money. And if a man has an inclination and a few tools they can make a few bucks. Some say they got a start stripping copper out of old rental houses in some state no one thinks about or ever travels to. Some say the interloper came from someplace so grim (Longview, Washington) that they couldn’t even get intoxicated by the clean pure air and bright unadulterated sparkling sunshine on the water. No one knows for sure.
The first thing that happened was a few beams were cut. Just a little was taken. Then another. Then another. And within that two week time you would swear that steel loving termites had infested the bridge. Everyday more was chomped down and bitten off until it looked quite ragged at the edges.
Well, what does it have to do with me? Well that summer I was helping marshall a bridge run. THE BRIDGE RUN. As in the grandest most awesome bridge run in the county. I was one of 100 volunteers or so but I pride myself on taking my duties more seriously than anyone else. So crossing over the bridge to go run the long trails on the other side I saw this parasitic action. Of course I didn’t do anything until it became, ‘WAY noticeable’ as the kids say these days.
I did what any good citizen does. I went on that Facebook thing and I complained on the Sheriff’s page. I received back a reply, but I didn’t read the entirety on account it was a 30 page document explaining to me about my personal responsibility. It asked me to think about the feelings of the people stealing the steel bridge piece by piece. “Do you need that beautiful American Steel more than they? Should you judge them?! Should you maybe ask yourself – what can you do to help?!” I scratched my head, sounded like a proper argument maybe it was my fault. I scrolled toward the end where it stated only two officers patrolled the waterfront and they hadn’t been seen lately because “have you noticed how sunny it is? Possibly if you weren’t so busy on social media you could realize that people really enjoy it here.” I was damn proud at that moment. If ever there was a place in all the world who could slap some shame down on a person and wake you up to a thing, it was our trusty local officials.
Maybe, I considered, stealing the bridge piecemeal wasn’t so bad. They would be done soon right? Before the race? It was the considerate thing to do but also like I said I pride myself on being the very best volunteer so I did what anyone would do and I wrote them a note and taped it to a 5’ rebarb spike haphazardly, and some would say terrifyingly dangerously, jutting out of the bridge like a root. “Um, if it’s not too much trouble, could you please wrap this ….” What should I call this? Thievery wasn’t an option, that would be rude. “Wrap up your project by October 23….” I wrote instead satisfied. Project. I liked that. I went on to explain the bridge run, leave them all my personal contact information just encase they had a question or better yet would like to sign up for the race themselves. Sure the cost is a little steep, about twice of a regular run and about three times more than necessary, but with all the steel they had sold, I done up and figured maybe they had the cash.
As I left I felt a little bad, should I have left a granola bar, a bottle of water? I mean, what kind of shape were they in that they were stealing an entire bridge. A bridge boasting enough American Steel to quilt a nuclear submarine.
The note – that was a bad idea.
That accelerated the rapid vanishment of the bridge. I mean, it was polite, please don’t give me a lecture on how I wasn’t thankful, I was. They were working to wrap up their “project” before the run. It was just that it was looking more like one of them old Mad Max movies every single day, there just wasn’t much left and what was left was all slashed I-beams and rebar and crumbling tarmac and smoking moldering bits of steel.
We had to think fast, at the bridge committee we take our work very seriously so there was a number of ideas. Stack old pallets and crab pots along the edges to use as a fence…maybe decorate the rebar and slag?
Wait – what? You’re asking about the cars? The trucks? People in danger from driving over the harrowing ledge of the now desiccated bridge? Have you not been paying attention dear reader about the venerable race in October and how it was important for the bridge to look really spiffy that day?
Yes, of course ‘TECHNICALLY’ there was no side railing left at that point at all and anyone could and did careen into the Columbia river an impressive steep fall that promised that no one could survive it. But precautions were taken. Every big freighter going under the bridge was warned to be aware of tumbling automobiles. Parks department donated two decommissioned orange cones and I myself wrote the note on one of the cones that read, “please be very aware that there are no side rails on this bridge for further comments, discussion…etc….etc..” and I gave my full personal contact information.
Pressed with the ever growing situation yellow tape was purchased but for reasons lost to hazy time no one actually strung up the yellow tape or flagged the bridge sides otherwise. Lets stop wasting time talking cars and trucks. *sigh*
The day of the bridge run came and at the pre-race huddle we decided to make lemonade out of those ugly terrifying lemons which were the leftover bones of the bridge now cut, torn and grizzled. What if the thieves had actually done us a favor? So we discussed it and that was the roots for the “Skyline Advancement” which actually went live on the city web site (I’m very proud about that). No more would our skyline be unnecessarily cluttered with steel and iron. Environmental reasons were made up on the spot, on the very spot, on why that bridge was a damn death trap to all we hold dear. Now there was an unmitigated view of the whole river and out to St. Helens on a clear sunny day (which again almost never happens but still…). Now there was no impediment to flocks of seagulls and we’re sure it was saving a species or two we just needed to identify them. We were on a roll.
When a few runners tumbled over the side we were ready for it. Personal responsibility. We said. You can’t make the State, the very proud state of Oregon, do something silly for you like keep you from leaping to your death off a bridge like that! Bridges are high. Bridges are windy. Bridges can be dangerous and EVERYONE knows it and you signed a waiver. Or, well okay, you got me – they weren’t around to hear what we had to say but we had it rehearsed.
Really it was a God send.
We always wanted one of the Orca pods to come up from the ocean further into our river basin and they showed up that week and they were a sight to behold and leaning over the scraped up ragged shell of the side of the bridge was a perfect photo opportunity. We all knew that the bridge being gone had made everything better.
But the weather always shifts. That one day at the end of the lazy hot summer, all two weeks of it, when Fall finally arrives with a big dark cloud on the horizon and something new in the wind. The heavy smell of rain is the smell of a long dark hazardous winter ahead of us. It smells of cold, of struggle, of not remembering the sun after a while.
And that’s how we got the bridge back.
One morning going into the college it was just there. I did get an e-mail back eventually, “sorry for taking your bridge, we needed it a little longer than we had anticipated.” Hu.
Well it was patched in spots and maybe not put together in the same weave and pattern as before but we understood, it was a lot of work overnight and all. So the painters came back and they began to paint the bridge again and the world went back to the way it had been before.
Anything else I have to tell you is only speculation. It’s the truth that I’m not sure that more than a handful of us ever realized the bridge had ever gone missing or wasn’t quite the same after the summer.
I think, personally this is just my guess – is that it took so long to pry down the six mile behemoth of a bridge because the borrowers of the bridge were taking extra time in town to see the sights, enjoy the weather maybe visit the kite shop and pick up something bright to fly on the beach. Possibly they spent the morning coffee shop hopping trying a different brew and scone at each and every shop. Maybe they rented a surfboard for the day and caught some cold water surfing.
No matter the time of year this place gets to you. It got to them. It got to the bridge that summer.
