We're All Bridgtenders...

 

 

This was the old Vilano Bridge before it got replaced by that high arch bridge on the right. It's a fishing pier now, dotted with concrete benches along the walk out to the end. Hard coquina stations that accommodate sun-fried anglers during the day and homelessness wrapped in soiled layers, at night.

Seagulls fight over the detritus both leave behind.

That oversized Bluebird of Happiness behind us is in training to be a Walmart greeter. Living successfully for many years at the infamous Magic Hotel, up the street, the Bluebird eventually became homeless himself. Life’s twists, turns, and a pickup truck, brought him to reside here, with his peeps.

During the 1990’s, with good friends who lived a few blocks away, we often spent weekends hanging out at their house or at Vilano Beach. A Steve Earl/ Lucinda Williams soundtrack, beer, seafood, beer. The kids spent endless hours in shallow pools, dark browning like so many water chestnuts bobbing in frothy waters.

One Saturday, when the girls decided to spend the night, I went home alone, beer coursing through my veins, driving an old Subaru with my sound system cranked up to “wow!”.

There was less focus on the evils of drinking and driving back then, and I was less focused on that day.

Steve and the Dukes were knee deep in snakes on Copperhead Road when the old bridge traffic bells joined in, clanging out a high harmony. The entire road in front of me started to rise, just a few feet, but enough for me to see the water below. I saw how the raised tarmac would decapitate me on the way down.

The bridge came to a jarring stop that shook my car like an earthquake. Turning down Steve and the boys, I heard more of the alarms screaming at me and saw the manic waving of the bridge tender in the big aluminum windows of his observation tower over the roadway.

Apparently, I’d driven past the crossing gates just when they were closing, as they were then, behind me. The bridgetender saw me too late…he had already pushed the “rise” button on that old vertical lift bridge. Panicking, he immediately slammed the “stop” switch.

Everything shuttered and froze, including me.

I took a breath, the bridge and bridgetender took a breath, and a few seagulls who had briefly frozen in mid-flight, became liquid on their breeze once again.

Bridge locked down tight, traffic arms up, all green lights…I slowly started driving. Driving and breathing.

Leaving Copperhead Road in the rear-view, I invited Louis Armstrong to sing me his version of “It’s a Wonderful World” as we drove home…he did, and it was.

Still is.