Minding the Gap

This year will mark the 75th anniversary of the Deer Isle-Sedgwick bridge (or depending on where you live- the Sedgwick-Deer Isle Bridge; or your worldview- the Deer Isle Bridge).  In celebration, and working with Opera House Arts, the Elementary School will be doing all sorts of local history stuff throughout the year, culminating in a mural unveiling and performance in the spring.

On Monday, the whole school made a visit to the bridge, to see it up close and personal, and to listen to an engineer from the DOT talk about its structure and the maintenance it takes.  He had asked us to show this video of Gallopin' Gertie prior to the visit, but the teachers deemed it too traumatizing.

How long will you hold out?  The suspense is killing me.

It makes me want to weep for a world that doesn't understand or allow for the grim fascinations of small children.

So a very few of them might develop a phobia of going over our bridge.   What's that compared to 1940s footage that deftly illustrates aeroelastic flutter? - A concept which I haven't bothered to research enough to completely understand, but LOVE TO SAY.

What was interesting was how the engineer described the bridge as a "forever bridge."  He wouldn't even make an outside estimate of its lifespan- simply explained that the state would invest in a rigorous maintenance schedule, because she's in fair condition, and it would cost over 100 mil to replace her...

The tacit implication being that the state wouldn't ever do so.  The Eggemoggin Reach is no Penobscot Narrows, vital to Route 1 travel.

But everything has a lifespan.  This monument of steel and concrete can't be forever

Shelley pointed out the non-eternal nature of construction quite well, then buggered off on a boat to die young (which must have totally Bysshed off Mary Shelley*).

How long til this bridge is in ruins?  We (I) grew up with the bridge and endowed it with the unthinking assumption of permanence:  It has been, It shall always be.

I never gave much thought to what confluence of historical forces(micro and macro) brought the bridge about- there is a bridge, so of course the island MUST be important enough to warrant it.

Now with this local history project underway, I am looking at the bridge with new eyes, seeing it not as a natural extension of the landscape, but as an alien structure- a fluke, strange and wonderful.  Having lived on an unbridged island for four years, I have a very keen feel for what life can be like in a world dependent on ferry service.

How interesting to imagine a future or remember a past for without this beauty in Bridge Green spanning the Reach...




* Are jokes like these the best or worst argument for a liberal arts degree?  Discuss.