Bridges Too Far Maybe Not...

When I'm driving and I cross an impressive span of bridge I always whip out a camera and try to take a photo. I know, you should not be operating electronic devices while driving but one of my favorite imageries is that final journey over the river to eternal reward so if a crash does happen at least I'm halfway over. 

Some of ya'll might think that's the best old mudbelly can do, halfway but on a recent trip I crossed many of the big rivers that drain the heartland of American. The photo I made is crossing the Mississippi and I forget exactly where, maybe in the vicinity of Memphis, but I remember the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Wabash, and the Red right off hand and there were many more. 

 

I have a childhood memory of crossing a bridge on a family vacation. We were driving in an old Pontiac at night. It was pouring rain and the bridge was very narrow. Seems I recall a narrow bridge at Vicksburg Miss. existed at one time but if it's still in service it's widened by now to accommodate the progression of vehicle size. I read something that said most Americans drive a car larger than WW2 tanks. I went to an old tank show one time and I noticed some were so small that I thought them to be mock ups but this statement makes me now think they were the real thing. Getting new info will change your mind like that. 

In my memory there was a Greyhound passenger bus passing the other way. Traffic was creeping due to the rain and the narrowing of the bridge. I always sat in the backseat behind the driver so it seems like the bus passed inches away from my rain streaked window. Thank God seat belts and automatic windows were not invented yet so if we went off the bridge we could have rolled down a window and escaped from the sinking car and instead had drowned as we fought the current instead of strapped into a hunk of big American iron and had our bodies recovered in New Orleans just in time for Mardi Gras. 

You know if you don't make it all the way over there is always a next best thing. 

I always imaging on that last crossing you step into the boat on the Earthly side. There's a person to paddle and they are all wrapped in a hooded garment so you can't tell if it's man or woman as if that matters because paddling is paddling and like most anything anyone can do it and also to discourage any attention you might give them because after all this is a last time thing so you need to be looking. You pile up all that junk you thought you needed, physically and metamorphically right there at the muddy, messy landing and step into the boat to head to the other side directly into a bright light. The light is bright because probably every thing you have thought about that far side is going to be wrong and He don't want your brain using any preconceived ideology to sort through what you might see on approach and arrive on the other side acting just like you did on the Earth bank of the river.

I could go on about getting there but like the electronic device I made that photo with your's is going to be different from mine.