Birthdays and Bridges

Woke up this morning with the rain stopped but trees dripping heavily as I walked out the driveway to pick up Linda’s PCNH, so rain isn’t long stopped. Yesterday was Kristen’s 21st birthday: during lunch we watched on the iPad as a huge green thing of rain headed into Bay County from the west and inched toward us. An hour later as she left to return to her college in Atlanta the sky was darkening and there may have been a few drops already. Rain all afternoon, heavy at times. Last evening, Linda and I parked on Harrison Avenue, walked a block in light drizzle through rain puddles to the Civic Center auditorium, and just as we took our seats for Garrison Keillor, my iPhone vibrated with Kristen’s text “I’m here.”

My blog post yesterday remembered something about bridges, several wooden bridges we had in Panama City my growing up years. Tarpon Dock Bridge and 4th Street Bridge. The cross-ways wooden planks on those old bridges would rattle rumble rattle rumble loudly every time a car rolled across, and we could hear the sound of it from our house at the far end of Massalina Bayou. There are “sounds of home” and when they’re gone they’re gone. Like the bob-white sound I used to hear at dusk every evening. And the whippoorwill.

One such sound I don’t miss is of being in the flight pattern of the old airport. But as an American I appreciate the roar of two USAF fighter jets gliding low over my house. Blessed assurance. Another sound of home, a clear and still evening not long ago when the sound of the Star Spangled Banner came drifting across the Bay from Tyndall AFB about sunset. A sound more sacred than any hymn, stop in your tracks and remember what you are. What a blessing.

Or, am I blessed to be an American? Or is being an American better understood as a gift with which I am to help God bless those less fortunate? Just as ancient Israel had the gift of the Lord, to share. But Israel did not share, and so by Jesus Christ the gift was given to the Gentiles, and we are to share. Just so, we are to share with the rest of the world what it is to be American. In our short history we have done that with varying success.

But I was remembering bridges, and bridges where Ray Wishart gets such striking photographs. Ray likes to shoot the Bailey Bridge, which crosses North Bay at Lynn Haven. When I was a boy, the Bailey Bridge was a two-lane wooden structure that rumbled and rattled unnervingly as the car rolled across. Most unnerving, and I don’t remember Bailey Bridge feeling all that steady either, it vibrated and shook along with all the noise. To me as a small child, that was one scary bridge. I don't think so, but it may have been a drawbridge, which would have made it all the more scarier. Or most scariest.

On US231 you can get in and out of Panama City without crossing a bridge. Otherwise there’s Bailey Bridge to the north on Highway 77. To the south? For some years there was talk of running a bridge from the end of Harrison Avenue across St. Andrews Bay to Redfish Point. Other years there was talk of a bridge across the Bay from what Magnolia Beach? to 11th Street. Talk, nothing but talk.

To the west is Hathaway Bridge, which Ray Wishart also has snapped beautifully. My memory of going to the beach, especially in summer, is the unpleasantry of getting caught out on the bridge when the span opened for water traffic. The traffic was always a tug pushing a string of barges and it was always miles away as you watched it move slowly and reluctantly toward the center of the bridge to pass through. When I was a boy this was the Hathaway Bridge, built in 1929

a drawbridge. To open, the draw rotated perpendicular to the bridge roadway. An open draw was inconvenient for traffic, but was an inevitable obstacle for anyone in a hurry to get to the beach.

East of us on US98 is what we may call the Tyndall Bridge, but I think its official name is still DuPont Bridge. Built about 1927, it was the same cantilevered construction as Hathaway Bridge. My best memory of the original DuPont Bridge is during WWII, riding across it in an articulated bus something like this:

They may have been military buses, I do remember MPs getting on the bus and checking everyone's ID before the bus was admitted to Tyndall Field. We were on the bus as an adventure to go swimming at the beach, guests of renters who were living upstairs in our house during the WW2 housing shortage.

Anyone feeling inconvenienced at being stopped and delayed when the draw opened as you were crossing knew nothing of inconvenience until they had the experience of waiting on Hathaway or DuPont Bridge for the draw to close, and having it jam open.

The spans from both Hathaway Bridge and DuPont Bridge were laid on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico just offshore

as fishing reefs and diving spots.