Massalina Bayou bridges

For some years, old friend Mike McKenzie, of the Panama City pioneer McKenzie family - - and Mike's family owned and Mike lived in The Old Place long before I did - - Mike sent me photos and newspaper clippings, and pages from old local newspapers, most notably 19-teens and early 19-twenties front pages of the St Andrews Bay Times. I've kept all that, and recently opened a thumb drive Mike sent me maybe ten years ago.

Above is an interesting photo that I came across, marked 1909 wooden footbridge across Massalina Bayou. I can't tell where the bridge was located, whether at Tarpon Dock or maybe where the 4th Street Bridge was later and is today. But I Googled, "when was there a footbridge across Massalina Bayou in Panama City, Florida?" and AI came up with answers that I did a screenshot and then cropped the page down to just show the replies. Here's that, though from what I personally know and remember about both Massalina Bayou bridges, they were both wooden automobile crossings when I was a boy, 4th Street Bridge was straight, Tarpon Dock Bridge was a drawbridge; so AI may not be infallible, eh?

And AI talking about a bridge across Massalina Bayou to connect Panama City to Millville don't make no sense, nomesane? That would have been an early "Glen Bridge."

My growing up years, I remember three, no four, wooden bridges for automobile crossing: Tarpon Dock Bridge, 4th Street Bridge, Glen Bridge crossing Watson Bayou to Millville, and the Bailey Bridge crossing from Lynn Haven north on 77 toward Southport.

The last Time that Robert and I looked, the old pilings from the wooden 4th Street Bridge that we knew as boys, were still there, at least under the east end. 

It's just a phase for me nowadays, publishing old Panama City and St Andrews pictures on Facebook; substituting for my habit, since October 2010, of writing a daily +Time post and linking it on my Facebook page, partly because I'm a little weary of the daily write and publish routine, especially when the short essays are about serious topics and my mind is more focused on what all has happened to and in Panama City since I was born here in 1935. 

Here's a pic marked "Tarpon Dock Bridge" when it was a wooden bridge, in my childhood a wooden drawbridge. The pictured bridge is wooden, but it appears to be a footbridge, not a bridge for automobile crossing. 

One thing I've noticed concerns the argument I used to hear as a boy, about whether this section of town is St Andrews or St Andrew. And whether the Bay is St Andrew Bay or St Andrews Bay. I find old official documents that have it both ways, so I figure there's no wrong way. Say it or write it however you wish. St Andrew, St Andrews, St Andrew's - - how did the area get the name?

One story is that the European explorer who first sailed into the Bay did so on November 30, the holy day of St Andrew the Apostle, of a year when a practice in discovering bodies of water was to name them for the saint's day when you discovered them.

Going to publish this Thursday evening at bedtime, because I'm hoping to sleep in Friday morning.

Pax and Blessings,

T89&c