Bridges

I've been wanting to write this post for a while now, but it has been too difficult, especially in the light of the recent tragedy in Minnesota. I have an unusual fear. Bridges. To this day, I still get nervous driving across bridges, and it's because of the dreams I used to have.

Bridges have always held a special place of terror in my childhood nightmares, mostly because of this guy:

The Rainbow Bridge, located between Bridge City and Port Arthur, TX.

While crossing this bridge was not daily travel for me, we still traversed it often enough that I was quite familiar with the experience. During my childhood, the bridge to the left in the picture, the Veterans Memorial Bridge, had not been built. There was only the two lane Rainbow Bridge. The bridge was so tall that as you approached, it looked as if you would be driving straight up. When traffic--especially the 18-wheelers--passed you going the other direction, it the entire bridge seemed to be shaking. I was in 11th grade when a schoolmate of mine was killed on this bridge on the way home from a football game. I still vividly recall my own white knuckled experience the first time I drove across it.

The Rainbow Bridge was a frequent character in my nightmares. Nightmares usually consisted of the bridge collapsing just as we reached the top, though I distinctly remember one dream in which the lane we were in fell off of the bridge. The entire lane just fell off. The car fell down, down, down, 175 feet into the river below, while my dad remained sitting nonchalantly at the wheel, continuing to drive as if nothing had happened. Just before the car hit the water, I would think with horror, "But I can't swim."

There was another bridge which was the culprit of many, many a childhood nightmare as well. This was the 18 mile long elevated section of I-10 over the Atchafalaya River basin. We crossed this bridge a couple of times each year when we drove to Alabama to visit my aunt and uncle. The nightmare usually started out with my family driving across the bridge as normal. The bridge is two lanes going each way, with rather a large space between them. Steel and concrete. In the dream we would be driving along and suddenly the bridge would change to a one lane wooden bridge, but still sturdy. As my dad drove, the bridge would become narrower and more rickety the farther we went. It changed from a solid bridge to two 2 x 6 wood planks placed on wooden girders. My dad wouldn't seem to notice, and would keep driving. The wood planks and the girders became more and more rotten, but still my dad didn't seem to notice and kept driving as if nothing were wrong. Finally, in a moment of sheer terror, the bridge ended and Dad would drive off the end, full speed, as if he never noticed, and we would plunge down, down, 40 feet into the alligator infested waters below.

Is it any wonder I was a chronic insomniac by the time I was 10?

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