I got what I wanted

So now it has been just about three weeks time since I had my long awaited visit with West Virginia’s metal monster. It is almost a sense of relief to have finally done that. It’s not just for the thrill of it but also a feeling of one chapter ending and another beginning. The Key Bridge is now gone, at least the main span and all of its steel wreckage have been removed. Marine traffic flows along unimpeded, and only the ramps leading to the bridge remain, Those chapters that began long ago have now ended. Included within them was the nightmare drive that really wasn’t, and of course the gory and untimely death that totally tarnished the Key Bridge for me. Then came the final chapter, for the Key Bridge at least, and for those who died working on it. My visit to the New River Gorge Bridge wrote the next chapter. It was a way for me to try and put the past behind me and to deal with the emotions dredged up by the Key Bridge collapse. I faced that monster’s hidden darkness in hope of putting that aspect of it in perspective. As I could never face nor cross the Key Bridge ever again, I could only have such an experience with a suitable stand-in of sorts. A massive steel bridge, built in the same era and completed in the same year, served well for that purpose.

I got what I wanted out of that encounter, just as I had hoped. The chance to see such a massive structure up close, to study it in detail in all of its fearful symmetry and splendor. To be in its presence and in its space and take in all of the sights, sounds and feelings. Not unlike going to a zoo to get a close look at a fearsome creature that you might never see up close (or want to get close to) in the wild. To do so in a safe way without being in danger from said creature….

But what now, and what of this continuing journey? What happens next? It has come to my attention that there is yet another nearby bridge that can be experienced by walking its deck, which is normally only accessible to vehicular traffic. This one is a very local metal monster, a matched pair of familiar steel serpents that span the Chesapeake Bay. Yes, I am speaking of my apparently friendly childhood monster, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The one that heralds passage to Ocean City, summer vacation and the beach. And also the very same one that so many fear! Anyone can, for a fee, sign up to walk the entire length of its four and a half mile eastbound span later this fall. The newer westbound span of this twin monster is also a contemporary of the Key Bridge. In addition, both had the same designer, so they are more or less cut from the same cloth, so to speak. One bridge I was afraid of and then repulsed by, and the other I was always happy to see and cross. But I had no reason to fear or loathe the Bay Bridge, as I was completely ignorant in my childhood innocence of its dark and morbid history.

Now that I know the full history of both bridges, I can easily see that the Bay Bridge is, by far, the most monstrous of the two. The Key Bridge could barely hold a candle to that savage blood spattered steel horror’s death and injury toll. A number of fatal accidents, including one where a truck went over the rail and into the water, have occurred on that infamous bridge. And of course the hundreds of lost souls who have leaped from its spans and perished in the waters below. But I also found out something quite shocking in my searching of this supposedly amiable monster’s past. I discovered that it too has tasted blood! And I don’t just mean blood spilled from fatal motor vehicle accidents that took place on its road deck. I mean in the very same hideous way that my friend’s buddy, the Key Bridge jumper, met his demise. Someone leaped from the Bay Bridge and never made it to the waters below and instead their body splattered onto one of its piers. That idyllic summer vacation heralding bridge of my childhood has been baptized in the blood of a willing victim!