I can’t believe it. Five punks have just been arrested in a conspiracy to blow up MY BRIDGE! The Route 82 viaduct over the Cuyahoga River– that’s the bridge. The bridge. My bridge.
If you grew up in that part of the world when I grew up there, “under the bridge” meant a particular place down by the river, a wild place at the end of an abandoned road, past a rusty chain barrier and down a weedy path. A lot of important teenage things happened down there. The place is part of the National Park now, with the road repaired and the paths all graveled and the weeds cut down. It gives you a weird feeling to stand under the bridge and read a commemorative sign that doesn’t exactly commemorate the really significant events.
But every so often I go down there anyway, and I sometimes see another middle aged man or woman standing there beside the paved mulitpurpose trail, looking up at the bridge or down at the water.
I’m glad these idiots got what was coming to them. I don’t think about the bridge very often, but what would happen to me if it wasn’t there?
Read about it here.
a cartoonist in Kekionga 