A piece of my childhood fell into Narragansett Bay today.



At 10:45AM the "old" Jamestown Bridge was demolished with a volley of explosives which dropped the center span of the bridge into the waters below. With it went childhood memories, teenage paranoia and a practical joke at the hands of the master, my father.

For those of you not from Rhode Island, the Jamestown Bridge spanned the distance from North Kingstown to Jamestown across Narragansett Bay. From Oakland Beach, where I grew up, you could clearly see the bridge silhouetted against the southern sky. At night the bridge was lined with a string of brilliant white lights.

This is where my father twisted my young brain.

My Auntie Anna and Uncle Eddy lived in Saunderstown, just south of the bridge. From their yard you could also clearly see the bridge. One day, probably before I even turned 9, I asked my father how the lights got on the bridge.

"Your Uncle Eddy put them there," he smiled.

To my young mind it seemed to make sense. He lived right near the bridge; that must be because he worked on the bridge. I took some pride in the fact that my Uncle Eddy had made something so beautiful. I beamed with the fact that thousands of other people could see the work someone in my family had made.

Kids that age don't really think much about what adults do. What my father told me seemed like gospel and I kept that thought in my mind as I got older. As I learned more about people and the things they do I rationalized that my Uncle Eddy must be some sort of electrical engineer. That seemed like the job a person would have to have to oversee the lighting of such a mammoth structure. Simple logic.

This is where the beauty of my father's partical joke blossomed.

My Uncle Eddy died when I was in my mid-twenties. I miss him greatly to this day. The day of his wake I picked up the newspaper to read his obituary. It listed his parents, wife, children, military history and his life long career as a butcher.

BUTCHER?!

That couldn't be right! My father told me he put the lights on the Jamestown Bridge. I even went to my mother to confirm what I was reading. The paper HAD TO be wrong.

"No," my mother told me, "That was just your father screwing with your head." Then she laughed.

When I started driving the Jamestown Bridge planted the seeds for a fear of heights. At the very top of its span was a steel grate which was open to the ocean below. As your drove over the top your tires whined loudly. The wheel swayed slightly back and forth as the tires jogged back and forth across the checkerboard grating. You could look straight down and see the churning cold water hundreds of feet below. It was a government built house of horrors.

You would try to drive as fast as you could to get across the grating. That only made the swaying of your front end worse. Just 26 feet wide, it had only two lanes and no breakdown lane, the swaying made it look as if you were going to be swung over into oncoming traffic. The whining of the tires on the grating only served to make your blood pressure go higher and higher adding a horror movie-like soundtrack to the commuting terror.

When you would hit the solid pavement again you could start breathing again and the blood would drain from your head. I loved going to Newport but I hated going over the Jamestown Bridge.

Even if my Uncle Eddy had put the lights on it.