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When we were little, the five of us, long before Mary Eileen was even a gleam in Daddy's eye, as they say, we used to "go for a ride." This must have been post-World War II, since we wouldn't have been frittering away the wartime gas rations with family joyrides. So, 1946, say, and we were 12, 10, 8, 6, and 5.
Indiana summers were hot and muggy. To us it was normal to dry off after a bath and still be as wet as we were before drying. The humidity was fierce. But it's all we knew and we dealt with it as everyone did in those pre-A/C days.
On hot summer evenings we would put on our pajamas and pile into the family station wagon for a ride. This was always at Daddy's instigation, or so I remember. Maybe it was Eileen's idea; she was very much bothered by the heat.
In any event, there we were with seven people in the car. Windows were open with the expectation of a slightly cooler evening breeze. And we would sing. I've already told you what we sang: "Show me the way to go home", "Down by the old mill stream", and "I've got sixpence." These were for starters, and always with harmony. Daddy's tenor led us. I don't think Eileen sang, ever. How typical (of me, of all of us) that we didn't watch, didn't pay attention to her. Was she having a good time?
But here we are on the back roads of the county, which Daddy knew from his own lifetime in that place, and which we just rode through blindly. But at the end of the ride (every time? once a summer? once a week?) we ended up at the dangerous bridge.
This was a condemned bridge across the old canal extension that connected the Wabash to the town. Here's how we knew it was condemned: big signs saying "Bridge condemned! Not safe! Do not cross!" Words like that. In hindsight I see the bridge as a couple of probably still-safe steel spans. The cross-pieces—that is, the boards that made a bridge out of those steel spans—were rotted through. Some were missing. The danger was obvious. At least, that's how my mind's eye sees it.
So here we are at the bridge and the car slows, stops. "Well, whaddaya think?" says Myron, father of five. "Should we do it? Should we cross the bridge?" He probably said something like "I told you we'd cross that bridge when we came to it—and here we are now. We've come to it." He was always one for a pun or a joke. But this was no joke. The car nosed up to the barricade. Daddy kept nudging, daring: do it? Not do it?
Well, if he was giving us a choice, we were loudly unanimous: don't do it! But we were only five little voices against his authority. Eileen? Did she say, "Myron, don't!" Did she ever say that? I'll check with a sibling (which I'll have to do sooner rather than later, because we're of an age . . .)
I said there was a barricade, but it obviously wasn't so complete that Daddy couldn't swerve around it. And he would take that station wagon full of his nearest and dearest—or so one might have imagined—onto the rickety bridge that could have collapsed at any time. We screamed and shook and bawled in terror. But he always went over the bridge.
Not on this evidence alone, I have to say that Myron was a bit of a sadist.
Maybe this was his way of dealing with the family overpopulation problem that resulted from having married a staunch Irish Catholic. Maybe when he signed off on the Church's procreation covenants he didn't realize how fertile his bride was, or how quickly a family could grow from one to too many to count. If the bridge had ever collapsed, it would have ended all his problems. Or maybe there was no danger at all. Maybe Myron knew that the city erected those danger signs only to deter mischief-making teens (yes, even then teens did their durndest to create havoc).
It's been the mystery of a lifetime: was our father really trying to kill us?
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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