The View from a Drawbridge

Today is my 25^th anniversary of being a bridgetender. Time sure does fly. I’m amazed I’ve lasted this long.

Recently, I was reminded how much I used to absolutely adore my job. And I do still love many aspects of it. I love the bridgetending parts of bridgetending. The opening and closing of the bridge, the taking care of the bridge, the feeling of expertise, and knowing every nut and bolt inside it, and its many quirks and inconsistencies. I know how and why it sounds differently in hot weather and cold weather. I can anticipate when heat expansion is going to be an issue and when it won’t be. I can feel when it’s acting up through the very soles of my shoes.

I also know the ebb and flow of the neighborhood. Even though I don’t know people by name, I know their patterns. I know when they’re most likely going to cross the bridge and with whom, and who jogs when, and who owns which dog. I recognize certain distinctive vehicles. (I’d probably recognize a lot more if it were 60 years ago, when all cars weren’t practically identical.) I am familiar with all the local vessels and the sounds of the captain’s voices on the radio. I love the peace and quiet in the early mornings and the late evenings, and I love, most of all, working by myself.

There is a 5% white-knuckled terror aspect to this job, because a lot of crazy, unpredictable things can happen, but it feels good knowing that I have the ability to think independently and figure things out, and so far, in all my 25 years of opening drawbridges, no one has gotten hurt due to my actions. Not once. I’m proud of that. It’s actually quite an achievement, given the fact that people don’t realize how just how reckless their daily antics on these drawbridges can be.

I’m not sure I could cope if my efforts to save them from themselves were ever to fail. This is not a job where you can afford to make mistakes, because mistakes could kill someone. The fact that most of those people walk away not knowing how close they’ve come to a really tragic day is a testament to my ability to do the job. (I have suggested a lot of ways we could have simple, low-cost community outreach initiatives so that people would learn how to stay safe around drawbridges, but these suggestions have always fallen on deaf ears.)

And that’s one of the many reasons why I had to be reminded that I adore bridgetending. Because once you reach beyond the bridgetending part, there’s another layer that has caused me to become sad and disappointed and to feel defeated and like just another cog in the corporate wheel. Just like every other laborer, essentially. Easily replaceable. Not at all appreciated. Considered a problem, simply because I know that we could do better and be better, but what is truly wanted by administration is for me to just shut up and do what I’m told.

I’m not trying to portray myself as a martyr here. I’m no different from most people in the working world. I’m not valued for my brain or my ability to innovate or make suggestions. I’m just here to do those repetitive motions that keep the can kicking toward wherever they think it’s supposed to go. I’m not supposed to have any purpose other than that. My job satisfaction or pride in a job well done is immaterial to them, and it always has been.

Even though I have come up with  at least 100 ways that we could work smarter, not harder, ways to improve efficiency and communication, ways to improve morale and cut away irrelevancies, ways to save lots and lots of money, these ideas absolutely infuriate everyone above me, to the point where now they’re not even acknowledged, even to the point of deserving a refusal. I would say that at least 50 percent of my emails go unanswered. That’s how much I’m valued.

And it’s being made increasingly clear that if I don’t shut my mouth, I’m most likely not long for the bridgetending world. That terrifies me. I don’t think I’m fit for anything else, and I only have to hang on for 1224 more days until I can retire. Please, God, let me hang on that long, if only for the health insurance.

But can I shut up, knowing, as I do, that things could be so much better? That we have the ability, and it wouldn’t even be that hard? Can I wrestle my integrity down into the dirt for that long? I don’t know. It’s damaging the best parts of me.

The irony is that they are annoyed by the suggestions I make, but I make them because I care. I make them because I want these bridges to be the best they can be. I want the people who work on them to be as productive as possible in the easiest ways possible, without wasting time on the absurd. And most of all, I want the traveling public to be as safe as they can be. In a sane world, these desires of mine should be encouraged, not discouraged. But this is not how the working world functions, and that’s why I chafe under this system.

Everywhere I look I see wasted potential and missed opportunities, and a complete disregard for the human beings in their employ. I see coworkers so beaten down that they have stopped even trying to lift their heads up to engage, knowing it’s a waste of time and energy. I see low morale, disappointment, and a creeping malaise and indifference. It’s like everyone is being covered with kudzu, and eventually, no one will be able to move at all. They already can barely be seen or heard, and it’s hard to tell one person apart from another.

We are like a human compost heap. But upper management is just fine with that. All they ever wanted was for us to generate heat in the first place. We still do that, even as we rot. So, is it any wonder that I’ve lost sight of the adoration that I once had for this job?

If I don’t reconnect with my love of bridgetending, there’s a good chance I’ll lose a big part of what gives me satisfaction in general. I need to find that joy again. But just the other day something wonderful happened. I was at the StoryCorps website, looking up the interview about bridgetending that I did back in 2009. I searched my last name on their site, and to my delight, more than one thing popped up. In fact seven things popped up!

The first was an excerpt of the much longer StoryCorps interview that I did, back when I still had such adoration for bridgetending and pride in the job that you could hear it in my voice. I sound almost giddy. You can listen to that one here.

The second one I had forgotten about entirely. It was a StoryCorps podcast from January 5, 2021, in which they were celebrating job changes, and they highlighted my story and one other really fascinating one and did a brief intro and outro about me, used a small excerpt of my interview, and for some reason they accidentally said I was 51 when I quit the job I had before bridgetending, when I was actually 36, but they corrected that on the web page. You can listen to that one here.

The third one was a link to the animated short they decided to create from my interview, which I absolutely love! It’s called The View from Here. You hear my voice and it captures the bridge I worked on in Florida really well. I never tire of watching this one.

The fourth one is a StoryCorps podcast released on April 13, 2017,  about their upcoming book Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work, an anthology of StoryCorps interviews about people who loved their jobs, and my interview was included therein. (Are you getting the impression that they really loved this interview?)

That podcast, besides rehashing the same interview excerpt, gets more into the history of the bridge, and also goes into a lot of fascinating detail about my life after I left Florida, and also gave me some closure about part of my interview that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. It also prompted me to write this post about that closure.

The fifth one was a surprise to me. I was gratified to see that they once again included my animated short in their StoryCorps blog dated August 30, 2024, in honor of Labor Day, along with several other animated shorts about interesting jobs.

The sixth one absolutely blew my mind! It was the StoryCorps blog dated June 7, 2023, for something called the “Working” collection, introduced by Barack Obama! Obama had just produced a documentary for Netflix called Working: What We Do All Day, so he was kind enough to introduce this StoryCorps collection on Working, too. And ta da! My animated short popped up there!  I’m dying to know if Obama saw my short! Wouldn’t that be cool, if Obama heard my name, even once? Of course, I’ll never know, so I’ll just pretend he did.

And then finally, the most delightful of all, was the StoryCorps blog called 2020:A Year in Stories. They included me in that one because that was the year they turned my interview into an animated short. But also, if you click on the “read the full transcript” link, they go into even more detail than ever before, and I don’t think they’ll mind if I include their kind words here:

For 14 years, Barbara Abelhauser got up each day and went to work in an office. She hated her job, and finally, one day she quit, reasoning, “I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. And if that happens, I want to have woken up that day and not thought, ‘I don’t want to go to work.’ ”

Her next job was nothing like the one before; it didn’t require her to put on pantyhose or navigate tricky office politics—Barb became a bridgetender. Sitting in a booth called a tenderhouse (pictured at left) over the Ortega River in Jacksonville, Florida, she opened and closed the bridge to allow boats to pass from one side to the other. Her office now consisted of a console with buttons and the walls were so close that she couldn’t even fully stretch out her arms. But windows surrounded her and from her perch on top of the bridge she had “the most gorgeous view in the entire city.”The bridge over the Ortega River requires that a bridgetender always be on duty, but that doesn’t mean that passersby were always aware of Barb’s presence. The position requires both patience and vigilance, and from her spot she became familiar with the people (joggers, fishermen and couples out for romantic strolls), and the animals (birds, manatee, and alligators), that spend their days on and around the bridge. She was “getting paid to stop and look.”

When she took the job, Barb didn’t expect to be a bridgetender for more than a year, but for the next 14 years, she watched the sun rise and set on the river from the tenderhouse. She now documents her observations and experiences on her blog, “The View from a Drawbridge.” In 2014, Barb left Jacksonville and moved to Seattle, Washington, where she continues to bridgetend.

Barb came to StoryCorps with her friend, John Maycumber, to explain why she fell in love with her job.

Originally aired April 15, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

This story is featured in Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work, a collection that celebrate the passion, determination, and courage it takes to pursue the work we feel called to do.

I’m so glad I searched my name on the StoryCorps website so close to the 25^th anniversary of my being a bridgetender, as it will go unacknowledged at work. In fairness, I’ve switched companies a few times, but even if they did acknowledge it, it is the people above me, the ones who don’t care that I care, the ones who would prefer that I didn’t care, who have played a big part in the fact that I had lost touch with how much I truly adore this job, who have me feeling starved for the job satisfaction that I once feasted upon. And that seems so counterproductive to me.

Spending time with these StoryCorps links has reconnected me with that joy and pride, and with what bridgetending really means to me. It’s the opportunity to stop and look. To quietly observe the world as it flows past me. The chance to keep it safe in subtle ways people don’t see. The chance to make a difference, even if it goes unnoticed. These are things that no one can ever take away from me. I just have to remember to hold them close to my heart.

For the next 1224 days, I’m going to try to stay focused on these things, because they are important. I’ll try not to let myself forget that I am an individual who matters, and even though I know things could be 1000 times better around here, I can still take pride in doing the best that I can do in the time that I have left. I’ll do so not for any expectation of acknowledgement which will not be forthcoming, but so that I can look back with pride at my time on the job.

I want, on my last day, to look up at my bridge and feel that we will part as dear friends. I want to leave with my head held high, knowing that I tended this bridge with love and care, even though my hopes for it had been so much higher. Obviously, bridges aren’t sentient beings, but on some level, it feels like we have developed a connection over the years, and somehow it feels like it knows how hard I’ve tried. It has certainly absorbed more than a few of my tears of frustration.

I tried. I never stopped trying. That counts for something. Even if all my efforts are forgotten by everyone else the moment I drive away for the last time, I’ll never forget. That will be forever mine. That has more value to me than any gold whosiewhatsit that they could ever give me, because it was always sincere.