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Doing the Right Thing
It happened again the other day. Someone saw me crossing my bridge on the elevated catwalk and called 911, thinking I was a jumper. This always amuses me. Do I look that miserable going to work? Because I’m not. I happen to love my job. But in order to avoid disrupting the traffic while going…
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My 15th Tender-Versary
On this day back in 2001 I operated a drawbridge for the very first time. It was kind of a strange time to be a bridgetender, because 9/11 was only 6 days past, and everyone was nervous and confused and angry and afraid. And we weren’t sure if it was over. And bridges make great…
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It Takes All Kinds
I used to work with someone whose anxiety came out in the form of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). On really bad nights, she’d actually walk up to the bridge on the roadway, on the dotted yellow line, because to her way of thinking, encountering a 4,000 pound vehicle was vastly preferable to walking on the…
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Least Favorite
I just finished doing the least glamorous, most disgusting part of my job. I spent an hour getting cigarette butts off the sidewalks and bike lanes of my bridge. So many thoughts go through my head while I do this. Smoking is a disgusting habit, compounded by the fact that these butt-throwers clearly have no…
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Give Your Child the World
At the risk of alienating half the American population, I genuinely don’t think that building walls between countries brings about world peace or understanding. In fact, the more that we interact with the rest of the world, the less we will fear it. It’s the unknown that is scary. The more you travel, the more…
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Why Drawbridges Should Not Be Automated
I’ve got to confess, I’ve visited the NPR website, where you can find my interview, about a billion times. I’m proud of it (except for the horrible picture in which I weigh about 50 pounds more than I do now). The page also allows for comments, and I’ve participated in those quite a bit, too.…
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Ego Boost
Go to Google and look up “Bridge Symbolism”. You’ll get over a million results, but the first one, the very first one, is a blog entry I did on that very subject. The first one. On Google. I feel like I’ve hit the big time. That also would explain why that particular blog entry is…
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More Money Than Sense
As a bridgetender, I often observe people in million dollar vessels doing the most idiotic things you can imagine. First of all, the price of the vessel seems to be directly proportionate to the lack of safety equipment on board. Rich people don’t seem to believe in marine radios or horns. They simply assume people…
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Feeling the Earth Move
When I was 19 years old, I was sitting in my dorm room in North Carolina and the floor shook slightly. I assumed someone was running along the wooden balcony on the other side of the wall. I gave it no further thought until the next day, when I heard on the radio that we…
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Remembering Dave
I used to work with a guy named Dave. When you work on a bridge that requires multiple bridgetenders and you are stuck in a small room with someone for 8 hours at a stretch, you get to know them pretty well. When you don’t get along, it can be pure hell. When you do,…