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The Death of a Drawbridge
It’s official, and it doesn’t come as any great surprise for those of us who operate the Sisters Creek Drawbridge here in Jacksonville, Florida, but it will soon be going the way of the Dodo Bird. Construction will begin soon, and they anticipate that the fixed flyover bridge will be completed by the summer of…
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Portents of Summer
Summer is only a month away, but as usual here in Florida we get it early. People envy us, until the temperature tops 100 degrees Fahrenheit with 100 percent humidity. Then, not so much. (And I want to know how it’s possible to have 100 percent humidity without having rain. Could someone please explain that…
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Sister, the One-Legged Pelican
Every drawbridge seems to have a mascot. You’ll just have to take my word for it. On this particular bridge, our mascot is a Brown Pelican that I’ve named Sister. She sleeps on our fender system every night, and she’s definitely not a morning person. Long after other pelicans are up and harassing the fishermen…
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Obsolete Jobs
Sometime within the next four years yet another of the drawbridges that I work on here in town will be replaced by a fixed span flyover bridge, thus putting quite a few bridgetenders out of work. Bridgetenders worldwide are becoming as rare as hen’s teeth. The only chance you have of any future in this…
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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,…
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Invisible People
When I’m at work up on my drawbridge and the weather is nice, I often like to sit with the windows open. We get quite a few walkers and joggers on the bridge, and a few will wave as they go by, but more often than not people will look right at me and not…
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Gender-Specific Jobs? Pffft.
It happened again this morning. I was leaving the bridgetender house at the end of the shift, wearing my extremely unattractive uniform and safety vest, and someone drove by and looked at me in shock. Fashion police? I doubt it. For some reason some people don’t expect women to be bridgetenders, as if it takes…
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Bridge Nightmares
It happened again last night. I had the nightmare that never fails to make me sit straight up in bed, bathed in a cold sweat with tears flowing down my cheeks. Whew. That hasn’t happened in a while. Post Traumatic Stress is such a lovely experience. In this case it‘s caused by an incident several…
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Dead Woman Walking
Last night I looked into the face of death, and the scary thing is that she looked like me. Or rather, how I would look if I had made much worse choices in life. I was working on a bridge that is so large that it requires three bridgetenders per shift. Two of us act…