My friends Brionna & Anne & I had drinks downtown Friday and then walked over the Stone Arch Bridge to see the 35W bridge and then have dinner on the other side. Brio wrote some reflections that night and said I could reprint them here.
Hi Everyone,
Thought I would share something that I wrote about the 35W bridge
collapse. It's funny how the mind works. I wrote this almost
immediately after coming home from hanging out with a couple of my
favorite people. When I returned to the same place today with Chris and
Ben, I found it odd how much my memory of seeing it the night before and
the images I took in today were, in many ways, different. While the
storm last night had something to do with that, I'm sure, I think my
narrative below is more indicative of how seeing it affected me rather
than a true account of what I saw. Emily and Anne - it will be
interesting to hear how your recollections of what you saw agrees or
conflicts with my recollection of what I saw). Anyway, for what it's
worth. . . here it is.
Brionna
A couple girlfriends and I met up downtown for drinks this evening and
walked over to the Stone Arch Bridge. For those of you unfamiliar with
the Twin Cities, the Stone Arch Bridge is part of a large historical
park memorializing the flour mill ruins. (A little over 100 years ago,
Minneapolis was known, in part, for its flour mills. Flour dust is WAY
more combustible than gunpowder and with the Industrial Revolution
relatively new to the States, the technology and working conditions were
ripe for sparks to fly. A number of mill explosions, including the BIG
one, resulted in too many worker deaths. The park honors that history by
turning the ruins into an educational park. It's pretty cool.)
From the bridge you get a decent view of the 35W collapse and boy, it
is difficult to find the right words to string together into sentences
to describe the whole thing. I was having a difficult time envisioning
where the bridge would have been because I kept looking for a landmark
to place the bridge in my mind. The problem, I later realized, was that
the bridge itself was the landmark I was searching for and could not
find. It wasn't until I was able to make sense of the other landmarks
WITHOUT the bridge, that the gravity of the bridge collapse from a
simple environmental/geographic standpoint sunk in.
While on the Stone Arch Bridge, you look to the right and see a slab of
concrete cascading like a waterfall down into the south bank of the
river. You see concrete move like that on hilly roads and streets, but
seeing the concrete take the particularly shape it has taken as a result
of the collapse challenges the mind to grasp how a concrete road can
take such a path. Strangely, it seems very fluid, as though it is
supposed to do it. Just as the concrete takes its dive downward, you see
a car, very precariously positioned, as though a strong enough breeze
could send that car down the waterfall of concrete to the rubble below.
As you move your field of vision to the left, just passed the
lock-and-dam system - which obscures a large part of the river and thus
the rubble of the bridge - you happen upon another very part portion of
the bridge, above the water, bent in a concave manner. Once again, you
are struck by how a road just shouldn't DO that. There is no reason to
have such a strong sense of cognitive dissonance, except that this
expansion of road is also an island of sorts in the Mississippi River. A
week ago, there were a number of cars on this piece of the bridge,
including the delivery truck engulfed in flames that became the death
pyre for one of the dead. Now, all cars are gone from this u-shaped
piece of interstate, fallen from its groundedness. All that is left are
the white stripes of the lane divisions, another eerie reminder of what
it once was.
Still farther to the left, you see a mangled mess of bridge trusses,
green in color and collapsed in such a manner that the geometric
patterns formerly created by the supports have fallen into each other,
creating dozens of new triangles, hexagons and open angles searching for
the beams that closed the shape it had once been. On the northern side
of this display of metallic geometry is another large slab of concrete,
cast down at nearly a 90% angle. Most of this section is shielded by a
number of trees, if I recall. At this point, however, it could have been
partially hidden by just about anything because at the same time, you
are hypnotized by your own personal, private, intellectual and emotional
response to seeing something that the local media, in its coverage, has
been unable to "make real" in your head and heart.
From that far away, it is difficult to take in the full effect of the
view. But, I'm not sure I want to. The miracle that so few died as a
result lessened the impact. Had we lost more to the event, I'm not sure
I could write my thoughts down immediately after seeing the aftermath.
Having attended the University of Minnesota for both undergrad and
graduate school, I know the bridge, traveled it often. There is a part
of my identity that is attached to it for the sheer fact that it is the
road I took so many times to get to where I am most comfortable, a
classroom, any classroom. It's funny the flood of memories, often very
visceral, you can have of simply driving a stretch of road, slowing down
along an exit ramp, sitting at the yield sign waiting to leave the
highway, cross four lines of traffic to get in the best position to
enter Dinkytown to find parking near a coffee shop that you might get a
demitasse of espresso to fuel a quick study session before a midquarter
exam or a discussion during recitation. Somehow, now, those memories
have more value in my mind, plug a bit more urgently at my heart.
Despite having traveled that portion of 35W for any number of other
reasons, the fact that it so often served as a gateway to the U is that
of which I am most contemplative. As I look back at what I just wrote,
to share this experience, it is a bit odd that I took myself out of the
narrative, using instead second person language. I suppose I needed a
bit of space to put words to paper around the experience of seeing the
site of the collapse, because, as I sat down to write about it, I felt
that the words would not come. Still, I, like so many here in the Twin
Cities and others - wherever they may be - who have followed the story,
recognize the change it means, however small or however monumental,
however public or however private.
Like Brio, I have traveled that bridge many times as an undergrad and grad student at the U of MN. As an icon, that bridge sticks in my memory as having the most amazing view of downtown when you are travelling south and look to the west. It was strange to look AT the bridge FROM downtown - an odd reversal.
My recollections from that evening are right there with Brio's. The concrete waterfall - the twisted geometry of the green metal parts - simultaneously disturbing and interesting. Locating the bridge within the context of other landmarks - the "aha" when we remembered that the Humphrey Center is just at the south end of the 10th St bridge...
It was strange to be on the bridge with so many people when it wasn't the Fourth of July. Usually, folks are just walking across - or it's a holiday and that's a reason for crowds - but this was neither...
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