He learned to like tomatoes and almost lost his virginity.

Oppressive heat and humidity mirrored the government's
philosophy, that is, be heavy, constant and
omnipresent. But, he only knew about the weather.

He was eighteen and white as only a terminally bundled
up kid from Western New York winters can be. Having
spent his first winter in Colorado, he did sport the
tanned/burnt face and raccoon eyes from wearing
sunglasses while skiing every day. At the time, it
was considered cool in Colorado. A kind of social
indicator, like being white skinned in Edwardian
England or being overweight in India is a sign of
wealth. The raccoon eyes meant you were a skier.

This was not Colorado. And these people would never
get raccoon eyes even if they skied a hundred days a
year.

He was ignorant of politics. And that's what the
tourist agency preferred. A tourist charter nonstop
from Denver to Montego Bay, for a week of all
inclusive, exclusive tourism, doesn't want you to know
about that damn Bob Marley etc. And he didn't. Not
many people did know about him yet, this being April
of 1978. Bob was still alive and on island.

The humidity was such that a haze hung low and near,
mixed with the heat waves, it produced a surreal
scene from first step off the plane. It would have
been exotic, no matter what. Sure, he had been on an
island before. He had been to the Thousand Islands and
there was an island on Heaths pond where the kids used
to play hockey. That's about it. Oh yeah, he had
camped illegally on Goat Island between the American
and Horseshoe Falls at Niagara Falls. He grew up
ninety miles from Canada and had been there often
enough. But, this was his first 'foreign' country. The
trees, the roads, the people, the clothes, the air,
the smell, the heat, the language, the currency, the
food, the water, the beer, the police, the animals,
the buildings, the cars, the music, it was all
exciting and intimidating. Before he knew it though,
everything was somehow more familiar.

The Montego Beach Hotel played 'regular' music. You
didn't need currency, but if you did want to use it,
the staff was eager to accept American dollars. It
was, oh so gated and green and swept clean. The taxi
ride from the airport to the hotel would remain his
favorite part of the trip.

He got the sunburn of his life. By the end of the
first day, he was cooked. It had taken him a while to
grasp that people would pay fifty dollars for
sunglasses in Colorado. He never even owned a pair
back home. Didn't need 'em. After he sunburned his
eyes skiing at A-Basin, (with a base elevation of
eleven thousand feet) he gladly shelled out the fifty.
But, he also didn't know about sunscreen.

Soon enough, his friends were taking pictures of him up
against the crumbling pink stucco walls of the
compound, er, I mean hotel. His pink, peeling, scaly
with white underneath skin, bore a remarkable
resemblance to the walls.

He learned to like tomatoes and almost lost his
virginity. Anybody else would have, lost their
virginity, that is,. I don't know about the tomatoes.
The evening staff winked conspiratorially as he was
being escorted by the hand toward the beach. The girl
doing the towing carried a sheet and a pillow in her
other hand. They spent the night in the sand. He found
it glorious and bewildering. She must have thought him
gay afterwards. He wasn't. Somehow he never
understood. But he did get bitten by something in the
night that would lead to extreme embarrassment soon
enough. He would carry the scar on his butt for life.
Without going into too much detail, three holes opened
on his left cheek and took a long time to close and
heal. He couldn't sit right for a long time.

They put on a skit and won first prize in the 'talent'
contest. They wore palm fronds on their arms, they
were draped in bed sheets and had scarves on their
heads. They devised a dance routine and sung 'Tip Toe
Through Jamaica' as their other friend rudimentarily
plinked it on the hotel piano. They bowed gracefully
and ran off the end of the pier and dove into the
ocean. They nearly drowned, wrapped in sheets and
scarves, as they were getting a standing ovation. That
put the show over the edge. They won big rum umbrella
fruit drinks similar in color to the hotel walls and
of course, his still beaming pink skin.

Let's see, they got harassed by a man with a machete
at Ocho Rios. But, the hotel van driver scared him
off. I don't think people get bothered at Ocho Rios
anymore. It's turned into a big tourist stop. The
weapon wielding man probably knew this was coming and
was trying to save his private paradise. Tourism is
not without its negative impacts.

All 156 people on this charter sort of knew each other
by the end of the week. Certainly they all knew us. We
won the talent contest! The flight back to Denver
reflected this familiarity. The stewardesses tried to
stop serving but it was too late. The passengers were
up and singing and pillow fighting. They self-served
and emptied the plane of alcohol. Someone was
reprimanded for trying to light up on the plane, not
arrested, not detained upon arrival, just told not to
do it. This was just before Nancy Reagan. Lucky for
him. Customs was a big drunken humor festival, if you
happened to be one of the passengers that is. What
would they do today if an entire planeload of
passengers except the children were acting like
children? Tourism is not without its negative
impacts.

They were surprised to find their stash still hidden
in the bathroom. None of them was brave/stupid enough
to try to carry it on the plane. Besides, duh, they
were going to Jamaica. Need I say more?

He and his talented friends got through, got luggage
and got out. They found Ralph's white '66 Ford
Galaxie, but just barely. It was buried. It was
Colorado Front Range blizzarding. Up in the mountains
they love the snow. Denver is next to the mountains,
not in them. It might as well be most places in the
country that, unlike ski towns, hate snowstorms and
have trouble functioning in them.

They fired up and drove up. They barely made Floyd
Hill. A front engined, two wheel, rear wheel drive,
four door, twelve year old sedan is almost required to
have bald tires. Ralph's passed the test. They made
Silverthorne that night. Sunburn and a snowstorm. He
discovered that he loved traveling. And the world was
getting bigger by the day. Exactly one week later four
of them boarded another plane in Denver and flew to
L.A. He had never been to California either.

Las Vagueness or Whauut?

It's a long haul across the last lost sprawl west of
the San Rafael Swell. And you don't say it the way you
spell. Especially when you are blowing west through
the snowing's best test and showing stress. There are
few other cars to view on the road, about as many as
finally are off the road. But the sane planes wouldn't
fly and instead of try to cross the backbone to get to
where we would have flown, we just took a left and
left and drove west, into the weather nest, not under
the desk. We took a little risk and hoped for the
best. It carried on scary and fast and low. We were
just trying to make the show. By the time and place
where we were still far far away but close enough to
say we could see the stuff of myth legends and famous
beginnings of ends, the storm was all petered like
bony grubby money lost on dice-dots in slots and
parking meters. It hid little veins and arcs of stark
of white stuff trying to make it to the night just
like us. If you ever saw that squinty city that does
your bidding off in the perfect middle of where it
looks little and should never sit still, like an open
window sill displaying a fraying wind blown quill, at
that time before it's light enough out to make it out
but you do make it out and stake it out anyway too. It
doesn't look really real and really it doesn't feel
real. Until you spill your fill into the insatiable
slots and tables and are unable to enable a comeback
at blackjack. Oh yeah, it's real then, my only fiend
friendless friend. Famous beginnings of infamous ends.
It doesn't look like much out in the clutch of such a
much maligned American miracle whip desert full of
silk slips and gapers gripping worthless scrips of
paper and land yachts and booze trips like landlocked
half cocked cruise ships serving the deserving
carefully chosen brazen inert frozen desserts for
small tips. And if you get past the last less than
free neon freon concoction of high octane action for a
silver shivering sliver and a fraction and lose your
shirt but don't get too hurt and turn your back and
make tracks with your slacks on, you'll fall out the
southern side empty as low tide or the inside of
pockets on said trousers. You'll slide south like a
mouth, tooth and gout as if the map was a trap where
the gravity of gravity really will rally and laugh at
your last ditch folly itch and plant you firmly in the
flimsy filthy earth at the first stop on the third
worse third world border, brightly terse and fierce
with vise and mirth that smolders. And out of order is
the order of the odious day. It's the way things stay
this way. And living in corrugated cardboard with a
disregarded dirt floor and yard, for god's sake. Break
the thirst and slake your best misstep in the stagnant
repugnant lake of distaste in a haste to make your
escape and traipse like apes out of the grip back to
Miracle Whip Strip and happily repeated yet regretted
road trips.

I will now go to the skeleton and ponder its ghost.

The first time I drove across Dewey bridge I was going to Moab to . . . go hiking! Yeah, it was that long ago, before mountain biking.

I slowly tooled south of Cisco, taking in the canyons as they deepened and took me in. Immediately, an eighteen-wheeler with a full compliment of over the sleeper-cab chrome exhaust pipes came barging into my rear view. It was obvious this trucker with the Confederate flag draped across his grill was more concerned with getting past me than safely negotiating the ever tightening twisting two lane. I gladly pulled my rusty Chevy over at the nearest opportunity. The big red lurched forward. It accelerated into the next turn, rocking out of sight. Twin trails of diesel exhaust dissipated into question marks above the canyon walls. I gave it a big head start.

If that eighteen wheeled predatory animal of the interstates could get across, then Dewey Bridge must be a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. I concluded that the stories I had heard about Dewey Bridge must be wrong. As a rabid connoisseur of unique and eccentric America, I was disappointed. It would be like going to Cadillac Ranch only to discover that it was made out of Mazda's.

When I got to the bridge, my disappointment dissipated like the diesel question marks had earlier. The giant chrome-mobile stood static, idling aggressively like a beast straining at the end of its chain. In this case, the end of the chain was Utah Highway 128 at Dewey Bridge. Dewey Bridge swayed gently, the perfect antidote to this dangerous frustrated southern freighter.

Dewey Bridge was every bit as small as it should have been. Possibly the span appeared even smaller and narrower than it would have without the big mean rig at its very edge. It looked like you could have brought Dewey Bridge here on that truck. But you would never be driving that truck across Dewey Bridge. The big trucker sat in his big trucker cab with his big trucker face in his big trucker hands, thinking whatever it is that big truckers think at times like these.

I loved Dewey Bridge at first sight. That peeling yet brilliant white wood, so similar to the white wood of an old roller coaster, was always inviting, never menacing. In subsequent years when I saw it and crossed it in all kinds of horrendous weather, Dewey Bridge was always a protagonist for me, a harbinger of good. After all, I was either coming from or going to another desert adventure when I saw it. The roof rack was always full.

I played around for an hour or so. I walked across and went underneath, checking out its aging assemblage. As I eased onto the span, my pick-up felt big, fat and especially wide. I stopped in the middle and enjoyed the lateral movements of this monument. Its enigmatic dynamics mirrored the bustling brown Colorado below. It was a complimentary piece of man made engineering in this tremendous landscape. The semi sat growling menacingly like a bad mood bent on venting. But it was safely trapped on the other side. It was going to be tough to even turn that monster around. If he had been trying to save time and money, well . . . he didn't.

And now that the gleaming white bridge is gone, I have to go see it. I expect the pillars and the remaining suspension cables will be a visual melancholy. Had it been an intentional arson ,I'd be pissed. As it was a stupid mistake by some kid(s), I'm sad and pissed but more sad than pissed. Don't get me wrong, I think the perpetrator(s) should suffer some punishment/penalty for this, no matter how unintentional their actions. I'm glad not to be the father in that family. But who knows, maybe it was the trucker's grandkid fulfilling his granddad's dying wish of revenge. Southerners never forget.

So this is my Dewey Bridge elegy. I will now go to the skeleton and ponder its ghost.

Top Photo Credit
Bottom Photo Credit