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.

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Bottom Photo Credit