Days of Uncle Ernest - Chesapeake City and the World – Billy, Chapter 7

Days of Uncle Ernest -

Chesapeake City and the World – Billy, Chapter 7

You know, Nina, when Uncle Ernest lumbered, with drooped head, toward the house, I could tell that he was still upset about his having to leave Billy and his family and that beautiful house overlooking the lovely Avalon. To raise my spirits, I climbed up to the highest branch of our maple and peered in toward town. The horizon seemed so different without our big, black drawbridge. As you remember, a German tanker had collided with it, knocking it down, leaving a mass of convoluted black steel rusting in the C&D canal.

It took seven years for them to build the modern span that exists today. In the meantime, the only way to cross the canal was to swim (which I did frequently), take a small vessel (which I also did), or (as most people did) ride the ferry which was provided by the Corps of Engineers. Ed Sheridan, my father's cousin, was the ferry's captain.

The ferry transported vehicles as well as pedestrians, and it would come roaring in towards the slip, churning swirls of water, maneuvering through the black heavy pilings (sometimes bouncing off them), and sloshing, banging, and hissing into the transport ramp like some bulky, squat, sea creature audaciously having its way. In the summertime, with the shore traffic coming and going, I would sell vegetables to the folks waiting in line, a line often snaking from the ferry ramp to beyond Dolph Wharton’s tavern about a mile away.

As a kid in school I watched the construction of the new bridge, from the razing of the houses in its path on the South Side to the tightening of the last nut that connects the last piece of steel. The sight of the derricks delicately swinging the beams into place, the concrete trucks constantly moving to and fro, and the sounds of clanking steel, loud staccato riveting, and roaring vehicles are still vivid in my mind.

And do you know, Nina, that in the evenings, after the construction crews left—leaving their trucks, cranes, compressors, and dozers skulking haphazardly about the site—my buddy, Junior, and I would run around, on foot and on our bicycles, all over that bridge as it progressed from ground level till the time the south side section was connected to the North Side section. Oh, the guards would sometimes harass us, but we almost always out-smarted them.

I remember one evening, shortly after dark, when Junior and I were riding our bikes up the unfinished bridge. The roadway span from the South Side ascended to almost the middle of the canal, about 100 feet or so from the ascending roadway span from the North Side. The only things keeping us from dropping 200 feet into the canal were a yellow wooden barrier and a thin white rope. Junior and I would ride our bikes around the barrier, crouch under the rope, walk gingerly to the edge, and peer down to the water far below.

Then we would climb the steel girders that hung over the water and look out across at the breathless view. More than once we would peer down into an active smoke stack of a ship steaming through below. On this particular evening, however, as we labored up the incline on our bikes, we heard a man yelling at us from above. He was flashing a light and shouting: “Hey, you kids! You’ll be arrested for this!”

He was coming after us, so we took off down that bridge at breakneck speed. We spun down the bridge bank, down into the road under the bridge, and across Saint Augustine Road. Then we tossed our bikes along the hedgerow, ran through Stanley Stevens' over-grown field, and sloshed into the swamp south of town. We crouched down beneath the cattails and hid there for quite some time. For sure, we didn’t want to be arrested. But do you know, Nina, that guy was just some old man hired to guard the bridge. He was just trying to scare us ornery kids. Would you say he succeeded?

Then I heard that old screen door bang, so I scampered down those limbs as fast as a squirrel after a fallen hickory nut. Uncle Ernest was feeling a lot better after a nice long pull on his glass, so he got me in a headlock, gave my noggin a good knuckling and, after a few swigs, continued his story. [To be continued Tuesday, 9/11/2012]