Chesapeake City’s over-head bridge in 1948

Pete Swyka tells of an incident while working on Chesapeake City’s over-head bridge in 1948

After I left the ferry I worked on the bridge for a while. It was still under construction and I had the job of tearing the paper off of those piers that hold the bridge up. They used forms when they poured the concrete, and they used paper to keep the cement from sticking to the forms. When they took the forms off the paper had to be scraped off. I worked on the scaffolding that they attached to the bolts all the way at the top. They dropped me down and I’d scrape the paper off the piers. I worked on Pier #1, above the water on the South Side.

Well, I worked with a man who was known to have seizures, and he had one while I was up there working with him. I remember that he could play any musical instrument that you handed him. He could also dive into the water and stay under for a long, long time. Well, one day he had a seizure when we were both on an open scaffold at the top of that bridge. All I could do was hold him down till he came out of it. He was twisting his arms, salivating, and foaming at the mouth. It was frightening because there were no side rails on those things. All you had was a twelve foot bed on the bottom, four sets of poles, and one rail across there with nothing between the top and the bottom.

And he was lying there, flailing around with one leg hanging off, so I pulled the leg up next to the other one and swung him around next to the center pipe and held his hands down as best I could until he came out of it. I didn’t want him to fall off and I didn’t want him to knock me off either. I had to slap him on the cheeks to help him come out of it and get him squared away and make sure that he was all right. When I got down from there . . . that was it. I quit then and there. After I got down from there I didn't want any more of that, so I went to work on a tugboat.