Crossing the Bridge

     That sounds so symbolic.  I know all the good little doggies cross the Rainbow Bridge to their Forever Homes, but I'm referring to the Valley Falls Bridge.  And by crossing that bridge, I don't mean driving over it, but walking across it.  Time was walking across the bridge was a common occurrence for us.  We used to walk to Dwyer's Pond for ice skating, though since my sister and I didn't own skates, we must have just watched. Some years later, a younger group of kids was enroute to the pond when a child ran to the woman in the house next door crying that her daughter was "stuck on the bridge."  The mother thought that her daughter had tried to climb over the rail and under the bridge like the boys used to, but she found out that it was her daughter's tongue that was stuck to the iron railing, the result of curiosity and a dare.  She took off in her car with a teakettle of hot water, and solved that problem.
    When we were really young, I remember walking to Brackley's house with my brother.  I think his parents must have thought it a good idea, the time we were recent citizens of the Village.  The sidewalk over the bridge then had a lower and narrow curb alongside it. My fear of heights made me walk across that first day on the very narrow side curb.  I didn't want to be close to the rail of the bridge.
    Later on, the bridge was just a place to walk.  We walked kids we were babysitting over it just for another place to go.  I remember a few times we walked home from the movie theater in Schaghticoke at night, after the show, the times when we could get a ride over, but not a return trip.  During our high school years, it was a common practice for boys in cars, from neighboring vicinities, to cruise around and talk to girls through their  rolled down car windows, and the bridge was the ideal place for a confrontation of that sort.  A little exhilarating, but perfectly safe, back in those days.  No one, of us anyway, ever got IN the car, or were even asked to.  And of course we walked to the Schaghticoke Fair---nobody ever had a car, and all the fathers worked.  When Ben Geren opened a small grocery store in his home, we would occasionally shop there if Sammy's was out of a certain product.
    Some of the kids, boys naturally, used to climb over the rail of the bridge and lower themselves down onto the beams underneath where pigeons nested. What they did to those pigeons is best left unsaid.  Another boy was a springtime visitor, carrying a bag of kittens, ordered by his parents to dispose of them.  I suppose  the requisite rock was also in the bag.  I never asked or wanted to know.   One interesting thing about the old Valley Falls Bridge was the stairway.  That was a favorite adventure, a good place to occupy the walking skills of the kids we were watching; all kids loved climbing.  The all-metal stairway wound down along  the west side of the bridge for the convenience of the mill workers, and there were many who utilized it regularly.
     By the "old bridge," I mean the one built in probably the 1940's or maybe even the 30's.   The original bridge, before our time, was lower and carries a sad connotation for our family, as it was the bridge my Uncle Joe's only child, Joseph, fell from and drowned at the age of eleven.  Tragically, the boys he was playing with ran home, frightened, and hid in their bedrooms, afraid to tell what they had seen. Or so the story went, along with the speculation that they might have contributed to his fall, but that was of course a possibility that was never pursued, not in those days.
   I crossed the bridge today.  I walked across it.  I don't know how long it has been since I last did so, but it was a long time ago.  It seemed a shorter walk somehow. Probably the last time I crossed the bridge there was a sidewalk on either side, but  I had to return today on the same side I walked over on.  So I missed some of the view.  The view of the trees along the river, toward where I live, borders on the spectacular, even though this September is still green.  I don't know when my next walk across the bridge will be---we'll cross that bridge when...