Bridges Freeze First

People think about bridges. It's irrelevant what kind. Whether suspension, draw, or wooden, they're always on our minds. This is made clear by how often they work their way into American idioms. Here's one:

It's water under the bridge. This statement lets us know that something that was once burdening has now passed. The burden is driftwood and it's gone down stream. Theoretically, it eventually reaches the ocean and settles with all our other problems.

Here's one, too:

Don't burn your bridges. In this case, the connections in question represent the future. For instance, the bridge is a former colleague named Derek: Don't burn Derek or he might not help you get that promotion in three years.

The bridgeism that's always stuck like mortar in my thoughts, however, was given to me by the Masons. Bear in mind, the Masons I'm referring to have no affiliation with the fraternal organization, though they are every bit as free. And if these Masons were Masons, it would have little or no affect on the impact of their words. (For reference, I believe the Masons were Christian.)

From the time I was eight years old to fourteen years old, Grant Mason and I were friends. His siblings, Tyler, Arthur, and Madison were also my friends, but to a lesser extent. Plain to see, the Mason children were all named after former Presidents of the United States of America. Unfortunately, Madison always harbored some resentment for being named after a man and chose to go by her middle name, Hillary. Oddly, I myself had (and still have) the last name of an American President—one who served two terms, in fact!—which was a popular topic of conversation on our summer road trips.

On one such trip I traveled with the Masons from home to Niagara Falls. It was a venture via station wagon, so needless to say we were bound to cross over several stretches of water. It ended up being six, roundtrip. Wedged between Grant and Madison, with Arthur to the right of Madison, I enjoyed the backseat revelry that was sing-a-longs, counting license plates, and dozing in and out of claustrophobic slumber.

In a Midwest state full of corn and men who harvested it, a flowing, glimmering oasis appeared on the horizon. As if stirred by innate patriotic intuition, the other Presidents and I awoke. It was a very large river. It was the Mississippi River—likely named after the state, I thought. There were boats. There were water skis. There were fresh water fish (presumably). Every station wagon on the road slowed to admire, as if simultaneously running out of gasoline and coasting to a halt.

Every passenger and every driver turned their gaze to the natural divider as it approached. Everyone but Mr. Mason. (I never acquired Mr. Mason's first name, probably because he was ashamed that it wasn't shared with an American Head of State.) He stared straight ahead, knuckles turning white as he clenched the wheel with more authority than he had the entire drive thus far. A protective and alert focus to his expression, Mr. Mason spoke with calculated certainty moments before crossing the first steel beam of the bridge.

"Bridges freeze first."

It was July. The temperature was roughly ninety degrees. In the backseat, the temperature was roughly one-hundred and ten degrees. Nonetheless, stone-faced and concrete, his words stood more steadily than the bridge itself. He had spoken this phrase hundreds of times before, was prepared to speak it five more times on this journey alone, and would speak it again and again for the rest of his life.

"Bridges freeze first, kids. Always remember that."

He was, of course, referring to the scientific truth that in cold weather conditions, bridges will freeze before normal roads, so they must be driven over carefully.

Even at my young age, I felt there was something more to this caution than on the icy surface. Now an older man, I still think about bridges and the fascinating dichotomy they possess. They rise. They fall. We travel through them and over them. Some are short. Some are long. Burning fire, frozen ice, and the water underneath.

Grant I were friends until I grew fourteen years old. He enjoyed athletics and actively participated in them. I didn't, so I didn't. I've just never liked anything spherical and most sports include a ball. It was a divide—a river, perhaps—that separated us and inevitably ended our friendship. Today, despite being old and mostly made of stone, I regret losing Grant. He was a nice young man at a time when I was, too.

Once we parted ways, Mr. Mason's warning gained profound relevancy to me. It can be spoken as such: Bridges are relationships. They are everything, in fact. They are life, death, Heaven, Hell, station wagons, baseball gloves, rivers, Presidents, and time. But especially, they are relationships.

"Bridges freeze first," Mr. Mason warned us. With Grant, I didn't burn my bridges. There were no hard feelings, no mean spirits. However, the water never went under the bridge, either. The remorse stuck, as I lost a friend for no darn good reason. Balls! Why didn't I like balls? The relationship was frozen. Not burnt, never washed to the ocean of other regrets, but frozen.

As it turns out, all the bridges in my life are frozen. Maintaining connections is a difficult practice. For most of my life this was very troubling to me, up until the point that my friend Saul (who is more of a mentor than a friend) pointed out that I wasn't as lonely as I thought I was. "You learned," he said, "so you're not lonely." His words have always satisfied me, or at least enough so that I can sleep and eat and live. Still, I can't help but think about bridges.

Dine and Dash

I had one major coincidence in my life. It wasn't like the coincidences in fiction and fables, though. Nobody came to a startling realization. The course of history wasn't altered. No one came out ahead. It went so smoothly, there and gone, and nothing changed.

I tossed my napkin on my plate, then retrieved it to blow my nose. I do this at the end of every meal, regardless of how dirty the napkin is. I've tried to be self aware of this habit, but my nasal never tells me it needs to be cleared until that stained piece of tissue hits the dish. Once, on an evening out, a young woman branded me as having atrocious table etiquette and stormed out of the diner we were so thoroughly enjoying. I've always assumed she just didn't want to pay for her portion of the meal. I thought we were going Dutch.

This place was also a diner. A significantly nicer one than I took that young woman to, in fact. Perhaps I should have brought her there. Lovely bric-a-brac adorned the walls, all of it in some way saying "Home Sweet Home". It felt that way. The forks and the spoons were both shaped like spoons, only the forks had prongs. They made for a wonderful right hand table setting.

I ate eggs and finished them. My stomach said it was full at the moment I ran out of breakfast. Satisfying.

The Waitress (her name escapes me) dropped my check with the kind of hesitancy God must have taken before putting Man on the Earth. The curls of her bob fell in front of her eyes and she made no effort move them. It's just a napkin, I thought to myself, assuming I had offended her with my misuse of the thing. She took a long gander at me before moving on to another group of customers.

It was odd. Most things are.

Julie came. She was the manager. Light brown eyes, light brown skin, and long, long hair. As she approached, it was as if she asked to borrow the Waitress's expression served to me moments before. I've got to stop recycling my napkins. Hands folded, she prepared to speak.

". . ."

Ah-choo! I sneezed, covering my nose with cupped hands. Why didn't you warn me sooner, nose?

Julie shifted gears. "Do you need a napkin?"

She gets it! I guess I didn't offend her, and thank heavens so. It's emotionally damaging to feel like you're being perpetually inappropriate.

"Yes, please," I humbly garbled through my hands.

As I cleared the remnants of my stuffy nostrils, Julie reassumed her concerned disposition. At the time, it was unclear what she was about to say, though I was quite certain it would end in a question mark.

"Sir?"

Hardly a question, but with the correct punctuation, nonetheless.

"Sir, have you eaten here before?"

"Yes, plenty of times. It's a pleasant establishment you run here."

"Thank you. I only ask because, well, you fit a certain description. That of a man who was here recently and decided to not pay his bill. A dine and dash, as we call it."

He must have had a mustache, tired eyes, and a "W"-shaped scar on his forehead. Those are all things I had (and still have, for the most part.)

"The man had a mustache and scar like the one on your head," she said delicately.

It was kind of her not to mention my tired eyes. It's rather unflattering, something no person wants to have brought to the forefront of the world's attention. The mustache, on the other hand, was one element of the coincidence. I had only grown it the day before, as it happened. Unlike most men—a burden and gift—I have the capacity to grown nearly any form of facial hair in a day's time. A doctor once told me it's a form of genetic regression, or something like that.

"Well, Julie," I read her name tag, "I don't believe that was me."

Clearly she wasn't hoping for that response. I was making things oh-so-complicated. A confrontation would surely stem from this lack of compliance, poor Julie thought. Fortunately for both of us, this wasn't true.

"Excuse me," said the Waitress, returning with her tail between her legs. "He's right there."

Julie looked. I looked. The Waitress pointed, candidly. A man who looked just like Rory Cleveland (or seemingly so, from behind) sat at a table just down the aisle. Fascinating!

Julie turned to me, her light brown skin now flushed. "I'm truly sorry, sir."

"Oh, it's quite fine," I said, then addressing the Waitress. "Does he really look like me?"

"He does. Very much so."

"Fascinating."

Julie interjected, "Truly, I'm very sorry, sir. Can I please buy your breakfast for you."

"That's not necessary. It was a simple mistake," said I, the victim of mistaken identity, in the moment before sneezing, once again. Ah-choo!

I retrieved the same napkin Julie gave me before and wiped my nose. Both women furrowed their brows.

"Really, I insist," Julie retorted.

I initially declined, once again, but decided it would be best to allow Julie to pay the bill, as I didn't have any money on me. As it turns out, I was fully prepared (though not proud of it) to dine and dash.

"Thank you, Julie", I said.

She took the bill from my table, then went on with the Waitress to question the other Rory Cleveland—the real dine and dasher.

Leaving the diner, it took great restraint for me not to approach my doppelganger. All I had seen was the back of his head, which gave me no frame of reference to our likeness, as I'm not familiar with the back of my own. Did he really have a scar? Was his mustache as prominent as my own? Why didn't he have any money, either? However, I managed to move on, satisfying my intrigue with the personal assurance that we'd meet again. We would.

I consider this a major coincidence, all things considered. That being said, nothing changed. My counterpart was still a thief. I was still without control and insecure of my napkin etiquette. The diner still served eggs. It was all the same as before, save for the fact that I ended up getting a cold, a likely result of using soiled paper to blow my nose. Ah-choo!

La Cucaracha

When I lived in the Hispanic part of town I was content—more content than I had ever been. Musicians call it harmony. (So do regular people.) Buddhists call it self-awareness. Hippies called it peace. The rest of us don’t have a name for it, but know it feels good. For me, it had a sound. It went like this:

Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh!

Sing it. The song is “La Cucaracha”. It’s more than likely you’ve heard it coming from a car horn. That’s where I heard it. Every night between the minutes of 9:45 and 9:50, the faint squawking of that song echoed through the streets and up to my bedroom window.

Around that time I usually found myself lateral on my bed, either sleeping or thinking about sleep. (It’s a little known fact that the best method of falling asleep is to actually think about sleep itself.) Sometimes it would roust my resting, while other times it would simply prohibit it from happening in the first place. The noise was distracting, to say the least. It took some nerve for that honking man or woman to do such a thing at such a relatively late hour of the night!

I got in the habit of waiting until ten o’clock before I started to think about sleep. On one evening, my thoughts consumed by the waking threat of the automobile opus, I was able to trace back to my first memory of the song.

The television was on and I sat in front it, seven years of age and plump. My mother allowed me to watch cartoon shows on Saturday mornings, so long as I promised to do my chores as soon as they were over. It was a reasonable compromise in my estimation, so I always followed through with my end of the bargain.

Tom and Jerry were a cat and mouse I loved. Eventually I fell out of love (as tends to happen with hobbies, spouses, and things not connected directly to one’s self), but at the time there was nothing better in the universe to me. The episode featured a Latin American setting. Jerry had made a friend, a fellow mouse of Hispanic heritage whose name was not revealed to the audience. Jerry and Mexican Mouse ran and ran and ran. Tom chased them. With capture eminent, the mice leapt into an arc-shaped hole, narrowly escaping Jerry’s not-so-threatening paws. Unfortunately for Jerry, his focus on the passion for the kill, he slid into the hole himself, though only his head could fit. He stuck. In a mocking and fantastically entertaining gesture, Jerry and Mexican Mouse took his whiskers in hand and played them like guitar strings. Jerry sang lead vocals. Mexican Mouse sang back up. Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh! It sounded more like a sped up forty-five than a car horn, but there was still a distinct similarity.

Another night. 9.31 PM. Surely it was coming again soon. Particularly restless that night, I decided to go out and find the source of the perpetual disturbance. Out the flat, down the stairs, through the front door, and into the streets. Directionally, it was clear that the honking resonated due east of my apartment, so I walked to where the sun would eventually rise.

A few late-nighters meandered about the sidewalks, gently caressing their lovers or carrying bags of groceries that they were unable to collect during the work day. In the same way I felt, they all seemed at ease with the general state of things. Not to say they were polite or even smiling, for that matter, but I could tell. It was good to know that everything was alright. Everything was fine.

I ticked along with the clock as it neared the time of the chime. Approximating the location of the noise, I stopped between a mailbox and a palm tree about three blocks from home. With nothing to do but wait at this point, it gave me time to make specific note of my surroundings.

An alley cat. Cracked sidewalk. A homeless man. The mailbox, as mentioned before. A gentle breeze. Stomped out cigarette butts. Parked cars. Chalk drawings for hopscotch. A newspaper tumbleweed. Crab grass. It was all very regular, very comfortable.

There was a calm. For a moment, it was as if all things ceased to move or breath. Even those things not known for moving or breathing—the mailbox, for example—ceased to do so. It happened the same way an animal reacts to the presence of seismic waves. Stillness. Then. . .

Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh!

Life resumed.

It was louder than I was used to hearing it, but not loud enough. I was off by a block or so. Considering the mission a positive step in my search, I returned home and thought about sleep, then dreamt about dreaming.

There I was again. 9:39 PM. I didn’t have to leave quite as early this time, for I had already picked my next vantage point earlier that day. It was a residential street two blocks further east than my previous location. Something about this place felt right. My ear was most upset about this whole debacle, so I trusted it when it told me to test 3^rd and Manhattan. At last, I could confront the honker and get to rest without disturbance!

9:47 PM hit. I started to worry. Of all the nights for the racket to end, why tonight? Was it because I came searching? Obviously this was an undue reaction. Moments after I asked myself these two questions and before I could ask a third, I spotted a man walking to his car with keys dangling from his index finger. I knew it was him.

He was of a stout build, reaching his mid-life, and had hands thick as the leather on a football. His white undershirt was tucked into a pair of plaid boxers. He was shoeless and Mexican. I found out through a later conversation that his name was Saul.

As he reached his car, Saul took slight notice of me, almost as if he was expecting me to be there, or like he’d had this encounter before. He unlocked the door of his four door pick-up truck, a modest American model with scraped paint—a laborers automobile. Casually, he hopped in the driver’s seat and closed the door behind him. His leathery left hand pushed the lock back down.

A moment passed and right on schedule, the calm came. My heart raced, then stopped.

Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh!

Thank heavens my bedroom wasn’t situated on that street! The cry of “La Cucaracha” was nearly deafening and seemed to last longer than it ever had before. I stepped to the flat bed of the car and rested on its dented bumper, back to the cab, waiting patiently. The door opened and a great weight was lifted as he returned to the pavement. My feet no longer touched the ground with him. They dangled as they do when one sits on an examination table at the doctor’s office.

Auditory senses were in charge at this point. Had he been wearing cowboy boots, my ears would have been in tune with the crackle of the hard soles scraping along the rocky surface beneath them. Instead, they heard the almost silent pats of his bare feet.

Saul faced me as I sat on his bumper. I attempted to formulate my inquisition as succinctly as possible:

“Why?” I asked.

He left. Not far, though. I craned my neck to watch him go back to the driver’s side door and once again insert the key. He had forgotten to lock it back up. Click.

Saul returned to me with the knowing saunter of a monk and put his arm snugly around my shoulder. Strangely, it didn’t seem strange. Had I not needed my own arms to balance myself on the bumper, I would have reciprocated in the embrace.

“Why?” I asked again.

“What would you think if you didn’t hear the horn tomorrow night?”

It was a calculated and unexpected response. I was looking for answers, not questions. Despite this, I answered his query honestly, surprising myself with the answer.

“That something was wrong, I suppose.”

It was true.

“And you heard the horn tonight, no?”

“I did.”

“Well then I guess everything’s alright, isn’t it?”

Saul gave my shoulder a firm pat, knocking me off the bumper and onto the pavement. He meant no harm. Tucking his shirt back into his plaid boxers, that horn-blaring Mexican walked back to his front door and disappeared inside. He didn’t need a key for that one.

Harmony, peace, self-awareness, contentment. Since I moved, it’s never been quite as easy to obtain. However, I’ve never had to think about sleep to reach it since then, either. I just have to hear that sound.

Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Da-Da Duh DAH! Bah Dah Duh Dah Da-Da Duh!

And everything’s alright.