Untitled Document

24 May 2004

Runaway

It's enough to make you feel a little creaky today. Bob Dylan is 63. Tommy Chong, of Cheech and Chong, is 66. Patti LaBelle just turned sixty.

Time for the Baby Boomers to move on. I saw Rebel Bob is now advertising underwear for Victoria's Secret. Perhaps there comes a softening of the mind with age. I will mark another birthday soon. I do not intend to get involved with the women's undergarment industry in any but a tangential manner, but I suppose that could change.

Victoria herself, God Save Her, Protector of the Faith and Empress of India, was born on this day in 1819. I imagine she might have sniffed "We are not amused" by the continuing crisis. But amid the world situation, the rites of passage continue.

I was talking to my older boy after golf yesterday. He is the next generation, rising, starting an internship in a few weeks with a real Agency of the U.S. Government, and expects to graduate in one more semester. He asked me how he was supposed to handle health insurance after he gets his diploma and is no longer covered by my policy.

I looked at him and said: "You get a job. That's how."

He looked at me with a certain dawning comprehension and panic.

I wonder if he will attend his commencement?

It is the season for that sort of thing. The President could not attend his daughter's commencement at the University of Texas yesterday, but of course, neither did Jenna. The Press made a bit of a to-do about it, but I know from personal experience that you don't have to go to the ceremony to get the diploma. My mother was vaguely suspicious about that, but a month or so after graduation the sheepskin arrived.

I thought it would be too crowded. I partied elsewhere, though I do not recall precisely where. Jenna Bush's sister, Barbara, will be granted her degree in the humanities today from Yale, her father's alma mater. Reportedly, the First Family will celebrate with a private dinner.

It will have to be an early dinner, since the President is supposed to travel to Carlisle Barracks in central Pennsylvania. He will address the commencement of the Army War College Class of 2004. The Administration is counting on a friendly audience on a secure compound. He is supposed to explain the exit strategy for Iraq.

I wish him luck. I probably won't hear it, since I am traveling to New Jersey to start the working week, by car, this time. I am going almost as far as New York, and from company property you can see the Empire State Building in Manhattan. I'd like to go see the Great Bridge, but I don't think there will be time today, what with the meetings.

They opened the Brooklyn Bridge at 2:00PM, on the 24th of May in 1883.

There were protests by the Irish workers, who thought the coincidence with Victoria's Birthday was intolerable.

It was a bargain to cross the bridge on the first day- only a penny toll. It went up to three cents thereafter.

The Great Bridge was a stupendous feat of engineering for the time, appropriate to the First City of the New World. The footings on the Manhattan side were smack over Number One Cherry Street, which had been the home of George and Martha Washington when New York had briefly been capital of the United States.

The whole thing was outsized. Chief Architect John Roebling had a vision that the Bridge would be seen from all points in the city, and be a magnet of progress and commerce. Around 27 People died to build the bridge, though the records are incomplete, human life being counted in Irish terms in those days.

That number may, or may not, include the Chief Architect himself, whose foot was crushed by a ferry boat while he was conducting some precision survey work. He lingered, refusing drugs to abate the pain of amputating his toes, and supervised from his sickbed, which had a window on the enterprise. His son Washington Roebling brought the project to completion.

The suspension bridge was not a new concept, though one of this scale was unprecedented.

The proud towers from which the bridge decking would be hung were the keys to the structure. They were based on gigantic caissons which were placed on the river bottom, and the space beneath excavated by Irish to bring them down to solid footing. The space where the men worked was filled with compressed air to the pressure of 23 pounds per square inch.

Under the Brooklyn Tower, the seal ruptured in the "Big Blow-out" in the fall of 1870. Mud and rocks were blown 500 feet in the air, and the men below were drowned or blew out their ears in the abrupt decompression. When they started, they lowered the tower six inches a week.

The rigging of the suspension cables between the two handsome towers caused more fatalities. In June of 1878, a cable strand secured at the New York anchorage broke loose. To demonstrate the power of the forces involved, the cable flew over 900 feet, over the top of the New York tower and into the East River, taking off the top of one rigger's head and knocking another off the anchorage along the way.

But at last the great day arrived, a fine day in May, and the President came up from the other capital in Washington to join in the celebrations. Chester Allan Arthur was in the middle of everything. No security detail was present, unless you consider the marching Seventh Regiment in their summer gray uniforms as security.

Reports of the day say he was cheered and applauded all along the route.

Life was simpler and yet more complex than it is today.

When the procession passed Eighteenth Street, the horses attached to the President's carriage "became frightened from some unknown cause and became unmanageable. They turned from Fifth-avenue down Eighteenth-street toward Sixth-avenue. A police officer caught the horses by the bridle and soon had them under control. A one time it looked as if there would be a runaway, and Mayor of New York Edson prepared to jump from the carriage in case such a proceeding was necessary."

The President was reported to be very calm during the whole incident, which lasted a couple minutes. There was a huge round of applause when the carriage returned to the procession.

I imagine that is what President Bush would like to get tonight, and I think the Army War College will give him a big hand.

But there was an event at the Bridge opening that makes you wonder.

A man carrying a yellow water-pail in one hand and a rack of glasses in the other was walking in front of the President when he dismounted to walk across the bridge. The President had to step carefully to avoid the water-carrier's heels. The crowd cheered the President. The water-carrier took it as a salute to him, and smiled, waving to the crowd, unaware of his proximity to greatness.

Over 150,000 people followed behind, crossing the Great Bridge that day.

Our leaders get the applause, or the brickbats, but I suspect they are more like the water-carrier on the bridge than they would like to think. The cheers they get are for the nation, not the man. Today, we shall see if President Bush can get his runaway under control.

I'm not going to hold my breath, but I am prepared to give him a big hand.