The Footbridge That Beat the Toll Gate

The Welds

I welded the stringers to steel plates I had bolted down through the mats. Then I welded cross-pieces of smaller pipe between the stringers every three feet, like the rungs of a ladder.

I burn a root pass with a 6010 rod and cap it with 7018. That is how I was taught, and that is how I weld everything that matters. My rig truck sat on the bank with the welder running, and I worked my way across from our side.

Every time I finished a joint and chipped the slag, I flipped up my hood and looked across the creek.

Hub would come down off his ledge, lean over, and look at it. Sometimes he ran his thumb along the bead. Sometimes he took off his glasses and looked closer.

Then he’d nod and walk back to his chair.

Once, he didn’t nod. It was a cross-piece about two-thirds of the way over where I’d hurried, and he put his finger right on the spot without a word.

I ground it out and did it over. I did not sass him.

By the time the sun was going down on Saturday, the frame was done. Four rails of gray drill pipe across the creek, with steel rungs between them, sitting on two oak mats. It looked like the skeleton of something.

Sunday

On Sunday morning we skipped church. That is the only time I can remember all of us doing it on purpose.

The pastor came anyway, after the late service. He drove the long way around in his good shirt with a cooler of ham sandwiches and two gallons of sweet tea in the back. He set them on Hub’s tailgate and said grace over them right there on the bank.

It was a short grace. He thanked God for good weather and strong backs and asked Him to watch over every child who crossed. Then he rolled up his sleeves and started carrying boards.

The boards came from the busted rig mat. We had taken it apart Saturday night with an impact wrench and a pry bar, and it gave us a stack of rough oak planks, two inches thick and fourteen feet long, black with old drilling mud on one side.

We cut them to length and laid them over the stringers. Then we drilled and bolted every plank down. Two bolts to a plank, one at each end, and a wrench on every nut.

Ardith’s oldest boy held the bolts. Easton ran the drill on the last few, with me holding the back of his shirt.