SPLENDOR ON THE HURSTVIEW BRIDGE

Me and that bridge, the Hurstview bridge that passes over 183, we go a long way back. I hear they are tearing it down next week to widen the freeway.

See, when I was 16 I had this pretty little girl friend, then one day she broke up with me and I was all heartbroke. It was like my world had ended. She had told me she was babysitting down the street from her house that night, and couldn't be reached, but being all heartbroke and forlorn, I wanted to talk to her real bad. So I spent a couple hours going through the Hurst phone book and calling every house on her street, asking whoever answered the phone if my girl was babysitting there, and sometimes my pathetic little story would come out, and the old man that had answered the phone would advise me:
“Damn, son, just go out a git you another girl, Hurst is full of pretty girls to call.”
It didn’t do any good, and I just kept calling every house on Oak street. I guess I must have missed one, because by the time I got to “Zystroski”, I had not found her.

So I decided the next best thing to do would be to just walk on over to her house, and sit in her front yard and wait for her to come home, where she would see my miserable ass, in the rain, sitting and waiting for her, and she would know then how much I loved her, and she would realize how unkind it was for her to put me through this horrible grief, and since she could not be so unkind as all that, she might take me back, and comfort and solace me in my time of melancholy, there, muddy sad and freezing in her front yard.
And maybe she would do that thing she would do, blowing in my ear and biting my neck because that really drove me wild.
I got to the Hurstview bridge. It was somewhere around midnight in the freezing rain, and as I reviewed my sorry life to this point I determined the best thing to do would be to just end it all, and just throw my heartbroke ass off the Hurstview bridge. It would be the ultimate demonstration of my undying love, equal to that like Dustin Hoffman had made in "The Graduate", pounding the glass in the Chapel, and running off with the stolen bride on a bus.

But something stopped me. I did not do a Billie Joe McAllister off  the Hurstview bridge, but instead walked through the drizzle the 4 blocks back home, and the next day I started taking the old man’s advice about calling all the pretty girls in Hurst.

So every day after 35 years I still pass the Hurstview bridge, and there are two questions that remain.
The first is this:
Am I the only one that ever thought of throwing myself off the Hurstview bridge?
And two:
Does anybody here really think she was babysitting down the street that night?
That’s really what I want to know.

.

HOW I DESTROYED THE HIGHWAY183/820 EXPANSION PROJECT

Last Saturday night I drove my truck off the Hurstview bridge. I landed smack dab in the construction zone, where they have the old 6 lane 121A highway scoured out for ten miles to make way for the expanded 16 lane 183 Freeway. My truck was OK, it’s a ’75 Chevy. “Like a Rock” baby, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore, and other than being upside down, she didn’t look to much the worse for the wear after taking a 30 foot fall.


All I needed was someone to help me turn her right-side-up and I could be on my merry way.

So I started climbing up the sheer face by the bridge, making my way up to Hurstview. I got almost to the top, using all my rock climbing skills. Up until then I had been completely unaware of having any rock climbing skills. I looked down into the canyon of the construction zone and I could see a few of the workers, wearing their hardhats and bright orange safety vests and I thought to myself “They probably wouldn’t much like me being up here like this”.

I turned back to my climbing, i was close to the top now, but a rock lodged in the side of this cliff gave way, tumbling down into the construction zone.
I tried to scramble the last few feet to the top and grabbed another rock, and it gave way as well, and a few pebbles too, and then the next thing I knew I was coming down the mountain in an avalanche of rocks and dirt that had lay undisturbed since the Pleistocene era, and the workers looked up to me and hollered ‘Hey, you get down from there!” but it was too late…

And from all the way out from I-35, clear to Euless Westpark Way, the entire 183/820 Expansion project collapsed in on itself.
“WHOOPS!”

I woke up, and I was tearing at my sheets, hanging upside down off of my bed

SCOTT AND I

FRONT ROW CENTER

I was a 98 pound weakling at the start of the 7th grade year. In the locker room after Football practice there was a big kid picking on me.
A guy I barely knew stood up for me. Even though he wasn’t much bigger than me and wasn’t near as big as my antagonist, he shook his fist right into the bully's face and said:
“Why don’t you find somebody your own size to pick on.”
It was not a question.
That is how Scott Thompson came to be my best friend.
Scott introduced me to Model Rockets and the Beatles all at the same time.
On Friday nights, he and I would stay up till 3am building a Model Rocket, then we would ride our bikes down Hurstview to the 7-11 for an Apple Beer Soda. By the time we got back home we were so giddy-drunk, laughin' and fallin' off our bikes. We could barely stand up. We would turn Scotts record player up full blast and listen to ‘I am the Walrus” one more time, dancing around the room like a Walrus might, before finally crashing on the floor of Scotts room.
And somehow between 7 and 8am we would manage to drag our tired, Apple-beer hungover asses out of bed and truck our bikes and Rockets to Bedford Junior High to launch.

My very first rocket Scott helped me build had a little flight problem. As I set it up on the launch pad, one of the four fins fell off. I had waited all night for the glue to dry, and I wasn't going to let something like a little loose fin deter me or force the mission to be scrubbed. I took the fin, licked it, and stuck it back onto the rocket, held it for a moment and let go.
It worked!
The fin stayed on the rocket as I gingerly placed it back onto the launch pad.
We were good to go!
I ran back to my launch button and said to Scott "Here goes nuthin!" and flipped the switch.
SSSSSHHHHHRRRRRRUUUUPPPP!
Into the sky it burst, a white cloud streaming from the exhaust. It got about 10 feet off the pad, took a right hand turn and headed straight for Scott and I.
"GANGWAY!" I yelled and Scott and I hit the deck.
It all happened in less than a second.
I was hooked!
The next year I was President of the Rocket Club. They called me "Rocket Renfro".

And Beverly, the Secretary...man, she was hot!

Check out Mr. McNatt's legendary comb-over. After 38 years he is still at the same scool, teaching the same classes, sporting the same hairdo. They say he looks exactly the same!



Check out the High-Water Straight Leg Jeans and my "Rifleman" Belt Buckle!


Sometimes Barbara wonders how much of my satories are true. Let these pictures serve as substantiation that this one happened exactly as I say!
I didn't even need to re-name McNatt! We used to call him "Superfly".

WILD WORLD

They kept playing that song “Wild World” by Cat Stevens all night long.

We had sister Churches, St. Paul Methodist and Hurst Methodist, and between those two Churches and our own Bedford Methodist we had a pretty good group of kids. When I think back it seems like whatever we did, they did as well. And whatever they did, somehow we managed to tag along too.
I think it must have been Halloween 1971, I was in the 8th Grade. The plan was to meet at one of the Churches, bob for apples, take a hayride, watch a scary movie, and then on to Hurst Bowl for all night bowling. I remember the movie was ‘Tomb of Ligeia” with Vincent Price, but I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was too busy trying to maneuver myself into the proximity of Nancy.
And it seemed like they just kept playing that song “Wild World” over and over again.

Nancy was one of the smartest girls I ever knew. She was not just a classmate, and not just a church-friend; she was also the daughter of longtime friends of my parents. Our parents had been friends before she and I were ever born. In a strange sort of way that made her a sister, or a cousin maybe. It made her at least very much like family, except I had a crush on Nancy.

After the movie was over we all loaded up the buses and headed for Hurst bowl, where they would lock us safely inside for the night.. It was on the bus that I was very much entertained by Vickie , who kept sticking her tongue out at me and saying it was really a lizard. I was delighted, and from that moment on I was past Nancy , at least for the night, because Nancy, never would have you know, shown me her tongue, and now I was all about Vicki .
And it seemed like they just kept playing that song “Wild World” over and over again.

So all night long, I kept trying to maneuver myself into the proximity of Vickie . Didn’t do any good, but we all had lots of fun bowling. It was exciting to find that I could have a crush on TWO girls at the same time. Ah, the promiscuous heart and mind of an eighth grade boy.
And it seemed like they just kept playing that song “Wild World” over and over again.

At 6AM the next morning, after donuts, we were turned loose into the world. I carried the silver/chrome tray that had had chips and dips on it to Mikes ’64 Impala, where Vickie, Nancy, and no tellin’ how many kids piled into that car to be driven home. It was on the Hurstview bridge as we crossed over Hwy 183, only a few blocks from my house that the flashing lights lit up the dawn and appeared in the rear-view mirror.
The cops were pulling us church kids over!
This was very exciting, more exciting than Nancy's wit, more exciting than Vickie sticking her tongue out at me, surely the most exciting thing that had never happened to me before. In 1971, a car load of bleary eyed kids driving around at 6AM was probable cause enough for Hurst’s finest to be suspicious.

The officer approached the drivers window.
‘Can I see your license”
“Yes sir” Mike says
“What are you kids doing out this time of the morning”
‘Were coming back from an all night bowling party at the church.”
“Your church has a bowling alley?”
Mike stutters ‘Er, well, um, what I-I m-meant to s-say was….”
But the Officer stops him. “I know what you meant son, its OK.” Smiling, he hands Mikes license back.

But then he glances to the back seat and sees me, holding that darn silver-chrome tray for the chips and dips. He frowns and sticks his head in the window.
“What do you have there son?”
I’m frozen speechless, terrified. I had never been asked any questions by a policeman.
In fact we are all a bit tongue tied. No one says a word, and his eyes are starting to burn right through me. I feel like I am holding a sack of stolen money, or a guys head, or some kind of contraband.
Just when the officer looks like he is about to draw his weapon, Nancy snaps.
“Officer, that is a tray for chips and dips.” She smiles sweetly, takes it from my hands and gives it to the cop. “See?”
He turns it over in his hands, examines the shine of the chrome and hands it back to Nancy saying
“Hmmm, I thought it might be a Hubcap”

What a relief!
We all just cracked up!
And on the radio comes that song, ‘Wild World” for the 10th time that night.
I can’t hear that song without thinking about Nancy, without thinking about Vickie, without thinking about that cop.

click here to see a related post about the majikat.

MY LAST TWO DATES

I can't even tell you about. There are no pictures, no names, and  I really shouldn't even call it a date, but here it is 3 o'clock in the morning and its like I'm 16 again, ready to throw myself of the Hurstview Bridge.
It really does suck, finding out you still bleed red, and can still get hurt..

Here we are at _______  ________, having the time of our lives.
Ive never spemt an evening feeling so close, so warm, and so full with someone I can't even acknowledge my love for.
I can tell you all about it in 100 years or so.