The Demise of the Cardigan Bridge

The Demise of Cardigan Bridge

‘Twas the year of nineteen and seventy,
Morning of February Four,
When the ice of the Keswick River
Broke up with a deafening roar,
And was soon jammed up in jagged cakes
That groaned and creaked and shoved
On the upriver side of old Cardigan Bridge
That had stood for years, unmoved.
Now many’s the flood that it had endured
Since ‘twas built in the year Twenty-nine,
And nary a once did it move even an inch
In all of that length of time.
It had been travelled by horses and wagons and such
And people on foot used it, too,
And many’s the car that was slowed to a walk
As the old covered bridge it passed through,
For the signs at its portals warned of a fine,
A large one it was back then, too,
Twenty whole dollars, a fortune almost,
If faster than a walk one drove through!
Now, the first car to traverse it, I have been told,
Was Ralph Colter’s old Ford Model A,
And the last was a half-ton owned by Doug Jones
In the early morning of its very last day.
At about nine in the morning of February four,
As the ice jam built up on its north side,
The old bridge began to creak and to groan
And then it began to slide
Right off its pilings, like launching a boat,
And down the Keswick it plowed,
Around the first turn and then `round another
As the rain still poured down from the clouds.
Beaten and battered, twisted and torn,
It came finally to rest on the shore—
After forty-one years of spanning those waters,
The Cardigan Bridge was no more.

a. franklin staples

Copyright© 1990 by Allison F. Staples