Iowa

Ruth and I were driving onto the old Mississippi River Bridge at Burlington when a semi that was going too fast lost control and sideswiped a long section of railing ahead of us, knocking it over and causing the concrete on the sidewalk and curb adjacent to it to buckle and break.  (There’s an inconsistency here, because the old bridge had a metal deck, and no concrete, which comes into play later.)  This section of the bridge had the truss under it, so the semi didn’t hit the structural members. 

The truck managed to back off the railing, get straightened out and continue east across the bridge toward Illinois.  I saw that the left half of the deck was bent down, leaning out toward where the railing had been hit, but the right half was still intact, so once the semi was out of the way, I looked things over and thought I would go ahead and cross. 

But just as I had that thought the entire span started to sag in the middle of the damage.  We were already out on the span that was sagging, so we got out of the car and started to run back toward the closest pier, but before we’d gone very far the entire span broke and dropped into the water.  It was a slow descent, but we ended up in the river in weather too cold for swimming.  Ruth was off the deck swimming toward the bridge pier, but struggling with the cold and all her clothes on.  I rode the deck down and was able to crawl across the metal grating keeping my torso out of the water as I hurried toward her. 

I eventually had to get into the water to get her.  I’ve been in the river before and knew that we couldn’t swim upstream, so even though it was cold I gave up on the pier and aimed us toward the shore, letting the current carry us downstream.  When we made it Ruth was shivering violently.  I wasn’t really cold, so I took my coat off to help her warm up.  When I looked at my coat it was torn up on the outside, but it had several intact insulating foam sections inside that weren’t even wet.

Later, I was at Mediapolis where my Dad had taken all the siding off the bottom eight feet or so of the barn.  Kyle Waller, from Morgan County Highway Department, was there looking things over.  There were three main sections of floor.  The center was dirt and the two sides had rough cut timbers up about two feet off the ground.  Dad wanted to keep the wood floors, but Kyle pointed out that most of the timbers had sagged from the years of load carrying and several were missing.  I noticed the barn start to tilt a little one way, then back the other way, making an awful creaking and groaning.  I decided it was time to get out.

Outside I saw that there were two cranes on the property.  One had hold of the barn and was picking it up off its foundation to be set aside in some open space to be scrapped.  The other had hold of another building that was being swung in to sit where the barn had been.  It was being picked from where the corn crib is, but it was a newer, better building.

The crane set it down on the foundations of the old barn and when it was all disconnected I went inside.  It must have had its own floor with it, because inside the floors were hardwood and smooth concrete.  It had some furniture in it for someone to use it as a house, but it had been a barn or corncrib recently because there were critters in it.

First, I caught site of a mouse scurrying by the corner of my eye.  Then as I got down on the floor near a piece of furniture where I’d seen the mouse I saw a black rat nibbling on some food.  I caught it by the tail and was going to take it outside, but before I could pick it up a cat saw it and attacked, biting it right on the neck.  I decided to let the cat have it and went back to scouring the room for other animals, chasing out snakes, raccoons, possums, and all kinds of insects.

I looked out a window and there was a cliff by the sea.  About 100 feet away was a point of rock with vertical or overhung sides.  Jeff Crabtree (Champaign Engineering) was driving one of those little four wheel scooters like handicapped people use and several people were walking behind him.  He drove it right out to the very point of the rock where he stopped, got up, surveyed the scene, and dived about fifty feet into the water.  This prompted the rest of the crowd, all in street clothes, to dive in too.  Jeff's dive was picture perfect, but the next guy behind him did one of those where the feet never quite get up and all that tucking the head down does is to make the person into an upside down V.  Fifteen to twenty people dived in and all looked to be having a great time splashing around.