“Are you guys jumping?”
“Thinking about it….probably not.”
They did. Maybe the camera, and the thought of blog immortality, helped tip the balance. There was a time not long ago when no one would have imagined swimming in this water.
It’s a beautiful site and the swinging bridge evokes memories for most natives to the Brunswick-Topsham area. The associations fall into three categories: the once foul pollution of the river, the origin of the bridge as a commuter route for Franco-American millworkers, or the friend-of-a-friend who once drove a VW across the swinging bridge.
The bridge, spanning the Androscoggin, once traversed what was considered one of the ten most polluted rivers in America. Because of the incredible pollution throughout the first three-quarters of the 20th century, no one would swim in the water. Nothing lived in it. Generally covered in a vile yellow brown foam, particularly down river and below the falls, in colder months the foam solidified. For all appearances it could have been walked across. When sheets of the foam would calve and float away, the piece left behind would reveal striations like aged geological formations with colored layers—none of them seen in nature—moving from darkest to a grim faded yellow at the top. The smell was legendary.
The second well documented bit is the history of the bridge itself. First built in the late 19th century to support a burgeoning housing development in the Topsham heights where mill-workers at the growing textile and paper mills might live one day, it has been repaired and replaced a number of times since. Intwined with the Franco American heritage of the region and their connections to the mills and to St. John’s Parish, there has always been an affection and fascination with the swinging bridge. At the end of the 20th century a coordinated effort to preserve the bridge as a cultural and scenic asset rehabilitated it and added some park-like amenities.
Less well documented is the story of the VW Beetle. Or was it a Rabbit? In any event it was a friend of a friend from high school who did it. And no matter how poorly documented the story is, everyone—of a certain age, at least—claims a connection to the driver, or at least to the passenger.
“It was a guy named Mo in a yellow Beetle, he works at the yard now. He was riding with a guy named Ted whose father was the school superintendent. They were coming up from Water Street when Joe Labbe blue lighted them so Mo took off, went the wrong way on Gilman, up Oak Street, and then across the bridge and into the heights. The cruiser couldn’t follow so Joe was just there sputtering like Rosco P. Coltrane.”
“No way, it wasn’t Mo, Ted was driving his Rabbit, but Mo was with him. And it was Jeffries, not Labbe.”
“Nuh-uh. It was Shelley and her sister. That family owned two VW Things. They both went across, And there weren’t any cops.”
“It was a girl all right, but her name was Janice. And she did get caught even though she made it across the bridge. She got caught because the Beetle—its name was Gregor Samsa—was tricked out with one of those fake Rolls Royce hoods so everyone knew exactly who it was. Cops just went to her house and waited. Her father was the Dean over at the College so you can imagine the scene.”
“The College. Gregor. Figures.”
(Maybe you’ve heard your own version of driving across the bridge? Drop a line. Click right on photo below for more)
