by Chip Jacobs
“No kidding,” Nick said, trying to focus on his nine-dollar omelet.
“They printed a poem that a cobbler wrote to a judge decades ago after he tried doing himself in. Can I read it to you?”
“I’d rather hear a movie review.”
“It’s short. He wrote, ‘I will not jump off the Colorado bridge to escape from being in the ditch. With California sunshine, mountain views, wine, and beer, the temptation is too great for me to live right here—’”
“Okay, okay. I get it.” Nick said, stopping eating. “What you might not understand, as an outsider, Julie, is what a spectacularly sore subject that bridge is around town. For many, it’s their Bermuda Triangle—where someone they loved disappeared midair forever.” He jabbed at his gourmet home fries, wishing they were hash browns. “People who’ve come across bodies down there suffer their own nightmares.”
“You’re right. That was insensitive of me.”
They didn’t speak for five minutes, the first awkward silence of an otherwise blooming romance. Julie, hence, was surprised when Nick cleared his throat.
“Remember at Cameron’s when I said I didn’t want to hide anything from you? You should know I have my own history there. And to borrow another metaphor, it’s my Chernobyl.”
“The nuclear reactor?”
“Yeah: where some of my joy melted down. I hate even mentioning it.”
“I can see that,” Julie said. “Your hands are shaking.” She napkined her mouth and pushed her eggs Florentine to the side. Calmly, she added, “If I may, you are aware—”
“Did you just say, ‘If I may?’ That’s so Victorian of you.”
“I know. It just slipped out. Anyway, you know that San Francisco is a city of bridges? And that you’re going to need to cross the Golden Gate if you relocate there.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Let me tell you what I have to overcome.”
By the time he was a high school senior, Nick explained, he and his associated rowdies had transformed the lightly patrolled area below the bridge into their party central. Many a weekend evening they climbed into the arches of the Foothill Freeway’s “Pioneers Bridge,” which state engineers designed as a flavorless replication of the nationally famous/locally notorious Colorado Street Bridge due south of it. Their tomfooleries—shotgunned Budweisers, the truth-or-dares with coquettish private-school girls, the reckless tiptoeing around the ledges—all fell within the standard deviation of normal adolescent misbehavior.
As the mood-setter, Nick usually cued up on his boom box the coda to “The Crunge,” where Robert Plant asked with funk whether anyone had seen an unspecified—and perplexing—bridge. Nick then would switch the music off, and everybody together would hoot, mantra-like: “That confounded bridge is here!”
Soon there was something really confounding. One summer night, amped up on intoxicants and testosterone, he decided he was going to clamber into the Colorado Street Bridge, prove he wasn’t afraid of the ghosts and supernatural occurrences rumored to occupy it. Impulsively, he squirrel-climbed over the fence and searched for a place to hoist up into its underbelly, which nobody else ever attempted.
“This doesn’t end well, does it?” Julie asked.
“Not particularly. When I touched the concrete, I fainted for first time in my life. It blew up from there. Fleet ran to call the paramedics, and they needed to cut through the fencing to reach me. Another buddy, RG, got everybody out of there and hid the contraband. My parents wigged out too. They forced me to visit a therapist after my blood tests came back normal.”
“What did he think?”
“That I’d suffered a traumatic flashback to when Mac, my old mentor, was killed at his own bridge accident at Devil’s Gate Dam. My father didn’t accept that though. Called it a lazy, psychobabble diagnosis. My mother sided with the therapist. They were already on shaky ground, and they argued for days. A month later Dad left, and they divorced. I only speak to him three times a year now.
“That’s awful,” Julie said. “Though it answers quite a bit.”
“Now you know why I’m off the Pasadena-mystique train. And why I’m acrophobic. I don’t remember the last time I drove across the bridge. But you’re also right. I better face my fears, high as they may be.”
Julie dog-eared an article and slid the paper over. “You may have your start,” she said. “Read this while I pay the check.”
—
Nick adjusted his Ray-Bans in the chilly November sunshine, waiting for the start of the “Arroyo-101 Tour” to begin. In signing up at Julie’s urging, he didn’t realize the outing was starting near the place he hadn’t been back to since the Reagan Administration. Revisiting his decision as he already was, yearning for a rainout as he did, he knew inside this was where his demons needed to be conquered.
There were worse things to be doing on this Sunday afternoon than tolerating three hours of worthless trivia about the bridge and other Upper Arroyo Seco landmarks. He could be stuck with Mark “Donut Man” Stonebreaker inventorying returned merchandise, or still moping after watching his bumbling Trojans lose a heartbreaker to their crosstown rivals yesterday at the LA Memorial Coliseum.
Think ahead, he told himself. David Loomer might be extending him an offer sheet next week. Just grit your teeth for now.
Nick’s manufactured calm had no sedative effects on Royo. While there were no alleged letters on his forehead anymore, there were clear jitters in his bones since they arrived. Whether it was tugging on his leash or wrapping himself around Nick’s Levi-clad legs, he was acting like a high-strung Chihuahua sniffing poison down here.
“Relax, muttenheimer,” Nick said. “I’m the one with the issues.”
Other attendees dribbled in from the dirt parking lot bracketed between the two hulking structures. The lot itself was east of a new, Mediterranean-style condo complex, part of which nestled under the southern edge of the Colorado Street Bridge. Pasadena’s uber-organized preservationists and NIMBY groups tried blocking the project. They were enraged the city would permit a “stucco monstrosity” beneath a historic site. But real estate trumped history and local ecology. Tenants were moving in soon.
Nick eyeballed his fellow attendees. Among them was a pair of slim, middle-aged women in designer jeans and hair bows, and a gawky, Art Garfunkel look-alike reading the tour brochure close to his eyes. Standing beside him was an elderly lady with bird-watching binoculars looped around her saggy neck, and a dark-haired man roughly Nick’s age. He wore a personalized Dodgers jersey with his last name embroidered on the back: Scuzzi. He gave off a Mark David Chapman vibe; Nick kept away.
The most fascinating person was a twinkle-eyed, older gent in a classic Led Zeppelin jacket with that winged angel on it. Nick smiled whimsically, knowing it was from the same late-seventies concert tour that he and Fleet sweet-talked their parents into letting them see at the Fabulous Forum, a highlight of their rambunctious youth. The gent approached Nick, all friendly, and Royo’s anxiety vanished.
“Love your dog,” the man with the clipped gray beard said. “Seems attuned.”
“Well, I love your jacket,” Nick said. “Let’s hope they reunite, only without Phil Collins on drums.”
He and Mike Zachriel shook hands. Nick wanted to speak further with him, but a candy-apple-red Porsche 911 came gunning down the winding access road toward the bridge, and skidded to a grandstanding stop. Another five feet and he would’ve hit the saggy-necked lady.
Before getting out, the driver checked his feathery, chestnut hair in the mirror. Nick, seeing the forty-ish man with wide shoulders and a duplicitous smile, was certain they’d met before. The tour guide curled a finger at the participants to walk toward his Porsche so he didn’t have to walk to them. Percy Fixx, in an orange Princeton sweatshirt, introduced himself, and then exclaimed, “Now who’s ready for a trip into yesteryear?”
The hands that people were blowing on waiting for him in the cold temperatures rose. Percy was ten minutes late.
“We’d need a three-day weekend to fit everything in, but we’ll give it a whirl,” he began. He said he volunteered for this assignment out of “sheer passion for Pasadena’s unparalleled history.” What he didn’t disclose? Doing this was part of his community service obligation for a pled-down stock-trading misdemeanor.
Percy passed around nametags and a Sharpie. While people wrote, he announced, “We’ll start with this beaut above our heads, move on to the federal courthouse up the bank, where the old hotel Arroyo del Vista and a boardinghouse for sick children was before that. Next, we’ll walk the trail to the Rose Bowl, and, time permitting, get to Devil’s Gate. Shame Busch Gardens isn’t around anymore. But you can’t build subdivisions on unicorns, can you?”
“Good thing Joni Mitchell isn’t here to respond,” Mike said in his smooth, basso voice.
Percy appeared ready with a zinger; he didn’t say anything, though, after viewing who needled him.
“Ordinarily, we’d talk on the deck. As you must’ve noticed from all the scaffolds and such, the city is still readying her for the grand reopening. Yours truly, I’m honored to say, will be speaking that day. We have some other illustrious guests lined up, too. Any comments?”
A split second after Percy asked that, Royo let rip a pretty extended dog fart; Egg McMuffins will do that. A collective snickering that excluded Percy followed. Trying to regain command, he looked down at his note card and said, “Call the bridge Pasadena’s Panama Canal. Just don’t call her average.”
Three hours of this joker? Nick shuffled his feet, feeling his legs mildly quivering.
“Citizens approved a hundred thousand dollars for her in spring 1912,” Percy said. “The job came in on time and under budget, as well choreographed as Operation Desert Storm.”
An ectomorph Asian woman in a JPL hat lofted her hand. “Can you address the ghost stories and suicides? What has the city done to—?”
“Sure,” Percy said, cutting her off. “When I finish my remarks. She’s fifteen hundred feet long, built from ten thousand tons of concrete. Nobody had ever constructed such a handsome structure over such a dangerous gorge before. The two men in charge, John Mercereau and John Waddell, collaborated to change that. What a masterpiece.”
Something, however, about Percy’s last words jolted Nick out of the peculiar headspace, neither agitated nor distracted, from which he tried biding his time. It was as though he’d stuck his pinkie in a live socket, or gotten shocked by full-body static electricity. While Percy droned on about weight loads and spandrel columns, Nick popped in a stick of Wrigley’s to center himself. Royo jumped up on him for his own piece; Nick jerked his head no.
“One last factoid. Visitors frequently inquire why she curves like a lazy S, if it’s for the aesthetics. The answer is that a straight bridge would’ve sunk footings into unpredictable soil, and increased the length and costs. Together, Messrs Waddell and Mercereau outfoxed the terrain.”
“Yeah, and who needs facts when you can spew misstatements and myths?” Nick said—if he’d said it. He marveled at whether the words springboarded from his own mouth or an alternative him.
Everyone stared his direction. Royo, in his finest Scooby-Doo, said Ruh-Roooooo.
“Excuse me. Are you accusing me of lying, or merely getting my facts wrong?” Percy said, glaring at his questioner’s nametag. “In any event, enlighten us, Ni-ck.”
Again, as though it was emanating from another organism, he answered. “There’s a lot more to that curve than what fits on your note card, Per-cy. Like how the early millionaires with homes on the cliffs applied pressure so the bridge didn’t impede their mountain views. While we’re at it, citizens voted in 1911, not 1912.
“Is that so?” Percy said.
“Yes. And Waddell was anything but gratified in his dealings with the city. After it altered his plans, he boycotted the opening.” Where’s this coming from?
Percy knifed through the startled group, striding up to Nick, whose unsolicited corrections had drenched Tabasco over a stock tour. “Okay, I’ll play along,” the beady-eyed tour guide said; the man wore enough Polo aftershave to trigger a smog alert. “Makes for robust debate. What’s your source? A secret book, a dissertation, a fortune cookie?” Percy finally extracted a group laugh with that one.
“I grew up here, so I must’ve recalled the facts from somewhere.”
Nobody on the Arroyo-101 outing was visualizing the next stops anymore. The Rose Bowl’s inaugural game: who cared? Tales of how Jack Parsons & Company tried summoning Lucifer’s moon child could wait. Everyone squeezed in around Nick and Percy like they were about to trade punches in a grade-school brawl.
“Here’s two facts for you,” Percy said. “If the minorities have their druthers, Jesse Jackson will be the next Tournament of Roses grand marshal—and your dog has a fat ass.”
“Better,” Nick said a foot away, “a chunky dog than a smarmy know-nothing.”
Percy nodded and retreated a step-in outward de-escalation. “Okay, Nick. I’ll cede the floor so you can school us.”
Alternative Nick emerged further. “Thanks. I will. On August first, 1913, bad framing caused part of one of the arches to collapse. Three men fell to their deaths, and eight more hung for their lives. After the tragedy, no one went to jail or paid a fine. Ooh, and I just remembered how the city exploited that to acquire its westside.”
“And to think I wasted two lunch breaks boning up,” Percy said, getting the designer-jean women to smirk.
“Did you read then about construction workers who claimed the bridge creaked and shook for no reason, or animals petrified to get near it?” Nick said. “Or that the project actually wasn’t on deadline. It was delayed multiple times, the last by a bloodbath.” Am I channeling an encyclopedia?
Percy now shook his head as if he were hearing about an apocryphal Yeti. “What I’m reciting is from the books,” he said, eyes veering between Nick and Royo, who growled whenever he spoke.
“I’m not doubting that,” Alternative Nick said. “I’m suggesting those books were written in revisionist ink. Lastly, not to nitpick, the job consumed eleven thousand cubic yards of concrete.”
Percy was tiring of this exchange. “Unless we have a history PhD among us,” he said, “let’s push on. I’m just a simple volunteer with an Ivy League education.”
The confused bunch started walking away, believing détente was reached. But when it was only the two of them, Percy leaned toward Nick.
“How dare you humiliate me like that? Where do you think you are? West Covina?” He then looked up at the bridge and winked, saying in a normal tone for the benefit of any lingering ears, “When you get down to it, it’s only molded concrete. Now, on to the Rose Bowl, granddaddy of ’em all.”
Percy jogged past Nick and his snarling dog, trotting to get in the front of the others on his new Nike Air Trainers. Nick watched the entourage wind toward a trail, though he didn’t notice the Zep-loving gent among them.
“Okay, boy,” Nick said, tousling his ears. “Let’s go home and split a grilled cheese. If I stay down here any longer, I’ll be speaking in tongues.”
The Rock Star of Sunny Slope Manor
Nick needed to lean in to hear Fleet speak over the juggernaut of campy iconoclasm rumbling past. Like Santa Claus, the Doo Dah Parade had come to town. After it departed, the world felt colorless again.
“You have no explanation?” Fleet said in a quarter shout. “You just opened your mouth and out pours dusty trivia, about a bridge that still gives you the willies?”
Nick and Fleet, here for their third year running, stood in front of a mishmash of fellow spectators, which ranged from families hungry for free weekend entertainment to hung-over Generation-Xers to aging hippies in denim jackets, one with an
“Impeach Everyone” patch on it. A calm Royo surveyed the mobile carnival from Nick’s kneecap.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Nick said over the piped-in music and group incantations. “I’m trying not to get too worked up about it.”
The performers in outlandish getups juxtaposed against the ashen skies and fizzy drizzle on the mid-city street. Some cheapskates donned black trash bags as raincoats.
“I detest saying this as an Eastern medicine man,” Fleet said as a performer in a squirrel costume breezed by, “but you could use an MRI and a good neurologist.”
“Really?” Nick said, tensing up.
A kinetic clown, wearing a sash reading “Komikal Knight: Pasadena Delight” over a traditional holiday nutcracker jacket, skipped past next.
“Relax,” Fleet said after acknowledging the clown. “I’m kidding. You said it yourself: you probably learned everything you blurted in a civics class and catacombed it. When you returned to where you had your, um, incident, it pierced a neural network. Revenge of the hippocampus, I’d say. You’re fine. That’ll be two hundred dollars.”
Past them now wheeled a Ford Pinto float, whose sign read, “The afterlife’s a fender bender away.” Satirizing the wholesome, and highly corporate Rose Parade, as the Doo Dah Parade did, was never dull. It was bawdy, tactless, and amazing.
“Why am I asking someone who practices biofeedback on unsuspecting shoppers at Bullocks?”
“Because you know I’m right.”
“And it pains me when you are.”
The next act was one for their suds-loving hearts: a top-heavy woman twirling a baton in a spray-on Budweiser label. Marching behind her were fan favorites: members of the Church of the Ornamental Lawn Decorations, the drag queens of The West Hollywood Cheerleaders, and The Synchronized Precision Marching Briefcase Drill Team.
You wouldn’t find this grade-A establishment-skewering at Pasadena’s best comedy club, the Icehouse, nor certainly at the blue-blood Valley Hunt Club, whose parking lot no Hyundai would dare enter. Fleet’s shit-eating grin said it all. Even more cynical than Nick, he likened Pasadena to a starlet who read so many of her own press clippings she refused to purchase Glade for her powder room.