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The streams of West Virginia are peppered with covered bridge crossings. Some were quite intricate, while others, plain and simple. Our Barrackville bridge was somewhere in the between and was nearly burned down a few times; however, it survived the Indian and Civil Wars by a cat's whisker. Recently, residents celebrated the bridge's 200th birthday and was restored to its natural beauty. Nowadays, a modern concrete bridge runs parallel to the old single-lane bridge which is a walk-through tourist attraction. However, when I was nine years old, it was used as the primary source for car and truck traffic to cross Buffalo Creek. To this little boy, the bridge was like a haunted place and took great courage for me to pass through it. Standing at one end and looking through the walkway side, the other end looked a mile away. It was dimly lit and received a mottling of light from windows cut on the roadway side of the bridge. Town drunks from a local tavern located at the other end of the shadowy structure traveled the covered bridge quite frequently. To see their black silhouettes staggering back and forth in the narrow walkway, made it appear they were trying to block the way. Pigeons roosted overhead on the hand-hewn beams making spooky sounds and flew out in a whirling breeze of feathers and dust. There was only one way to get through: Wait until it was all clear; hold your breath and run for your life. Exiting the bridge was another thing--the drunks sitting along the tavern porch railing would yell, scaring the bejezzes out of what little was left in my body. They really liked watching me jump and hear me give out a hair raising scream. Many days, I sent a barrage of rocks their way until they took shelter. They meant no harm--just wanted to create a little excitement in their boring lives. There were days when my tension grew so high meant bypassing the walkway and running straight down the middle of the single-lane bridge. This event produced more laughter as they shouted, "Come back, come back." One of their favorite tricks was to wait until I was only a few running steps from exiting the walkway and throw an old dead, six foot long black snake on the bridge floor. This created a new Olympic Gold Metal long jump record. They staggered and laughed until they fell over each other in a heap of hysteria. This was a good moment for me as I cascaded them with a shower of cinders from the rail road track until the porch took on the appearance of a black cindered street. To this day, I cannot look through the old covered bridge without hearing the distant echo of laughter from those ornery fellows who yelled, "Snake! Run Joe Run." The memories of the old bridge are different for many people: Confederate and Union Soldiers crossings, Indians on the war path, horse and buggy routes to the blacksmith shop and rail road station, a place to get a beer, a north-south route, delivering news papers to the folks across the creek, and many others. However to the little boy who still lingers inside me, it was simply the "Covered Bridge Run." I am grateful to those who pressed onwards to have the bridge restored. I do not believe its future will be as exciting as the past but certainly will provide room for many stories. |
