|
|
|
5 September 08: Calhoun Street Bridge,
My bridge
by Nathaniel Popkin
September 5, 2008
Ed. note: This is the first of the thirteen bridges spanning the tidal Delaware River that we're going to pass over and under in the next week or so. Nathaniel is
a Trenton native, and when I told him about the series, he related a personal relationship with the Calhoun Street Bridge, the northernmost of the tidal bridges, the
next-to-last free crossing coming downstream. This story and these photos are his.
* * *
There are places and things in life that retain an emotional charge, a sensitive energy. The greatest for me is my grandparent's house in Trenton.
I still smell my grandmother's rosewater, the musk of the kitchen (not her kitchen, she didn't cook), the thin, grainy decline of their bedroom. I feel the satin of
the couch, the crumbling driveway beneath sneaker feet, the roots of the massive, languorous European Beech (my grandfather would say the governor had wanted the
tree for the Capitol but it was too large to move).
These were seventies days; I wore a shirt with a frog on it, Swim Camp '77. That was the year my grandfather died, the day after Elvis, a few days before my
father's 40th birthday. I remember the day, too, waiting with my sister Nancy on the worn carpet of their bedroom floor while everyone else was at the hospital, and
my grandmother's fierce expression and her arms crossed as she left the car and came inside.
I remember too, the sound of the bridge, the Calhoun Street Bridge between Morrisville and Trenton, as we drove back home. The buzz and jostle beneath car wheels.
It was the most familiar sound perhaps, 15 miles an hour and the tight squeeze and the little guard shack that once in a while would be renovated -- aluminum siding
and a window unit to match the times -- and the merge ahead onto route 29.
My dad has taken the bridge every working day since his dental office opened in 1967; for me as a kid it would mean a day at the office with him, a visit to the
grandparents, or to my other grandmother, my father's mother, whose funeral limo ride across the bridge I recall now; how many times had we driven her back home,
across the bridge, after dinner?
–Nathaniel Popkin
nathaniel.popkin@gmail.com
For Nathaniel Popkin archives, please see HERE, or visit his web site HERE.
For The Possible City, please see HERE, or purchase the book HERE.
* * *
Ed. note 2: Nathaniel mentioned the Capitol, also known as the New Jersey State House. The building, on the Delaware Riverfront (if separated by Route 29,
à la I-95 in Old City), dates back to 1792 when it was built by a Philadelphia builder called Jonathan Doane. By some counts, he's also credited as the
architect, but I've been unable to confirm this. Legendary Philadelphia architect John Notman (Athenaeum, St Mark's Church) directed an enlargement of the building
in 1845, including the golden dome, which united the older structure with the new addition. Read more HERE.
|
SUMMER OF THE DELAWARE ARCHIVES:
|
|
