The Gay Street Bridge

Gay Street Bridge unstable wooden planks tested
--your courage
--your convictions
as uncertainty shifted back and forth with each step above the railroad tracks
toward the other end
--your belief
--your determination
lifted each foot in the right direction confirming your commitment
to your faith.

I believe I've written about traveling across the Gay Street Bridge. I seldom use the word "hate", but I hated having to cross the Gay Street Bridge. I had to cross that bridge to get to church.

The bridge was not well maintained and extended over the railroad tracks. I never heard that anyone ever fell or jumped off the Gay Street Bridge. But, the structure , I felt was unsound, and I hated having to risk my life every Sunday crossing it.

It was many years later that I learned that there was another route to get to the church that was a much longer walk. But, it was much safer way that would not have left me haunted with memories of the Gay Street Bridge.

The morale of the story, sometimes the more inconvenient route may be safer than the more familiar convenient route that erodes your confident in doing the right thing.

A more colorful story about the Gay Street Bridge:
The story is that the present Gay Street bridge once marked a train stop where
fashionable and intellectual passengers, frequently from Washington or New York, would alight to be conveyed by carriages to the Hanna home. Because of the many "gay" groups which traveled back and forth, the street acquired the name GAY STREET, and the bridge became known as "the Gay Street bridge. "