ON THE BROADWAY BRIDGE -- Technically, because the Broadway Bridge is in our town, no dateline is necessary. But beginning newspaper kids are told to find a dateline that's cool to attract the attention of the reader.
A better dateline would have included "as it was fixin' to close," because that's where a whole bunch of people were on Wednesday morning. They were on the bridge. It was fixin' to close. It was a big deal.
Evidence of the bigness was the number of people taking pictures with their cellphones. The people at Apple must be doing cartwheels.
Closing of the bridge has been well-documented by every major news organization in our fair cities. We feel obligated to add our own impressions.
A beautiful day, and good thing this event was in the morning, because the sun was out and men in suits had started to sweat.
From the top of the bridge, the river was a rich swirling brown. Immediately to the east of the bridge were parts of the new bridge, being put together piece by piece on barges along the north shore. The adjectives "awesome" and "amazing" are seriously overused nowadays. But seriously, the sight was awesome and amazing.
At one point a spectator whose foot was on a loose piece of iron slipped. Heads turned quickly -- did someone go over the side? Nothing but a clang, fortunately.
This was a friendly crowd, exemplified by Andy Lehing of Little Rock. His mission was to ride the last motorcycle to cross the Broadway Bridge. Having seen no other motorcycles, we think he did it.
When Allison Walton of the Little Rock Police Department sang, beautifully, the national anthem, nary a single protest broke out.
A prayer was offered for the safety of the workers. Amen. The prayer also asked for a blessing of the people of Arkansas. Amen. But we repeat ourselves, as Mark Twain, a famous river man himself, once said.
The bridge, opened to traffic in 1923, cost $971,000. The new bridge will cost $98.4 million. An inflation calculator from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics figures that $971,000 in 1923 would have the buying power in 2016 of $13,676,506.31. We don't know about the other $80 million or so. But clearly something has changed over the past 93 years.
Scott Bennett, director of the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, called the bridge closing "much anticipated and much dreaded." He nailed that one. To put it simply, he added, "it's time." He nailed that one, too.
Joe Smith, the mayor of North Little Rock, said his city now had cameras in operation to monitor the flow of traffic through his city during rush hours. Drivers acting badly, he said, will be put on Facebook. He was kidding. Maybe.
Geography is destiny. County Judge Barry Hyde alluded to that when he said Pulaski County was "divided by a river but joined by our bridges."
Amen to that, too.
Mahatma@arkansasonline.com
Metro on 10/01/2016