I took this photo of the old Hasty Low Water Bridge at some point in the last decade. It was not long after this photo when work on the new overhead bridge took place. This could be a scary takeout point when the river was really rolling! I remember watching one of the local vendors trying to get a boat out of one of the culverts in the early eighties. The water was just over the top of the bridge and the occupants decided to paddle up to the bridge, jump out and try to get the boat to float across. What ended up happening was that when the guy in the front jumped out, the suction from one of the culverts pulled the front of the canoe into the culvert, sucking the boat in all the way to the widest middle part which was too wide to continue. The man in back was somehow able to get out without being tugged under and was later seen thanking the dear Lord above for not pinning him inside with the boat. The vendor had to wait for the water to go down later that summer and was finally able to retrieve the boat by removing the center supports and beating the boat through with a sledge hammer! Years later I watched a friend of mine step off the bridge and get sucked through one of the culverts at the north end of the bridge. A car was coming across the bridge and he was afraid that he was going to get run over so he decided to step off. The first culvert on that end was situated in an area that was rather shallow (except for the immediate location of the culvert) and the water around it was only six inches deep. He immediately vanished and about ten seconds later emerged from the other side of the bridge. He was cut up pretty bad from the exposed metal of the old culvert but somehow survived. We often thought what would have happened if the culvert would have been blocked. He was lucky to be alive. Every time I float past this location I think about how much the river has changed due to the low water bridge being removed. I kind of miss it now when I go past it.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 23:02:04 +0000
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