I was driving over the Canada Bridge in Norwich the other day (tangent alert! Neither side of the bridge, which is actually on Sherman Street as it intersects with Asylum Street, is connected in any way to our Neighbor to the North. When I and my family arrived here in the Fall of 1991, people whom we met called it the 'Canada Bridge' and everyone I've ever met who has been in Norwich at least as long as I have, also calls it the Canada Bridge. I was raised a Catholic and am used to believing in things that have no proof, so I call, too, it the Canada Bridge) and as you head towards Asylum Street, down Sherman and over the bridge, you can see the times have not been kind to the sidewalk, especially on the bridge.
The Canada Bridge is very cool, in my opinion though it's not an especially pretty bridge-it's all concrete and asphalt and it's very utilitarian--neither Clint Eastwood nor Meryl Streep would roll up sleeve or undo a shirt button in its vicinity--but when we've had a lot of rain (as we've had recently) you can look at the old stick with the depth markings that's been there since I don't know when (before Canada was Canada, perhaps?) as the water rushes and swirls beneath the bridge and be amazed and impressed.
Anyway, the other day in addition to the turning-into-pulverized-powder concrete of what's left of the sidewalk over the bridge and the smashed pieces of curb that dot that side of the bridge (how do you do that? Come out at night with a sledge hammer?), someone, or more than one someone, had tagged the face of the bridge. When we were kids it would be called 'defaced' the bridge but now the little darlings we've bred are only expressing themselves and we wouldn't want to stunt their emotional growth, right? Real Life as the Jerry Springer Show, gotta love it.
Whoever the artist was, he/she chose white paint, which may well be a cry for help all by itself and aside from a couple of numerals also spelled out the word F*CK and with the asterisk much too hard to paint, used the letter U instead. It's sort of a half-empty, half-full glass kind of thing, I suppose. Norwich schools have not fared well in Connecticut Mastery Tests, CMT, for most of the last decade, particularly in the graded writing portion, so I guess I could be happy that, while a small step (a very small step) was taken for writers everywhere, with both my wife and my daughter in the car as I crossed the bridge, I wasn't really ready to cheer.
I have no neanderthal attitude about the role or place of women in our culture. My daughter is 21 and my son is 26 and they are more wise to the ways of the world at their ages than I am at mine and my wife has been around the block more than once, so I'm not sure why the James Joyce impersonator so angered and embarrassed me with the display of literacy skills, but I was both. I've raised my children to understand that there's trash in the world but have never seen the need to have a garbage truck drop its load in my front yard, so I didn't really appreciate the spirit of outreach the bridge scribbler demonstrated.
As it happens, on the City of Norwich website, which gets better and more user friendly every time I visit it, and I visit it a lot, you can accomplish a Citizen Service Request (you don't have to be from Norwich to fill one out, but I think it helps, at least a little) to do everything from reporting a pothole to asking about bulk waste pickup. You cannot use it, successfully, to request pony rides for your birthday (not that I have any first hand experience with this rejection) but considering twice a month in Council chambers there seems to be what smells like what comes out of the back end of the pony sometimes masquerading as discussion, I'm surprised you can't.
I used the website request the other day to suggest the Norwich Public Works Department dispatch someone with paint (I have no idea as to color) to cover up all four letters or, if paint is at a premium, any two of the worker's choice. I've done about six or eight of these requests in the last year and am always impressed that someone reads them (I have self-esteem issues) and reacts to the requests. Maybe the elected officials don't get done everything we want when we want it (as if that were even possible) but the daily municipal operations are more than responsive and responsible. I have every confidence that mine wasn't the first note about the Canada Bridge and wasn't surprised that the repainting happened faster than you can say 'drop cloth'.
It wasn't a perfect day for bananafish by any means, but Holden thinks it'll work out fine.
-bill kenny
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