"WARNING!" Flash, flash-- "CLEARANCE 11 FEET 6 INCHES!"
"WARNING!!!!" Flash, flash-- "CLEARANCE 11 FEET 6 INCHES!!!"
"Yo! You in the Peterbilt!... WARNING!!!" Flash, flash-- "CLEARANCE 11 FEET 6 INCHES!!!--"
And SMASH! Crunch. Grind.
Ah, yes... another one gone to the Truck Cab Graveyard.
Every couple of months, my exit on the Parkway looks like the parking lot after a big Steelers loss-- unmoving, clotted with cars, black exhaust and steaming rage. And then I know:
Some semi-tractor-trailer has gotten wedged under the bridge to Second Avenue again.
The area is like a great Venus fly-trap for large trucks, drawing them down the road under increasingly lower bridges until eventually the truck cab can go no further...
Then the bridge peels off the top to get to the gooey Tootsie Roll center.
The berm along Bates Street looks like the truck cab equivalent of heads on pikes at the gates to a medieval fortress. Twisted metal and large chunks of expensive equipment sit to the side as a way of saying, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."
Of course, the flashing yellow signs with the clearance levels should be a warning, as well.
Yet the truckers always seem to miss that part. Why, I've seen truckers plow forward with not a care in the world-- thinking of their loved ones back home... outrunning Smokies... overcome by the stink of pig carriers and diesel... or hampered by lack of sleep...
Only to get lured like a mosquito to a bug zapper under that bridge.
It's the song of the Sirens... the lighthouse lure of privateers on the rocks... or just long hours and a lack of java. But it's a regular feature of my commute.
Then yesterday, I saw a semi headed down the very road toward oblivion.
A quick eyeball estimate-- even from us shorty four-wheel amateurs-- said that Big Mack was never, ever going to clear the 11 foot six area. It'd be like a tin of beans to a can opener.
His fellow commuters watched in rapt anticipation as he went through the first series of warnings... went through the second flashing cries and...
STOPPED...
Twenty feet from Ultimate Doom.
He put on his flashers and waited to back up.
I applauded, the claps echoing over my car radio. Yes, this day, the Cab Eating Bridge would not feast on the good travelers of Western Pennsylvania.
Ah, but it will be twice as hungry tomorrow.
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