TRUE FACT #8
I AM OWNER OF THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE! (Well, At Least A Piece Of It).
Ever since that summer day in 1973 when my parents’ station wagon broke down on the
Goethals Bridge between Elizabeth, NJ and Staten Island, NY, (with all 9 of us kids
aboard having to exit the car as we waited nervously for that tow truck hero to rescue us,
while fully-loaded, rumbling tractor trailers and loud billowing diesels powered past
children only inches away on the narrow 4 lane highway bridge, tiny helpless faces
peering curiously and dangerously over the thigh-high catwalk railing hundreds of feet
above the marsh below us) I’ve had an incredible fear of heights and bridges.
Jeez, I can’t imagine why.
This intense phobia did not surface right then and there…
However, it was the catalyst for what would follow.
My next direct encounter with a bridge of any significant magnitude occurred maybe
3 or 4 years later while on a family outing in Manhattan. The fates had led us toward the
far side of the city where the East River faces Brooklyn. Mom and several of my siblings
decided we should walk across the Brooklyn Bridge… I guess just to say that we DID it.
That seemed like a good enough idea to me at the time, at least until we actually got up
there onto the friggin’ wooden walkway that suspends archaically above the clanking and
impatient automobile traffic on the lower deck.
As the others strode adventurously up the incline leading to the iconic first tower, I found
myself gripping the hundred year old handrail in petrified panic while waves of water
could be seen lapping below us through the gaping spaces between the aging boards
under foot. I thought, “SHIT, if I could only make it to that first tower to read what it
says on that plaque…” Every step I took forward seemed to make the enormous Gothic
masonry arches appear further and further away. Maybe this is what they call tunnel-vision.
Finally, an eternity later my mother happened to look back at her lifeless, white-as-a-ghost
son who was now trailing miles behind the pack. A few words were spoken and my ringing
ears were relieved as she abruptly put an end to my Brooklyn Bridge nightmare by giving
me permission to turn back… In my life, I don’t think I ever ran as fast as I did that day to
get the hell off that shaking, rickety bridge and back to the firm safety, comfort and stillness
of our beloved mother earth. Even if it was in the form of the cool, hard slate and concrete
sidewalks of New York City, amen. There are some places humans are not supposed to
walk… the sky is one of them.
Growing up in a port city and eastern coastal state meant that everywhere we went, there
were colossal bridges to encounter. We were surrounded by the Arthur Kill, major rivers and
waterways. It didn’t help my anxiety much when I landed a sweet job as a driver for Eastern
Bearing Company and learned I had to occasionally make deliveries and pickups on Staten
Island. That’s where I would discover and face the greatest nemesis I had known to date…
the leviathan known as The Outerbridge Crossing. It even sounds like something from the
Twilight Zone.
I would literally drive miles out of my way to find alternate routes to avoid using the major
bridges. Getting in and out of Staten Island by car or van without crossing a major bridge is
impossible, unless you ventured into Manhattan by tunnel and drove across town to the
Battery Park Terminal to use the Staten Island Ferry. What a goddamn nightmare.
When I arrived in Los Angeles in ’86, it would seemingly mark an end to a long and painful
relationship with skyways, viaducts, suspension, and cantilever bridges.
As I began having some measures of success with each band I played with, touring
and travel would bring us to places where bridges were inevitable, and crossing
them would become an issue among me and my band mates. It’s good policy for
band mates to take turns at the wheel on the long drives between shows. Anytime
my turn would come up, I’d vigilantly scour my trusty Rand McNally Road Atlas for
any spans before getting behind the wheel of the motorhome or touring van,
especially in areas unfamiliar to me. I’ve been known to hastily pull over upon
encountering a frightful, looming bridge, and with sweaty, debilitating panic
attack in throat, chest and arms, (not to mention cowering in dire humiliation),
have to plead with someone else to drive us across. Needless to say, relying solely
on the ever unpredictable GPS further intensifies the feelings of anxiety.
Determined to conquer my fear once and for all, it crossed my mind that perhaps I could
de-mystify the whole thing by studying bridge building and learning about the physics,
principles and techniques involved, the science of engineering and the numerous types of
structures and their histories. Though it ultimately did nothing to quell my fears, I’d soon
become completely obsessed with and fascinated by these fantastic, gigantic erections and
hence realized my love for them and just how much I am in awe of their might. (Okay,
insert penis joke here, go ahead, I can wait... Meanwhile, here’s mine:
“That’s What SHE Said”).
As I educated myself further, the fear I’d experienced for years was justified as I learned
about the many, many lives that were and still are lost creating and maintaining the
world’s greatest and most notable bridges. I read about how during the Great Depression
era many civic projects were underway, and regular men, unskilled workers, some having
families to support, would gratefully sign up for a day’s wage and get up there with a flask
of whiskey in their coat pocket to comfort their nerves, risking it all for a dollar while
working with no real safety equipment or regulations. Project leaders used to measure the
mortality rate and cost of completion together- One life per million dollars. Were these
lives expendable?
As an artist and painter, I felt an empathy for and a kinship to the obscure bridgemen,
especially the painters, the ones who get up there on the end of a rope in a bosun’s chair
with paintbrush in hand, dangling in the wind performing the ceaseless job of painting
their bridge. What a thankless fucking job. (Can you name ONE person who worked on
ANY bridge? Help me out here.)
Inspired by these “Joe-unknowns,” these invisible heroes, these nameless and faceless
magicians that people have no clue about nor ever gave a single thought to or wonder
about as they mindlessly and ungratefully drive across their hand-built master pieces, I
set out to pay homage in a series of works focusing on one of MY favorite suspension
bridges, the Golden Gate Bridge.
My “BRIDGEMEN” project received the support of GGB Company itself, and soon I was
painting with the actual “International Orange” paint, a hue that is specially mixed for and
used absolutely nowhere else in the world… except on the Golden Gate Bridge! My requests
for tired old brushes and bridge materials were accommodated and soon I was the recipient
of steel suspension cables, hard hats, wire brushes, goggles, and other fun stuff including
what has become one of my greatest treasures in this world, a handful of used, badly worn
original rivets which were taken out of the bridge during a safety upgrade.
The significance and power that these rivets hold is intensely meaningful to me. Handled by
the now deceased and forgotten men who originally drove them into one of the world’s great
wonders BY HAND, they represent the drive and determination to overcome adversity and
obstacles under extreme conditions to accomplish a common goal.
Each rivet is quite magical and talisman-like. They help connect the dots for me in a personal
way between what it is to be an artist following his vision, no matter how lofty, regardless of
fame, fortune, or accolade, and balancing that with being of service to the world in some tiny
way... perhaps one rivet at a time.
JFH
LINKS:
ARTWORK by Joe Normal:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.585107118255263.1073741836.386253224807321&type=3
Bridge Painters in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx0LwtLl4-M
Bridges mentioned in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethals_Bridge
https://www.google.com/#q=brooklyn+bridge
https://www.google.com/#q=outerbridge%20crossing