ROCKY POINT REMEMBRANCE

Bridge to the future

GOLD HILL — The Rock Point Bridge will be closed for five months beginning late this summer or early fall when the historic structure undergoes intensive refurbishing,...
Photo and headline courtesy of the Medford Mail Tribune.
Whatever you do, do not repeat this story to your children, I'd rather not be responsible.


I was 13, and had gotten myself a job at the horse farm down the road. Arabians, meaner'n hell, as we rancher folk would say. Anyhow, it was a after school job, so I'd ride the bus to work, muck out stalls for two hours, $1.65 an hour as I recall. A nasty dirty smelly job, someone had to do it though and I wanted my Levi 501's, my mom wouldn't buy them for me, to expensive, so I took the job. After work, the river was right there, so I'd generally take a short dip to cool off before I started off on my 4 mile walk home.
Now all the big kids, everyone knew jumped off the bridges in town, not me though, I was a good boy and my mom did not approve of children jumping from bridges. In truth I was afraid of heights, but the mom excuse was easier on the pride. Peer pressure. It finally got me. Although I tried to stay away from the older boys who worked at the ranch because they chewed tobacco and drank stolen beer( they'd already gotten me sick with the chew and laughed while I threw up) I got trapped into going with them to Rocky Point to swim instead of the usual spot at the Ben Hur park, where I usually went.
Needless to say, within probably 5 minutes they had me standing outside the guard rail looking down over 35 feet at the surface of the water. I use the word surface because that's what it looked like to me, a hard surface. Turns out, it can be a very hard surface. You see you're just supposed to step away, not push away. If you push away there's a chance your upper body could begin to fall forward, which means that your chest and face will feel some impact on arriving at the water, impact enough to leave some pretty nasty bruises, telltale bruises. Mother was aghast. Father was appalled. I was grounded and lost my job. So unfair. In fact, it was so unfair, that by the time I was 18, I'd already jumped a few times from the railway trestle, 80 feet.


The union newsletter says that a union company was awarded the contract to refurbish the old bridge. I SURE WOULD LIKE TO WORK ON THAT ONE!!!