By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Big Lake winter gales make for whiteouts sweeping over and under north-south bridges here. Rescuers call these wind funnels.
When lightly-loaded trailers with high profiles are engulfed in these blasts, they turn into sails, jackknife but bring nouveau Evel Knievel cab drivers with them, far shores in sight even as they plunge.
Two nearby I-196 truck launch ramps have furnished much grist for gossip these last two months.
The first hit came 4 days after Christmas in early-morning darkness and was a doozy: A northbound semi towing two trailers smashed through guardrails and plummeted down the bridge embankment, pinballing off concrete barriers to land and catch fire on old Allegan Road below.
The bridge troll was wakened early “by the most din I’d heard in my 28 years here: brakes squealing, metal wrench, glass crunching and BOOM!
The driver, a former prizefighter was found KO’d but belted in properly and buffered by an airbag, could be pried out by a Good Samaritan and dragged to such safety as existed on the span above just in time. The BOOM! was the truck bursting into flame.
Two and a half months later site scars remain. “What would you take pictures of?” our photographer asked the troll. Shrug. “OK I’ll go look, but wait: How long have those billboard signs been up there?”
“The bottom one changes,” the troll said. “The top ‘Steer Yerself 2 Chikin’ went up maybe 2-3 weeks ago. The bottom one, “America’s Best Firearms” has been pretty steady going back.”
Traffic suction swayed me as I walked under the nearest bridge to in between them where scorched and garish remains still stood.
The legend of the Prize Fighter and Samaritan remains. The still-singed 14’x8” bridge height sign bearing testament.
The troll began musing on road wrecks past, singling out the time two teens spun Dad’s station wagon and, teetering on the concrete wall till cops pulled them off, issued stern admonishment, called Dad to come pick them up. But that was not like this.
He’d heard of the one too Jan. 27 four miles north when a truck hauling “potentially” 25,000 pounds of plastic particles, known as “nurdles” in most business contexts, launched from the 38-mile Kalamazoo River span and plunged, popping open bottom hopper doors and spilling most in the frozen marshes, cattails, reeds, more wetland bric-a-brac and into currents below.
First cleanup next day took 11 hours and employed bucket loaders to clean up as much of the mess as possible given masses of PPPs camouflaged with snow. They came back post-thaw Feb. 28 to scoop up remains that had not yet already scattered in car-truck backwinds north or in river currents. This stretch too bears scars although truck-tire skid tracks were being filled in with spring grass last we checked.
“Quite a view down here,” said the troll. “Seen you parked ‘cross the street in front of my neighbor’s warehouse — It’s empty now, once hosted boat supplies —and figured you was shooting something. Caught it all on video cam …
“How long,” I asked, do you keep the tapes?”
