The leaves started turning colors and falling from the trees in the Missouri River Valley. The beauty of fall never lasts, especially when the wind blows and the leaves start flying off like they are today. Mary keeps busy putting her gardens to bed for the winter, and our neighbor came over yesterday with his air compressor to blow out our underground sprinkler system lines. We can only wonder what kind of winter waits for us.
We had excitement around these parts on Monday. Demolition experts set explosives and dumped part of the Missouri River bridge into the water. A new bridge alongside the old one opened for two-lane traffic a couple of months ago, but the other two lanes were not in use yet because the west end of the old steel structure stood in the way. So down it went and construction to complete the new bridge goes on. I had driven by a couple of days previous to the explosions and saw workmen using cutting torches high up on the arches to weaken their joints.
We did not drive to the site when it was detonated, but television crews were there so we could watch the action live. I believe there were some 190 simultaneous explosions set off. Everything happened fast: we saw the twinkling of all the charges blowing, lots of dark smoke, and the almost immediate collapse of the structure. I couldn't help but notice the hundreds of birds taking wing from underneath to get out of there. In seconds it all lay in the riverbed. Workmen got busy right away to clean out the debris since they had only 24 hours to get it out of there. The bridge was 86 years old, and for a time was the only one across the Missouri. Prior to that barges ferried traffic across. After the smoke and dust settled a transportation department supervisor showed how the rust had worked and weakened the steel. He commented that it was worse than they thought it to be.
