Out of the Frying Pan

Adventures of Elwood & Mike - Part 4

Every day at school or after, Elwood and I would get together to make our perfect plan. Yessirreebob, those fellows on Mission Impossible should have hired us. Finally the great day arrived, Saturday. We had told our parents that we were going fishing, so we were going to leave around 6:00 a.m. (We didn’t tell them we might be the bait.) I was up by a quarter til five getting ready, even took my fishing rod so they wouldn’t be suspicious. At six a.m., here comes Elwood up the street, carrying his fishing rod too, and smiling so bright you thought the sun was up in full. We headed for the bridge, carrying those rods like men going to war.

It stood in front of us, that big beautiful bridge, close to 800 yards long, cold steel and concrete, just waiting to reveal its mysteries. As we went across, we waved at the toll booth operator (you always waved so they wouldn’t think nothing). We must have been walking faster than I thought for we were on the Kentucky side before I knew it. Elwood had casually glanced to see if my mark was still there and it was. We went under the bridge to hide our fishing rods in a good place, then came back and casually strolled to where the mark was.

We acted as if we were just looking around at the river. The railing was about four feet tall, the pipe on top was about six inches in diameter. Underneath the top pipe was kind of like chain link fencing only thicker. We knew when we went over the pipe, we’d have to make sure we grabbed hold of the fencing to climb down under the bridge. We were so psyched.

But every time we started to go over that dang pipe, a car would show up, either from the Ohio side or from the Kentucky side. (Where were these dang people going, fishing or something?) This wasn’t working like we’d planned it, so we walked toward the Kentucky side, trying to think of a different plan. We sat down on the embankment and stared out at our tunnel, so close and yet so far away.

Elwood got up and walked the bank, going further under the bridge. I asked him where he was going and he said, “To see something.” This could have meant anything, including taking a leak, so I just kept sitting there. I saw something out of the corner of my eye and looked up. There was Elwood, above me, swinging from girder to girder until he got on top of a bigger one. I chuckled as he turned around and came back. He hollered down at me to come up there and check it out, so I did.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked me.

“About what?”

“About swinging from girder to girder and stopping on the bigger ones to rest our arms.”

The bigger girders were only about twenty feet apart, so I tried it out. It was easy. When I came back I was laughing. It was another stroke of genius.

So we started swinging. As we were swinging, we were also climbing. Soon we were high above the embankment – then even higher above the water. We were both in pretty good shape at the time and being brainless meant less weight to carry too.

We did it. We made it to the first tunnel, and climbed in through the viewing hole. It wasn’t until we were right near it that we realized those viewing holes were about 2 ½ feet square, plenty big enough for us to climb through. We were kings. Those fellows who climbed Mt. Everest were wimps! We started looking around to see what treasure we’d found and there... was nothing but empty space, just like between our ears.

But we still felt good because We. Made. It! We sat there, in our glory, looking out the viewing holes at the city, at the shore, and even at the churning water down below.

Then it came to us... of COURSE they wouldn’t put anything of value in the first tunnel, they’d put the good stuff in the middle tunnel! It was harder to get to and was at least 80 feet above the water, a long drop before a body would smack the surface.

Since we’d made it to the first one, we were confident we could make it to the middle one just as easily.