Published October 17, 2024

Speaking of bridges, which I was yesterday …

When I was young, my family sometimes headed east — to Acadiana, to Baton Rouge, maybe even to New Orleans. We did this many times, but this is about one specific trip. My dad’s mom was with us in Baton Rouge, and she lived in New Iberia, Louisiana. Coming from Lake Charles, that was on the way.

We crossed the Mississippi River on the Huey P. Long-O.K. Allen Bridge, which connects U.S. 190 to land on the east and west sides of the river. I know we did because the “new bridge” hadn’t been completed yet. Interstate 10 was still a work in progress.

How do I know that?

My dad probably took this with our Kodak Super 8mm motion picture camera. I was watching home movies we’d converted to DVD and saw this. Such a cool discovery.

I wish he’d kept the camera on that part of the river a little longer. No doubt he knew the historical significance of the bridge under construction, but probably not how it would hit for us in 2024. He panned down the river from near the “old bridge” to just west of the state Capitol, getting a great view from the observation deck high up what remains the tallest of U.S. state capitol buildings.

Then he took footage of the grounds around the Capitol, then resumed filming the mighty Mississippi, this time pointing the camera toward the south.

Seeing it now, after having driven across the completed bridge many times over the years in my previous life, is a “wow” moment for me.

Here are stills for you.

Just. So. Cool.

(If only we could see “Red Stick” (Baton Rouge) before buildings started popping up.)

Anyway, the drive from Southwest Louisiana to Baton Rouge, New Orleans and beyond got a little easier and faster when the bridge and I-10 expansion were finished.

More on the ‘New Bridge’

What is formally called the Horace Wilkinson Bridge opened April 10, 1968. When do you suppose we got this look at it? Construction began March 21, 1963. We usually went on our vacations in summer. Could this have been as late in the process as summer 1967? I’m thinking it was probably the year before that, but I’ve never built a bridge.

I had on a Batman T-shirt, if that’s any help.

Some people still call it the New Bridge. In that case, I’m New Carly.

I mean, I am.

We went up and down all 49 steps to get inside the Capitol. One for each state, in order of its statehood (with the addition of Alaska and Hawaii on the last step after the building’s completion).

As an adult, I worked at The Advocate, the Baton Rouge newspaper, from early September 1999 to early September 2008. For my first six years, the offices were downtown, in an area between the Capitol and the bridge.

My desk had a good view of the river and the bridge. A co-worker told me it was a thing there to look out the window and see if you’d caught a rare moment in time: no 18-wheeler making its way across the bridge. There were some who said they’d never looked and not seen a big rig crossing the span.

It would be unseemly to say I happened to see the bridge on a clear day and didn’t spy what people outside of Louisiana call a “semitruck.” (Not long ago it was “semi-truck,” but people in charge of such things decided we no longer needed the hyphen as a bridge between the two words, and they pushed them together to form one word. I’m imagining at least one head exploding in that newsroom in 1999 at the thought of it.)

Anyway, if I did have that rare glimpse, I’d never tell. Why ruin a good story?

Speaking of rare glimpses, I hope you enjoyed this! Aren’t old home movies fun? Thanks again, Dad, for the trip and the moving pictures!