¡Colores!; 802; Spanning the High Desert: New Mexico's Historic Highway Bridges; Elmo INT #2 (END)

My brother made that, and he'd worked on it for a while. He worked on it for eight years, he says, all in and off, and took him a long time to get the screwdriver to where it would really work, and finally I was shorting a ridge here that, oh, to make a little bit for what Chris said, and I want you in your most colorful terms, okay? And I think you can do that. Okay. Tell me what it was like between how hard it was to go out there in the twenties without the bridge, and then how nice it was to, and what's the bridge one in, and how easy that thing. And you could say, if you said something like, you know, the, the, the, the, the, Chris let's say, that had a wooden bridge in it before, yeah, there was a, there was kind of a wooden pure bridge in out there, wooden pure bridge, you know, there's also, we, we also went across the bridge way up in, and by love and talent in Mexico, that's 15

miles this side of Cuba. We went across the bridge up there all the time, and everything, that was a wooden pilot bridge. Did you go across the road there one time, and you were talking about that road, you think the road was, the road across the road, just down into the road back there? I never did go, there, it road showed that, it went, went there, but I never, we never did go. Well, but I was hoping you'd say something like, driving out there prior to that nice bridge was a real pain in the, you know, where, okay? You know, if you said something like that, and then after the bridge went in, it really helped a lot. I mean, something like that. Have a little more fun with it. Okay. Oh, on the old wooden bridge, oh, we never did use it very much, because there was, there wasn't very much of a road out to it, and it was pretty hard to go in there, oh, it'd be awful, it was too slow and everything, but when they put this, how the real,

real purple bridge in, that steel bridge in there, and everything, we could cross it without wondering where it was washed out or not, going out there, and the road was a lot better, and it sure was, sure did help a lot of time going to Laguna. We just saved a whole lot of time. It was just, it's a pretty nice bridge. Yeah. Did you like it because the way, when I look at it, it looks like it's pretty interesting, you know, the way it's built, re -eworked, yeah. Interested in it, that way too, by just the engineering of it? Yeah, we. It's some, I don't know, when we were driving across at the other day, and you just kind of look at it, you see the way it's built and everything, I just wonder if it was kind of a, what did they say, an object of interest, or, I mean, like, you know, actually got built and everybody stopped and looked at it and, yeah, when we, when we first seen the bridge out there,

we couldn't figure out how to much use, so much steel up in the top of it to hold the floor up. It was a sure buildup or up there on top, the dog raised back and forth and everything, and it sure used a lot of steel. Was the real parko, the gully itself, could you describe that to me? This real parko is not really a river, it's mostly dry old all the year round, but just whenever it rains, or it feels the flash floods and everything else just pours the water into that, and it just raises, because it's not very wide or nothing, but it has

steep banks and everything else, and the water just runs fast in it, it raises up there, and whenever you go there, look at it, when the flash floods, it might be clear dry, where you're at, but then when you look at it, maybe farther north, they'd had a lot of rain and everything, and it just raised the water up, and it really moves fast, too. Was it a dangerous place? Oh, I wouldn't even think about going in, I've seen a lot of times the banks would fall off, something like those glaciers up there in Alaska or something there, they'd just piece of the bank would just slice off and fall down into, I guess it's all undercut and everything else,

and it would just fall big old pieces, or dirt would fall in. Could you tell me it was a really dangerous place? Can you say that for me? Yeah, it was real dangerous, because the walls on the side was steep and everything, and there was no way of getting across it if there wasn't a bridge, because it was just too much water at different times, and you wouldn't know when the water was coming, because I could say it could be dry, and the water, one of the eight, ten feet deep in it, and run into a bit to the devil. Well, did you dad like the bridge, I mean, before it was a big, oh, yeah, my dad, oh, really sure liked the bridge, because you didn't have to worry about that,

they all wouldn't when we went across the wooden bridge, was always afraid of breaking through or something else, or with a loader, with a loader, lumber and everything else, it was pretty, we had heavy loads and everything else at that time we thought there was heavy loads, a lumber, of course, nowadays there's nothing. Okay, one last question for you, what's the nicest thing you could say about that Quarko Bridge? Well, the old wooden bridge, we only one car at a time would go across it, because it didn't have no sides on it, or nothing, and this here, all steel bridge there, it had this, all that steel on top of it, and

everything else, and you wouldn't be able to run off of it at all, because it was really a good bridge, and we all liked it, my dad thought it was a bridge, that kind of a bridge. Okay, cut for a second? Okay, that's hard to keep him on track, he must have all over the place. Why don't you go with Wider? Because his dad did all kinds of, Wider? They've all mine, and he's funnest lying, and everything else, all over the next book. So your dad must have really liked, I mean how many times do you think your dad went back and forth between here and Grant? Hundreds of times, sometimes would go, but five or six times a week would go over that bridge, going to Mount Taylor, or

he went to seven lakes and everything with the oil well equipment, and he had, but sometimes he'd have seven or eight trucks out and had brothers, and all that drove him, and cousins that had come to town during the winter time from Nebraska and different places, and they would drive the trucks and everything with, as I'll say, my dad could go to town and get loads to all different places and everything else. Maybe it would load into Grant, and then go on top of Mount Taylor and bring in a load of lumber or something like that, and he was all the time holding back and forth across that real purple bridge. At the only bridge we had from there to Mount Taylor almost. So it's a

pretty important place? Yes, it was, it was real, because there were no other way to get across that real purple if you didn't have a bridge, there were no way. That's the ending I wanted. So all you need to do is just take a second, and you don't have to say where we'll just be very quiet. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you.