"Great Equalizer Discovered In Walks Across the Bridge" from the October 27, 1960 Door County Advocate
—JIM ROBERTSON
Great Equalizer Discovered In Walks Across the Bridge
The common denominator has been found! It's walking, plain and simple walking.
The discovery was made by this reporter and perhaps many others in treks across the disabled bridge last night and this morning.
There has never been such a show of togetherness, hospitality and howdy-do since Henry Ford put the country on wheels.
There's no status symbol on the bridge. No jalopies, no Cadillacs, no foreign jobs. Everybody looks the same and everybody's in the same boat (that's figuratively speaking because we can't get on the boat.)
Hospitality Plus
And when they walk, people are so confounded nice. They greets each other with good mornings, hellos or just plain hi's. They even stop and chat.
How different this is from motor traffic and its dirty looks, the muffled but meaningful lip movement which even a person who isn't a lip reader readily interprets as "I'll bust in your fenders, you so-and-so road hog, you."
Men aren't cussing out women drivers. Local drivers aren't cussing out Chicago drivers. Chicago drivers aren't cussing out local drivers. Drivers in Cadillacs and foreign jobs aren't crossing the bridge with their nose in the air.
In fact, where humility presides, even law seems unnecessary. No signs say "Keep to the Right" and yet people just seem to keep to the right, even if it is contrary to pedestrian rules of the road. And they are ever so apologetic when they happen to meet headon, with the amusing jockeying back or forth resulting as each one does his best to give ground.
Walking the bridge not only brings out the best in you, but it's good for you. Doctors tell us walking is the best exercise there is but, most of us avoid the exercise as much as possible. Now we're doing it, like it or not.
The feeling of togetherness induced by the bridge mishap is not confined to the bridge itself, but to the both sides of the bridge. The first time we mainlanders set foot on the island, it was with that strange, apprehensive feeling of being cut off from the world. We felt better upon our return to the mainland.
But it only took a couple of crossings to rid ourselves of this feeling, of separation, of a divided city. The feeling was completely gone when we were reduced to walking the bridge. Then we could see the many people who live on the west side but who make their living on the east side and the many east siders who work on the west side. And businessmen on each side will tell you how much they appreciate the trade from the other side.
Let's face it, we need each other. A humble confession from a humble pedestrian. The six-shooter was the west's great equalizer. In Sturgeon Bay it was foot propulsion.
The first direct shipment of a product from Sturgeon Bay to a foreign port via the seaway had to be called off because of the bridge mishap. Monday four Travelifts destined for Iran will be loaded on the Canadian ship Canuck Port at Green Bay. They were to have been loaded at the Bushman dock in Sturgeon Bay.
—JIM ROBERTSON
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Other posts by Jim Robertson:
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/jim-robertson
Articles about the Sturgeon Bay Bridge: