The bulldozers pushed the scrapers until they were filled with rocks and dirt. The material was then hauled away to be used as fill for other sections of the new Interstate 90.
When I was five years old, I watched from a fence post as the heavy machinery that many children dream of chipping away at the earth until the road was close enough to build a bridge over Cedar Creek.
The highway took one of our pastures. I remember my dad literally using a big saw to cut through the beams that held our old barn together. He cut off a section of the barn that would have hit the highway right-of-way and pulled it into the yard with the tractor. He put boards on the exposed end of the barn and I grew up with the scaled-down barn being both a place of work and a pastime. My friends and I would build tunnels in the loose hay we piled in the barn. But as a kid, stomping the hay when it was up to my waist wasn’t so much fun.
And now to the heart of the matter: Like many of my colleagues in the county, I make a lot of highway trips to Missoula, Spokane and beyond.
The bridge repair at Nine Mile Hill seems to have taken a long time. We have all become accustomed to having a 35 mph speed limit for traffic in both directions on the west bridge while the east bridge is being repaired.
But the traffic lights, the escort vehicles and, above all, the slow journey of 3 to 6 km/h over the bridge caught my attention: “What the hell is going on here?”
My language could perhaps have been a little more colorful.
Charity Burns, spokeswoman for the Montana Department of Transportation, explained to me that the two bridges are connected, and vibrations on one side cause vibrations on the other.
Workers had started laying the deck on the east side and the vibrations from traffic, especially the large trucks, could affect the proper laying, thus causing creep across the bridge.
Interestingly, the bridge west of the Nine Mile Bridge is also being repaired, although you may not see the workers. The workers are underneath, replacing the bearings under the westbound bridge. The bearings are installed between the bridge piers and the girders and allow the bridge to flex, reducing the stress on the structure.
The bridge is jacked up while the bearings are being replaced, but Burns assured me that everything is safe for passengers and crew.
The department hopes to have the Nine Mile Bridge completed by the end of the month, or perhaps sooner. It may be completed by the time you read this.
Finally, you may remember my surprise at whether the workers covered the cracks in the highway with toilet paper after sealing them with tar.
Technically, it’s not toilet paper, but blotting paper. Blotting paper is a thin absorbent paper that was originally used to soak up the ink from a quill before writing a letter, for example. But guess what: The Federal Highway Administration’s handbook says that toilet paper is often used as blotting paper.
Burns explained that the paper is there to keep the tar off the vehicles. We all appreciate that.
So the mystery is solved – it may not be Charmin, but it could easily pass as prison toilet paper.
