Michiko's America

My eyes get tired fairly quickly when I read books.  So, I watch TV programs more often these days.  One of my favorite programs is NOVA.  I love learning about nature, outer space and engineering feats.  And I want to watch it with my kids.  But when I suggest watching an episode of NOVA, they’ll pull out their trump card, “I have so much work to do.”  One time I couldn’t resist the urge and asked “why do you have to study that much?”  This is my sincere question. It seems to me, they’re acquiring so much knowledge at the cost of curiosity in real life.

Anyhow, resistance is futile: no parents can overcome the power of homework.  So, I preview every episode of NOVA and show my kids and husband only the most interesting parts of it.  A recent one was “Operation: Bridge Rescue.”  The introduction said “an icon of an early engineering ingenuity … now a team of master craftsmen and elite engineers battle torrential rain and blizzards to rebuild one of the world’s longest single-span covered bridges.”  How exciting!

The location is Blenheim, a town 40 miles southwest of Albany, New York.  Its population is fewer than 400.  Their proud bridge was also one of the last surviving twin-lane covered bridges.  For residents of Blenheim, it was their cultural identity.

I didn’t quite understand the American’s fascination with covered bridges before.  People in Vermont, for example, told me to visit them.  I appreciated them, mostly for their rustic beauty and how useful they must’ve been to villagers who needed to cross rivers and canals.  In this NOVA episode, however, I learned that covered bridges can last indefinitely. The bridge’s roof prevents rain from getting into the bridge structure, while regular wood bridges will typically fail within ten years. I now understand that in America, a nation whose history is relatively short, covered bridges that have been a good part of the local history can mean a lot to the residents.  This was especially true in Blenheim where its covered bridge had been a national historic landmark and a source of pride, until it was destroyed by the flood caused by hurricane Irene in 2011.

Rebuilding this bridge is a huge undertaking.  To protect the bridge from future floods, they will build new and higher concrete abutments on either side of the creek. They rebuild the new bridge on the narrow flat land right next to the creek, and once it’s complete, they’ll move this 226-foot-long, 100-ton structure up onto its new abutments.

The creek is shaped like an elongated letter “C”, and the only flat land is the area within this “C” and the straight line connecting the beginning and the end of the “C”.  Because the flat land is so narrow, they had no other options but building the bridge 90 degrees diagonal to the final bridge position.  Faced with this geometrical challenge, Jerry Matyiko who specializes in moving super-sized structures decides to build a temporary roadway across the creek.  Then with eight sets of powered hydraulic wheels under the newly built bridge, he’ll somehow manage the sharp turn and drive it onto the temporary roadway.  Once in position, Jerry will use hydraulic jacks to raise the bridge 25 feet.  He will then set the rollers underneath the bridge, and use the hydraulic push rams to inch the bridge onto the concrete abutments.  Amazing!

As if this were not challenging enough, they also have to deal with a time limit set by nature.  The flat land is in a flood zone, so when snow starts to melt, the creek’s water level will rise.  Therefore, if they don’t complete the move soon enough, the new bridge will face the same fate as the old bridge did.  A time bomb is ticking, and they don’t know when it will go off.

Now the bridge is done.  They start moving it on hydraulic wheels.  Here Jerry’s crew encounters the first problem.  The wheels start sinking in the waterlogged creek bank because the bridge is so heavy.  They use the wooden boards to resolve this.  Then the next obstacle comes.  They have to turn the bridge to line it up with the temporary roadway.  It’s a 90-degree turn, and there is not enough room to turn it.  Now they’re racing with rising water.  They have added some space with rocks and wooden boards, but it’s neither wide enough nor strong enough to deal with this massive bridge.  So, they decide to keep the front end still and swing the rear end.  To do so, they need to shift tons of earth fast to expand the level ground.

This is where I couldn’t help myself from pausing the DVR and sharing my Japanese two cents with my American family members.

“If these engineers were Japanese they would’ve prepared the ground way ahead of time, so that there would be no glitches in the last phase.”

At some point, the program showed the site picture from above, and I knew they were cutting it too close; it didn’t look there would be enough space to swing this thing.  By measuring the size of the flat land, and using simple tools like paper, a ruler and a pencil, they could’ve figured out the risks.  However, even when the stake was enormously high, they just went in with American optimism and fix-it-as-we-go attitude.  I was appalled and bamboozled for the second time (I’d already seen this when I previewed the episode).

Like the movies, everything goes well in the end and the bridge touches down on the abutments. Now the 6.7 million-dollar project is complete.

And this was exactly the moment when my kids and my husband screamed together “What?!”  While I was elated by this engineering triumph, they found it unreasonable to spend that much money to rebuild the covered bridge for a town where only 400 people live.

They have a point.  If I lived in Blenheim, I would’ve looked for less expensive options.  But, it’s their bridge, and they somehow obtained the funds, so I’m happy for them.  If I said it in Japanese, however, it would sound cold, as if I didn’t care about social justice.  Japanese tend to be more concerned worthiness of the investment of time and money, whether it’s their own or others’.  They also tend to think that there’s a standard yard stick for measuring meaningfulness.  I’m a bit of a rebel with this.  To me, meaning is created by individuals, it doesn’t reside within things.  Something totally meaningless for one person could be hugely meaningful for someone else.  This difference, I believe, makes the world an interesting place.

I’m Japanese and can be greatly impressed by beautiful architecture and craftsmanship, but when it comes to meaning of life and in life, I’m aligned more with Americans who cherish individualism.  And my American family members seek reasons first like good Americans do, but examine if the goal is worth pursuing in terms of broader sense of public service.  This cultural complexity, which doesn’t necessarily follow the usual Japanese/American cultural line, keeps my family life fun and frustrating at the same time.  And to me, that’s fantastic!