"Crossing" A Bad Bridge

This column originally appeared on Aug. 3, 2008

It was old, corrupt Noah Cross who laid down the law (in the film “Chinatown”) on how detestable things can grow more accepted over time when he told private investigator Jake Gittes, “ 'Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

But I don’t think that any amount of time is going to help the new bridge over the Brandywine Creek on South Creek Road in Cossart.

The new bridge was erected — and when I say erected I mean it in the most bureaucratic, industrial sense of the word imaginable — to replace the old Pylesville Twin Bridge. The Pylesville span was nothing remarkable, and it was certainly crumbling. If there ever was a bridge in Pennsylvania that deserved the classification “structurally unsound,” the Pylesville bridge would certainly be the Barack Obama of bridges: a leading candidate.

But it had its own certain charm, probably because it had, as Cross put it, lasted long enough. It was built in 1925, when guys with first names like Harris and Coulson were county commissioners. It had none of the rural grandeur of the nearby Smithsbridge Covered Bridge, but from a distance it fit in with the surrounding scenery, and it looked at home rising over the Brandywine. I’m guessing it was named after Howard Pyle, the artist who introduced his student N.C. Wyeth to the Chadds Ford area.

I don’t know if the new bridge has a name. It shouldn’t have a proper name. It is too ugly to deserve a name, and certainly not one given in memory of a famed American illustrator. It should be referred to solely as “County Bridge No. 83,” like No. 6 in “The Prisoner.”

When I say ugly, I do not mean ugly like some architect had an idea for a new span that just didn’t pan out, an idea borne of an overdose of chicken tikka and brussels sprouts. I mean ugly like being devoid of any thought of beauty whatsoever, there only to serve the function of keeping the cars passing over it from plunging over the edge of the road into the tranquil waters of the Brandywine below.

The bridge looks for all the world like the cement barriers dividing the lanes on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

That is a tough inspiration to live up to, but the bridge does have one thing going for it: It makes a lovely tabula rasa for graffiti. Which is nice, because when tourists come to Chadds Ford to explore the Wyeth milieu, the one thing we want to make sure they see enough of is spray paint on concrete. “Oh look, Martha, it’s like ‘Evening at Kuerners!’ With gang tags!”

I am hoping that this is all just temporary, and that the real new bridge will be built now that Gov. Rendell has decided to spend billions of dollars for bridge replacement and let the commuters on Route 202 rot in hell, or the weekday rush-hour traffic jam, whichever is worse. The real new bridge, I’m hoping, will be designed by a true architect and will make all the surviving Wyeths weep with pleasure.

And it will be a pleasure once again to drive over the Brandywine on South Creek Road, making your way to SIW Vegetables (“Open 7 Days 10-6; Saving the world one ear at a time”), where they still sell the county’s best sweet corn and let you sign an IOU for your produce if you accidentally left your wallet at home.

An Andy Moment

This column first appeared on Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007

There must be a category somewhere in the register of Chester County Citizenship Requirements that dictates that you have to have at least one Andrew Wyeth Moment.

That is, a time when you or someone close to you have a brush with the most famous painter ever to eat at Hank’s Place.

I thought about this when I saw him on the front page of Friday’s Daily Local. Andy – you get to call him Andy if you’ve lived here long enough and run into him once or twice -- was honored as a recipient of a 2007 National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony Thursday morning.

Wyeth, now 90, is no stranger to White House honors. In 1963, President Kennedy gave him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he got the first Congressional Gold Medal given to an artist from Bush One is 1990.

But it was still good to see him up there next to the president – smiling what must be a trademark smile and wearing what must be the only lapel-less, collarless suit jacket in America. It’s the “local boy makes good” story on a grand scale.

And Andy remains a local boy at heart. He was raised here in the land around Chadds Ford and Birmingham and Pennsbury, and if you pick up the West Chester telephone book today and page through to the “W’s,” you’ll find a listing for an “A. Wyeth” on Route 100. It’s his business office mind you, but you still can call him up if you’d like.

It was just that kind of neighborliness that marked the two encounters I’ve had with him. In November 1986, as a major exhibition of the works of Andy, his father N.C. Wyeth, and Andy’s son Jamie Wyeth was about to open in the then-Soviet Union, I picked up the phone and dialed his number. The phone rang a couple of times, then someone answered and I asked to speak to Andrew Wyeth. A moment later, he came on the line.

I probably didn’t ask him any questions that could have been considered probing or thoughtful, but he was jovial and responsive during the interview and seemed pleased when I told him of an evening a few nights before that we’d spent together – and by together I mean we both occupied space in the same large auditorium at the Metropolitan Life Building – in New York City.

The occasion was a preview of the hour-long documentary, “The Wyeths: A Father and His Family.” After the viewing, I approached Andy for a few words and a quick photograph. He was sitting with his older bother Nathaniel and his sisters Henriette Wyeth Hurd and Ann Wyeth McCoy. When I mentioned I was from the Daily Local News, Andy turned to his siblings and said, “It’s the man from the hometown paper!” I snapped off three or four shots and took my leave.

I was looking at one of those photographs recently and felt pleased. One, it’s in focus. Two, I didn’t cut anybody out of the frame. But best, Andy is wearing that lapel-less suit, holding his sister Ann’s hand, and smiling a smile as big as the Brandywine.

Not bad for an Andrew Wyeth Moment.