TODAY'S VIEWPOINT
My bridge to nowhere Fishtrap Hollow
RHETA GRIMSLEY JOHNSON

My bridge didn't cost the $453 million that Sen. Ted Stevens wanted. But they weren't giving away twoby sixes, either. And my bridge leads from a reasonably groomed yard to a thicket of briars that some might consider Nowhere.

You have heard of the Bridge to Nowhere, the Alaskan pork that even Congress couldn't swallow.

Well, we built one. A Bridge to Nowhere. Or, more aptly put, a Bridge Over the Branch Into the Briars.

When I say "we" built one, I mean I provided the vision, and my husband did most of the work. It often works this way.

For example, one day I came home with six old church windows and excitedly proclaimed: "I finally have my greenhouse!"

Don calmly said, "There's a little assembly required." Then, over the next two years, he built my greenhouse.

I honestly thought the bridge was an afternoon (tops) project for a slow day. I clipped a photograph from one of my home and garden fantasy magazines and left it in conspicuous places -- on the table, on the sofa, on his pillow.

The picture showed a small, square wooden deck perched atop a small pond and adorned with birdhouses and deck chairs. I'm good at nailing decking, since gravity does much of the upper-body work when you hammer downward. And I already had the birdhouses and deck chairs.

It was the $500 worth of lumber and posts and concrete that was missing.

When I first bought the farm 20 years ago, I was a true romantic. I called the zigzagging spring-fed water that runs through the acreage like an appendectomy scar "the babbling brook."

Someone with a less-romantic soul corrected me. It wasn't a brook or a creek, merely a branch, which rises dramatically whenever there are hard rains. "Branch" is not a particularly beautiful word like "brook," but at least the pragmatist didn't demote it to a "ditch."

Early on, my father and a friend built a beautiful little arched bridge for me, hauling it all the way from Montgomery, Ala., and installing it carefully over the branch.

The rains came. Torrential rains that overflowed the branch. It broke the bridge and my heart.

Ever since, I've wanted to try again. Anytime I spot a pleasing design for crossing water, I dog-ear the page and pant. Which brings us to the here and now.

Seeing that the deck picture with drool was not going away, Don sighed and starting figuring. Our bridge would have to be higher off the ground than the one in the picture, he said. It would need posts set in concrete to keep it secure when the rains came.

Finally, just in case, we'd use screws instead of nails so the lumber could be reused if the decking floated off into the pasture. And, oh, yes, it would take several days to construct.

Don bought a new posthole digger and began the decidedly unglamorous work of digging into the gravel pit of a pasture. Meanwhile, I chose bright colors to paint the plastic chairs we already had. I can economize when I have to. The Bridge to Nowhere was off and running.

My bridge didn't cost the $453 million that Sen. Ted Stevens wanted. But they weren't giving away two-bysixes, either. And my bridge leads from a reasonably groomed yard to a thicket of briars that some might consider Nowhere.

After three or four days of hard work, Don was finished. Because we used screws, I never hefted a hammer. He went back inside to tote up the damage.

And I sat on a French-blue plastic chair atop the new bridge and imagined how wonderful it would be if all the briars on the Nowhere side magically disappeared.

(c) 2008 Rheta Grimsley Johnson Distributed by King Features Syndicate