It had been another beautiful if steamy summer in Charlottesville (C'ville). I was 26 and having the time of my life, with absolutely no awareness that my life would change forever in less than a month (a story for another time). Life was not perfect. I had recently quit a job I thought I would love, and I was taking a break, living off of my ex-Y's and my meager savings. By my calculations, I had about three weeks for rest, repair, and revelry at most before I had to get back to my primary job of supporting my ex-Y through graduate school. It had been a rough year, year and a half, and I needed a vacation.
No. I take that back. Life was perfect. Perfectly imperfect.
My ex-Y and I had survived a summer of couples counseling, I had quit an incredibly stressful job, and we had the best friends. On. The. Planet. Besides Ralph Sampson, star center of the UVa basketball team, was about to begin his senior year. My life was taking a turn for the better (not that it had been horrible mind you, but six months of '82 had been a bit rough for my ex-Y and me, and that had been tacked on to a less than stellar year the year before).
Our house tended to be party central. What can I say? We were young, and this was Charlottesville in the summer... fall, winter, spring. On any given evening anywhere from three to four couples and a few singletons were gathered in our living room. It was a time in our lives when people used to just drop in and as friends grew in number, a party would erupt.
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| THE Corner, directly across from THE University, C'ville |
I may poke fun at Charlottesville at times, but living on Wertland Street was a little slice of heaven, and Charlottesville is beautiful and well, life was good.
Generally speaking, we had at least two sober adults on duty on most nights--spouses who would be driving their partners home and myself--who could make the call on whether someone had best hand over their car keys, take a walk or call a taxi. Mostly this was because three of us women were working stiffs with husbands in grad school, and so we were not inclined to imbibe, or imbibe too much, on a weeknight. Indeed, Kathy, Judy, and I would often be sober for the larger, planned weekend events at my home only to hear over the course of the next week reports about how drunk we were at the party. Well, that's what alcohol will do to you. You tend to think everyone's in the same boat with you unless they are falling down drunk (or you are falling down drunk and then I suppose, you still suppose that they are in the same boat with you). And God forbid anyone should ever have fun at a party without alcohol; at least not when you are in your 20s and still in graduate school. (That was sarcasm.)
This week night was different. One, I wasn't working, my friend Kathy, a waitress, didn't have a shift until late the next day, and I believe my friend Judy, a nurse, was off. And two, it was the night before the day first year students would hit town to check into their dorms. (And now that you ask, yes, it's true. Just like The Corner and The Grounds, first year, second year, third year, and fourth year are all phrases that should also be said with a slight upward tilt of the chin. As in, "I am a second year student." No freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors at UVa. C'est gauche!) Overnight, the calm that was Charlottesville in the summer would cease and the small, southern city would be alight in college students. Streets would be clogged, The Corner mobbed, sidewalks overrun, and every store and restaurant in town would have to be avoided, as they would be crawling with students and their parents, credit cards in hand.
Anyone who has lived full time in a university town probably knows this experience: the relative calm followed by sudden frenetic activity. Calm erupts into madness once the fall term begins only to be followed by serious madness during parents' weekend, big football games, and graduation. All days where the locals drive a minimum of 30 minutes outside of the city limits if they want to go to a restaurant, grocery shopping, a big box store, but mostly preferring to stay home like turtles in their shell rather than be shellshocked by the sheer number of people pouring out onto the streets and roadways. Days where they dare not order pizza.
And someone among those gathered on that night suggested that that was reason enough to have an end of the summer celebration. With just three couples and perhaps our upstairs neighbor, a near permanent fixture in our home (and we hers), on hand, we got rather festive.
Judy and I were rarely ever close to being falling down drunk. Not that anyone in our immediate circle was a falling down drunk--except once, but that's a story for another time--, but most grad students we knew, flirted with that description on occasion, some more often than others. I'd like to say that it was because we (Judy and I) were responsible drinkers, but the truth was I couldn't handle alcohol. (As it turns out, people with ME/CFS have alcohol intolerance.) Tipsy was more our neck of the woods. But tipsy was raucous for me and so that will be my excuse for what happened next.
So there we were--Rick and Kathy, Judy and Tony, me and my ex-Y, and possibly the upstairs neighbor--having a grand time. Now, I'm really not certain how much everyone else had to drink because you see, after two gin and tonics (over the course of several hours), I was pushing the other side of tipsy. The side I knew would send me spinning if I didn't immediately go for a walk. Yeah, I was primed for trouble and actively seeking revelers to walk with me.
And I don't know whose idea it was, but I can tell you, I lacked the focus to come up with both the idea and the plan, but not the enthusiasm for the deed. (I had no doubt suggested that we go to Howard Johnson's for a sundae.) Surprisingly, my ex-Y, Tony, and Judy, though they thought it a brilliant idea and acted like it was something they'd do, weren't up to putting their money where their mouths were. When push came to shove, I guess they weren't interested in being arrested for public intoxication, a distinct possibility if my internal sense of whackdoodleness was the yardstick for other people's drunkenness. I really can't say how much they may have imbibed given that I was a lightweight and therefore not an accurate measure, nowhere near as reliable as a breathalyzer (which, of course, is a story for another time... it's not what you think). Perhaps they were more in charge of their faculties than we were... Nah. Okay, Judy probably was because she would be driving; besides, she had a responsible job. (And really, I have no idea how much Rick or Kathy had imbibed because, well, I had those two gin and tonics and was, well, you know how I was.)
As we--Kathy, Rick, and I--stepped out into the surprisingly balmy night, we were giddy with mischief and certain we'd have no trouble gathering the supplies we needed on foot, though by now it had to be 11, or 12, or 1 or 2 in the morning. And we were right; in short order we were armed for the task. Like I said, my ex-Y and I lived within walking distance to everything.
And that's how we ended up in the wee hours of the morning at Beta Bridge with several gallons of paint (white and blue) and paint brushes in hand prepared to deface public property. And deface it we did. Both sides of both sides of the concrete bridge were painted in their entirety in pristine white by just the three of us. Dodging cars, keeping a look out for local police, trying to stay upright, scrambling up and down embankments, we totally erased all of the graffiti that had come before us--left as it was from the previous school year. (Click this link to see one side of the bridge and get a sense of what three of us accomplished that evening with paint brushes, no rollers; the bridge is much longer than I remember it being, and I was expecting it to be smaller than my imagination remembered.)You see, painting Beta Bridge is a tradition in Charlottesville. Back then, from what we understood, the police would make a show of scaring people off. And I suppose, the risk of being arrested for being intoxicated in public was true enough, particularly if you were falling down in traffic. But an even greater risk was whether you'd started painting the bridge late enough in the night. It was not uncommon for the bridge to be painted in its entirety more than once in an evening if more than one cadre of students (or possibly town folk... Kathy and I couldn't have been the only ones) decided to make a statement on C'ville's most public and democratic forums.
The tradition of painting Beta Bridge, specifically, for public edification and amusement began in 1926. I have no clue how often a photograph of what's been painted on the Beta Bridge makes it into The Daily Progress, C'ville's local paper. But during the six years we lived in this jewel of a small southern city, I don't remember a photo of the bridge ever being in the paper save the next morning. Our artistic and literary masterpiece headlined the paper and greeted the returning students on Rugby Road. The front page sported a picture of Beta Bridge with an outsized, ghostly blue announcement: They're Back!
...Cue Poltergeist soundtrack.
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| Claire's Shameless Mock Up |
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