I was born in Bayonne, New Jersey – a small metropolis situated on a peninsula adjacent to New York City – and my earliest memories are of towering smokestacks, steel drums of oil and cargo ships pumping across Newark Bay like quiet leviathans. But of all Bayonne’s industrial relics, nothing remains more firmly fixed in my psyche than the Bayonne Bridge: a parabolic, steel arch spanning a tidal strait called the Kill Van Kull.
I distinctly remember the gripping fear of crossing the bridge as a child. To my soft mind, the bridge’s vaulted structure made it seem as though our car would need to drive across the top, precariously balancing itself without the aid of guardrails or safety nets. A less anxious child might have assumed that, upon reaching the summit, our minivan would take flight, lifted by some divine magician toward an infinite sky. But I knew the truth: we were indubitably doomed to plunge to our deaths in the hazy water below.
