For Sparky and myself, curiosity drives passion which in turn fuels our life's engine. Our passion was capturing the story of both unbuilding the Grace (1929 - 2007) and Pearman (1966 - 2007) Bridges and discovering the unbuilders. It takes a lot of passion to track a project from July 2005 until April 2007 - rain, shine, hurricanes or moving to Singapore. We discovered the joy of discovery learning. Ken Canty opened the front door for us - then Steve Testa, Ponch Billingsley and Mickey Rogers opened many side doors. Below are the highlights of what we discovered, who we met and what we learned.
And a reminder from T.S. Eliot (East Coker from the Four Quartets)
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
Late in the afternoon, Sparky found a little girder harvesting going on just to the right of the Ravenel Bike/Pedestrian lane. (There is, however, some confusion of the day - the photo data says Nov 2, but the sequence fits with Nov 1 - so I"ll have to figure out the correct timing later.
Looking straight on, this is the last girder
At the same time Michael is hammering away at another pier in the port
Chris, with his trusty 7550 lifts the last girder
rotates it to the right
and lowers it to the dinner table, it becomes a tasty treat for a shear
All the while, Michael is hammering away at the pier
and works his way down to the cross member
and then the sun says goodbye
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer