I was in Cooperstown, New York on Thursday night. The drive from Portland was fast and easy, a little rain to begin which quickly cleared up. The highways were clear – not many people traveling on the Mass Pike or the New York Thruway on a spring midweek midday – and the dog and I made the most of the empty parking lots and open fields of the rest stops. I haven’t driven west of Sturbridge in a long time, but memories came back – the long climb into the Berkshires with an old farm barely fifty feet from the eastbound lanes, the drive across the Connecticut River outside Springfield, then across the Hudson south of Albany. The Hudson River bridge was terrifying; the railings are open down to the roadbed, and the bridge carries three lanes with no shoulder on either side. I stuck to the middle lane as my panic level slowly rose, reminding myself that we would get across, talking to the dog and trying to reassure myself while telling him it would be okay.
I started getting mild panic attacks driving across bridges a few years ago, during the summer after my separation when I first started heading back to Seattle to visit my son. I’d get rental cars and take him to the miniature railway in Skykomish, and we’d have to drive across a long viaduct on US Route 2 north of Everett, and I realized that I started to dread driving across the mile-long stretch above the estuary. Worse would be crossing the floating bridges across Lake Washington, especially the old Evergreen Floating Bridge with just two lanes and again, no shoulder. I could feel the panic start to rise when we would leave the solid ground, and once I had to slow down below the speed limit, my hands shaking and my breath getting caught in the back of my throat. We made it to the other side, and I breathed deeply, reminded myself that I crossed bridges all the time, and there was nothing to worry about, but I could envision myself ramming over the steering wheel and bursting through the Jersey barriers and drowning.
I have the same fear reaction in tall buildings. In London, the building I worked in had most of its conference space on the 30th floor, and my bosses worked on the 31st floor. The meeting rooms and offices all had floor to ceiling windows, and I’d need to sit facing away from them or in a seat as far from the window as possible, or I’d get this odd sense that I needed to run into the window, smash through and fall. I was horrified of it but as I talked about it I found that other people, too, had the same odd sensation. It wasn’t so much fear of the height as fear of my own potential to jump, to feel forced to jump for no reason. On bridges I now have the same sensation – not that the bridge will collapse, but that for no good reason I’ll steer my car into the railing and down, down to the river below.
I had dreams as a kid where that happened, me driving my parent’s old fake wood paneled Oldsmobile station wagon, the dog in the seat next to me, sometimes my sister or my mom in the back seat, and I’d wrench the steering wheel and drive off the side of the Million Dollar Bridge crossing from Portland to South Portland, always on a small siding of the bridge, always waking up in a panic, in sweat, as the car left the roadway smashing through the sculpted concrete railway and then pointing down, aimed right at the edge of the Fore River and the ground, waking up just as the front of the car was about to hit, the wheels spinning and the engine howling an angry death scream.
We made it to Cooperstown and had a long walk, my dog exploring the fields outside of town. There is a venison farm not far from the village, fenced off fortunately, that engaged every ounce of his attention. The deer were docile and ignored him, which fascinated him – shouldn’t they run? – but they clearly knew the fence was there, clearly had seen other village dogs stopped by the chain link, and they didn’t care. We walked through the village, past the Baseball Hall of Fame, down to the lake where he tried to drink it to the last drop. The village center had a mix of 18th century buildings, that vague colonial or Federalist style you find in inland villages that didn’t have the wealth to build as solidly as in Boston or Newburyport or Nantucket, but copying the styles anyway, now restored as bed and breakfasts or the proud homes of historically minded lawyers. Slightly further away were the taller warehouse and business styles of the early 19th century, brick and stone and now filled with baseball souvenir shops and pizzerias and barbers, and in the neighborhoods behind were larger houses from the later 19th century, on large lots, with room for servants and carriages. The Airbnb I stayed in was in a somewhat delapidated example, but the interior had the old touches – a clawfoot tub, carved door frames and mouldings, wainscotting in the kitchen – that were touching even though they had been painted over one or two times too many.
I listened to baseball on the radio and read, the dog up on the gigantic bed curled up against my body, and fell asleep with the Red Sox holding onto a lead.
The next morning was cold and the clouds sat low on the hills just above town, quiet in the offseason. The dog and I went for a long morning walk, retracing our route from the evening before now in a dimly grey damp. He poked his nose into bushes and at the corners of the wooden mansions as cars drove slowly on their way to work or to school. I packed up my things and he jumped into the back of the car and I parked in front of the Hall of Fame and went inside, while he curled up into a ball for his midmorning nap. I hadn’t been to the Hall in twenty years, but I remembered the feeling of awe in there, walking amongst the bronze plaques with the oddly misshapen portraits of the masters of baseball. I found Carl Yazstremski, I found Carlton Fisk, I found Ken Griffey Jr. and the tears came silently down my cheeks, remembering the games I had watched as a kid on the old black and white Sylvania television in the sunroom across the street from the ocean, remembering Yaz running around Fenway in his final lap on his final game, remembering listening to games on the radio. I saw Kirby Puckett and remembered his round blueberry form dashing through the outfield making ungodly catches, stinging singles through the infield. I saw the bare marble being prepared for Jeff Bagwell, remembering his trade to the Astros and how I thought it was yet another dumb ass trade from a dumb ass Red Sox management team. I saw Pedro Martinez and was struck down by memories of his fastball in the postseason, remembered his slim small form whipping around and felling Yankee batters and his fist pump and his passion and thought I felt that way about baseball once, but the fires are dimmer now.
The last time I had been here was on a long summer trip with my best friend, we watched minor league baseball and drove through western New York and eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I had met my girlfriend in Princeton, we were on opposite sides of a fountain pool and we both took off our shoes and walked through the pool and met in the center and kissed.
I walked out of the Hall, got in my car, and drove west. The miles ticked off, we found a rest stop with a long grassy hill and the dog frolicked and rolled in the warm grass as the sun finally came out. We drove past Syracuse, and Rochester, and Buffalo, and twisted north on Interstate 290 up towards the Niagara gap. And I saw the bridge.
The worst nightmare I had as a kid was of driving up a narrow bridge that soared up towards a blue girdered center span towering above me. The bridge was two lanes wide and left no room for error, and in my dream I found the gap for an error and at the top of the span, between the blue steel beams, I found the hole and plunged over the side. The car fell, concrete scattering and falling past me in the drivers seat, and there was no bottom, the water below kept falling in pace with me, the car suspended in the air but the air rushing past and never getting closer to the surface of the water far below me. I could feel the terror without end, sometimes waking up in a daze, not knowing if I was dead or alive, sometimes waking up in a panic, sensing that death would never come and that feeling worse than actually dying. My dog – not my dog now, the dog we had back then – would be in the passenger seat and she would be frozen in fear, I could see her rigid and pushed back in the seat, eyes wide open, knowing this was the end even though the end never came.
Interstate 290 has two bridges over the St. Lawrence, and the first one was that blue bridge. I hadn’t had the dream in years, but I knew it as soon as I came around the turn and saw it a mile in front of me. The panic came instantly back into my chest, driving at seventy miles per and seeing the cars and semi trucks around me, and I could feel the blood pounding up my neck and the bile rising through my stomach, and I knew I couldn’t stop, I knew I had to keep driving. I drove past the toll booth and with only two lanes I knew I couldn’t avoid being on the outer edge, I chose the left lane which had a Jersey barrier instead of the right lane which had open railings and a pedestrian walkway. I could feel the sweat coming through my hands making the steering wheel slick, I wondered whether I could hold onto it with enough force to prevent the car from twisting to the left, from hitting the concrete, from diving off the edge through the blue steel girders where I would fall into the slow moving river as it twisted towards the falls. I got to the top of the rise and the center span and out in front of me the industrial landscape of the border lands stretched out, I could see the lake, and the car sped down the slope on the other side, past the steel and onto the viaduct, and I was past it, my heart either starting to beat again or ceasing to race beyond speed, and back to a living pace.
The dog looked out the back, towards the west, calm, not worrying about the bridge, just looking forward to the next rest stop and the next roll in the grass and the next drink of water and belly rub and the next chance to nestle his nose in my lap.
I crossed into Canada. The border guard asked about my plans. A couple days in Hamilton, a few days in Prince Edward County, a night in Montreal with smoked meat and poutine, and back to Maine in a week. He gave me a treat for the dog. No firearms, right? No, no firearms. Welcome to Canada, he said, have a good trip.
I retuned the radio and found CBC Music. The afternoon program. Shift. Canadian indie rock and the smooth voice of the DJ in Vancouver. I felt my heart beat slow down a notch, I smiled at the early 90s three minute perfect pop tunes. The font on the highway signs changed from US interstate to Canadian provincial sans serif, merging onto the five lanes of the QEW, the pace of the traffic going from lazy western New York to high speed Ontario scofflaw. I smiled and felt like I had come back home. The skyway rose above the steel mills of the Burlington lakeshore and despite the heights, despite the low concrete railings, I wasn’t scared. The sun lit the low haze of a spring afternoon, lit the pollution from the smokestacks, lit the lake freighters sitting at anchor in the Hamilton harbor, and I was happy, as happy as I can be these days, longing for my love, longing for a mission, but on the road, with my dog in the seat behind me, moving at speed towards the next destination.