The Tickle Bridge

The approach is still there but the thing itself is long gone. I am reminded of it every time I drive north of, yes, Bellefontaine, Ohio on US 68. The hills roll a bit there and a couple of them cause the bottom of your stomach to drop out as you hit them at 55 miles per hour. You know that feeling I bet? When the road falls downwards suddenly and it feels like your stomach goes with it, as though your breath were momentarily taken away. Well, it used to be you could get that feeling on a bridge on 14th street in southwest Detroit, just south of Michigan Avenue. We called it the Tickle Bridge.

Me Pops would pack all of us in the car some evenings and we would take a ride down 14th just to feel that sensation. And let me tell you the bottom of your stomach dropped way down. It honestly felt as though your breath was taken away. It dropped off so suddenly it really felt, for just that instant, as though the car were falling over a cliff. And then car would be full of the laughter of us kids for several seconds as the false danger was averted and we got our breath back.

I've often wondered how the bridge was ever made, or how it managed to stay up. The fall off was dramatic, more harsh than on any other roadway I've happened across. But it was cheap entertainment for a family of nine. Somedays Pops would circle around and we'd do it all again. It was Cedar Point without standing in line for ninety minutes.

It's gone now, but funny thing. When I imagine hard enough, I still feel my stomach drop.