Sadness abounds.
Tomorrow morning the Virginia Department of Transportation will begin demolition on the "Old" Fieldale Bridge. This is not the "new' one, built in 1970, but the old iron suspension bridge built in 1931 to replace an earlier one that literally fell down.
It is narrow, and when you are waiting in traffic on it and a car inches past in the other direction the whole thing shakes. Still, it has been there all my life, adding character to the town. The "Silver Gate" my friend Georgia said last night when I told her about it, comparing it to San Francisco's Golden Gate. I cannot imagine the millions of times it has been crossed by hundreds of thousands of people. I have crossed it in a car, on foot, on the back of trucks. I can count 6 generations of my people who have used it. It is hard to let it go. So much in life to be sentimental about.