Along Highway 377 where it crosses the Colorado River, you can still see the old Winchell bridge off to the side. It’s a huge structure, almost beautiful with great, reaching arches and massive beams. The old bridge is sure prettier than its modern replacement, as is often the case with older vs newer construction. It’s kind of strange to see it standing there all by itself, abruptly ending so that the parts of it that used to attach to the riverbank just sort of hang out into space. It looks like time just stopped right there.

Old buildings or constructions that, for one reason or another, have been abandoned, make me wonder what they were like back in the day, how many people were once there, what they felt and thought about. Remembering the way things were creates a link between the everyday world around us and our own lives. Memory keeps us connected.

Two people that remember this old bridge are Johnny and Milly Kirklin of Bangs, who used to live at Winchell, as well as across the river in Mercury. “My Uncle Bruce and I rode a couple of green broke fillies across it and back around 1964,” Milly recalled. “We got a Coke at the Midway store. My daddy was so mad when he found out.” The bridge is pretty high, so I can see why Milly’s dad might have worried. Johnny worked at the old Midway store in Winchell in the late 1960s, and lived near the Midway store for a while. Johnny said his grandad used to ride horseback from Mason over the bridge to Winchell around 1904. He would stay at the old wagon yard, at only about age 10, then ride on to Elkins visiting family. That must have been the older bridge, of which nothing remains but a few concrete foundations. The ruins of the old wagon yard that Johnny’s grandad stayed at can still be seen at Winchell. The town was basically destroyed by fire in the 1920s.

The Winchell bridge we can see from the highway was constructed in 1932 by the Austin Bridge Company of Dallas. It was nearly destroyed by the great flood of 1936, which caused the Colorado River to span nearly a mile wide at Winchell, washing out a nearby railroad bridge and many buildings. “Designed with three through truss camelback structures, the center truss measures 200’ in length and each end truss is 110’. Including the approaches, the total length was originally 848.2 feet,” I read on the Texas Escapes website.

“This bridge was condemned in 1987 and a new concrete bridge was built next to it. Brown and McCulloch Counties signed a joint maintenance resolution at that time, each county being responsible for repairs to their half, including removal of tall vegetation under the bridge and spot painting to protect bridge joints and cover graffiti. To prevent access to the old structure, about 60 feet of approach was removed from each end.”

The old Winchell bridge looks like it still has some life in it, but its structure was not sound. Life can be like that, things we are used to in everyday existence suddenly lose their function. I lost a close friend this week, and it feels like things are just left hanging like that old bridge. Author and thinker Milan Kundera once wrote, “We possess memory so that our lives have coherence and are not lost.”

It is important to remember places and people that are no longer part of our everyday lives. Collecting memories forms a pathway of understanding for us that our own sense of reason cannot create. The old bridge looks like you could almost see people driving across it, but now it’s empty. Old buildings or constructions that have just gone, for one reason or another, like people we have known, leave behind things for us to ponder. Memory is a strange and powerful thing. It brings to life what is nearly forgotten, and helps us build bridges of our own when things happen we don’t understand.

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com