Yeah, Almost

I was looking through some old pictures earlier today and came across these two.  Had to chuckle.  I can look back at it now and be entertained but at the time it was kind of irritating.  This happened about 15 years ago.  Where we used to live was on the main drag out of town, just where the road curved.  Down the road from us were two bars.  So as you might imagine, sometimes the people driving passed our house really shouldn't have been behind the wheel.  That gentle little curve in the road was just too much for some people.

So when we moved into our house it had a nice little foot bridge that went across the drainage ditch to where our mailbox was.  Then one day while we were away someone came barreling up the road and didn't make the nice, gentle curve.  Instead they went into our ditch and took out our little foot bridge and mailbox.  Yeah, that was kind of irritating.  This is Maulbeere and Himbeere standing on what's left of the bridge.  The rest of it is laying where it landed.

Well, we were able to find out who they were (which was a lot of work - I was amazed at how hard the police made me work to get a copy of the report) and contact their insurance company - fortunately they had insurance.  We made a claim for the bridge and got enough to replace it.  So I rough drew out a plan for the new bridge, which I wanted to be a little longer and sturdier, figured out what wood I needed and then spent a Saturday and, with lots of help from the little people, built the new bridge.  Here is Schwatrzbeere standing on the new bridge.

I thought it turned out really well.  And it definitely was sturdier than the old one.  We got to enjoy it for a year or two before someone took it out again.  As a testament to how much sturdier the new bridge was, getting hit didn't scatter the new one out near as much as the old one had been scattered.  But it was still damaged enough that it was beyond repair.  This time I just made the claim and pocketed the money but didn't rebuild the bridge.  I just moved the mailbox so it was next to the driveway.  Aw, well.  It was a nice little bridge but I figured if people were going to keep running into it I wasn't going to keep rebuilding it.