An Old Crank

When a boat whistled, Tennie Steele put down her crocheting and went to work. She walked out to the middle of Starkes Ferry Bridge, inserted a long handle into a slot and began cranking. "Hard?" she said. "You ought to try it. Sometimes that thing is impossible." But the short, trim grandmother leaned into the job, and slowly the bridge swung open and cleared the channel.

The widow Steele, when I talked with her in 1978, had been a bridgetender for 18 years on one of the relics of Florida's transportation system—a manually operated swing bridge across the Ocklawaha River where it met State Road 42 in Marion County. All that time she had lived in a white frame bridgetender's house that perched behind the guardrails on what amounted to an island. She could fish off the back porch. Her best memories were made right there at this site of an old ferry-crossing that served Confederate major Thomas Starke's plantation in the 1880’s. As permanently as a human can, she built her life around the river. Her husband, who died in 1969, planted lemon and tangerine trees along the banks, and each year they were full of fruit. She planted roses. Her children grew up in this tiny six-room house where she finally lived alone.

"Lord, I love this river, and I hate to leave it," she said. "But they're going to tear down my house." Mrs. Steele knew the old hand-cranked bridge could not last forever. Nevertheless, she had been stunned the previous spring when state officials said she could stay no longer than six months more, perhaps less. Plans called for a high-level bridge that would not need a tender, and until that got built the state would depend on nonresident tenders working reduced hours. In a nation of easy-riding nomads, where people regularly move from job to job and city to city and mate to mate, she believed in the old rule that a person should make lasting commitments to achieve the sense of direction that makes life bearable. "There'll always be changes," she said, mentally picking her path into the future. "Life changes whether you want it to or not. But you can find a way and a reason. One thing leads out of another. I'm thankful I could carry on as long as I did. I was 65 this year, and I can get retirement. They offered to move the house for me but I told them no. The place is full of termites. I'll miss the fishing, but it seemed like they were always biting best when I had to work and couldn't take out the boat.  "Besides, that old crank is so hard to turn. I don't dread leaving as bad because of that. I'll just move on up to Anthony [also in Marion County], where my son lives, and I'll be fine. I can sew and raise flowers and maybe go fishing occasionally. I'll have plenty to do, just like I always have."

The Steeles made their way to Starkes Ferry from Alabama in 1953. "We were farmers," she said. "We never did public work." In 1960 a friend recommended her, and she readily took the job and the little state-owned house that went with it. "Made $65 a week to start. Paid $25 a month rent and they furnished utilities," she said. "It was six days a week and 24 hours a day then. Couldn't even get away to go to school meetings. But I loved it. Just suited me fine. Sometimes a month would pass without having to open the bridge—has to be a houseboat or something like that. But sometimes two or three'd come in one weekend. It wasn't too difficult, but you had to be alert." Starkes Ferry, a rural community between Umatilla and Weirsdale, changed little in Mrs. Steele's 18 years there. The same two fish camps sat on either side of the river, but they got a little busier and a little fancier. There were fewer campsites and trailers in the early days, but even in 1978 there were not so many. Her salary rose to $600 a month and work time fell to three-and-a-half days a week (42 hours), with a relief bridgetender (also a woman) handling an equal shift from a small office next door.

Most of the boat traffic could go under the bridge without her services, but the highway traffic had increased. Barely a yard from her front door the autos whizzed by in two opposite-bound lanes closely bordered by heavy guardrails which she could reach from her front door. "The traffic gets to be a problem," she said. "Once, a truck loaded with oranges hit the house. Cleaned out all but the top and bottom of two rooms, furniture and all. Scattered oranges all over the house. I was outside fishing. "Another time my grandson was here and we had been fishing. I was out on the back porch cleaning the fish when he came back and said, 'Granny, a box of corn fell off a truck on the road'. I looked out there, and a trailer had hit one of the guardrails and scattered corn all over everywhere. All that went with the job. I had to keep the road clear. You'd be surprised how many people stopped their cars right on the bridge to look at the alligators—we've got a 14-footer that hangs around out there—or to climb down that fence and pick some of my tangerines. Had to keep 'em moving."

She sat quietly in her living room, listening to the pendulum clock ticking, looking at a mounted bass on the kitchen wall, the framed pictures of her grandchildren and the curtains standing out in the river breeze, and sighed. "It wasn't perfect but Lord knows I'm going to miss it," she said. "If I didn't have another place to go, I'd put me a trailer down there on the river and stay right on."

One of Florida's last hand-cranked bridges was passing into history. Tennie Steele followed reluctantly, for she was leaving a life behind.

May 21, 1978 by Al Burt, reprinted in The Tropic of Cracker (1999), University of Florida Press.