Our Bridge is Gone

This is the fifth story from my father about the adventures of two brothers (Rafael and Gabriel) from a very poor family of 10 trying to make a living during the Great Depression in the 1930s.   This story takes place in August of 1932 The other stories can be found in previous blogs: "Dracula Got us Fired," “Having a Meal at the Smorgasbord,” “The Whipping” and “Coffee, Sugar, Firewood and Meat.”

Our Bridge is Gone

Life for the two boys, Rafael and Gabriel, was sometimes amazement and awe.  Being two kids in a family of 10, with very little means and without a mother had become normal for them.  Their big sister Chita, although only 12 in 1932, she had taken over the household chores and took care of many of their basic needs.  Their mother Altagracia had died almost two years before from complications after giving birth to their little brother, Roberto.  Their Father Catarino had been working on a farm in Texas and had come back for the weekend.  There was a heavy rain and very windy all day Saturday and they were planning to go with him to Mass early Sunday morning on August 14, 1932.  Catarino liked to go to the early mass, and getting up so early on Sunday was something the two boys did not like, but it was not raining and life was good for the 7 and 8 year kids.  They played the rest of the day.  On Monday the Catarino had planned on going to work in Texas, but it was too wet and windy and the foreman at the farm told him to go back home, the ground was too wet and they probably could not get back to work until late in the week.  He would stay around the house fixing things that needed to be fixed with the two boys helping.  They enjoyed having him around the house.

A few days earlier, around August 9, 1932, a storm was forming off Haiti; it started north and crossed the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico dropping lots of rain in the city of Merida.  On August 11, off the coast of Yucatan, the storm intensified and formed into a category 1 hurricane.  It moved across the Gulf of Mexico, increasing in intensity to a category 4 landing on the Texas town of Freemont on evening of August 14, 1932.  The storm killed 40 near the town and continued to drop nearly 10 inches of rainfall as it moved northwest.  The eye crossed the coast about 10 p.m. on August 13, slashing a 30- to 40-mile wide path of destruction across Brazoria County, Texas. It finally dissipated in the Texas panhandle.  According to the official accounts, “the greatest single toll for any town was 7 in West Columbia, Texas, where sustained winds over 100 mph flattened homes. Two neighborhoods that had been constructed for oil industry workers there were wiped clean. Freeport, Angleton and Galveston suffered extensive wind damage, and the inland towns of Brazoria, West Columbia, Damon and Needville, all in the path of the eye, were also devastated.”  But, the forty people in the official count were not the only casualties.

The Family lived on “Bravo” street in Nuevo Laredo, the first block running parallel to the river “The Rio Grande,” but in Mexico it is called the Rio Bravo.  Between the house and the river was cotton gin, a small factory with several cotton gins, machines that quickly and easily separated cotton fibers from their seeds.  Behind them and on the edge of the river was a hide-curing and tanning shop – not the best smelling place, especially when the wind came from the north.  On the morning of Tuesday August 16^th, the kids awaken to city-wide excitement.  They had awakened early because rainy days were special for the two kids.  To them it meant money!  Nuevo Laredo did not have a paved street and rainy days created giant puddles and seas of mud.  They had two long planks they had found in the river last year and with a couple of bricks, they could make crossing bridges over the streets’ mud. At 3 to 5 cents per crossing they were making enough money for movies for the rest of the year!

The excitement in town was because the water level in the river was rising.  It was just below the rails on the railroad bridge from Nuevo Laredo to Laredo Texas and still rising.  Around 2:00 in the afternoon, the kids took their planks back to the house and went to the railroad bridge to see the river.  When they got there they could see trees, cattle, horses, small houses and all types of debris, floating down the river.  Their older brother, Antonio, a great swimmer, was busy dragging large branches and small tree trunks from the floating debris and piling up on the shore for use as firewood for cooking in the house.  A great effort, but just a useless effort, for at the end, when it became too dangerous to go after the drifting wood and the river crested, all his pile went floating down the river.  A couple of hundred people, from both sides of the river had walked on the bridge to watch this amazing thing: Houses, wagons, countless trees and brush, cattle, everything floating down the river nobody had seen anything like it before. 

Sometime later, the people from the railroad began to warn people to get off the bridge because it was in danger of being washed away.  It was a wooden bride with pilings and the trees and debris were beginning to accumulate on the up-river part of the bridge.  Most people ignored the warning and about 6 in the evening, the bridge began to cark and lean.  People started to run to each end of the bridge, but the break-up was too quick.  The trees and debris had piled so high that they formed a dam and the pressure of the water was too much for the bridge to hold back.  Rafael and Gabriel could see the bridge going over, people falling into the water trying to come up for air, but the trees and debris and the turbulence in the water dragged them back down.  Others, that could still move, try to climb on branches and on anything that was floating but he current and the turbulence was too much and could not stay afloat.  The timbers of the bridge and the rails rolled over most of the people, completing the job the trees and debris were doing to drag the people under water.  Rafael and Gabriel saw three people who had managed to get on a floating tree branch and ran down the bank of the river to see if they could get out.  They seem to be afraid to make a swim for it to the shore, plus with all the debris they probably didn’t have a chance.  The boys kept on running on the river bank and saw that the tree with its three passengers was coming up to the second bridge; the one for cars, trucks and pedestrians.

The second bridge, made from concrete, seemed to be stronger but it was lower to the rising water.  Like the railroad bridge, the debris had piled up and was damming the water flow.  The three people on the tree were washed against the pile of debris against the bridge and began to climb on top of the debris to the bridge.  One of them fell and was sucked underwater by the current.  The other two made it to the bridge and Rafael and Gabriel could see them running toward the end of the bridge on the Mexican side.  The gates controlling access to the bridge were closed and officials on both ends of the river were trying to get them open, no so much to let the two survivors out, they were trying to get on the bridge to cut the railing in an attempt to more easily allow the debris to flow over the bride and maybe save the bridge.  They managed to get most of the railing cut before the water began to rest over the bridge.  Shortly after Rafael and Gabriel could see that most of the debris; houses, trees, cattle, hundreds of trees and large brush was flowing over the bridge.  The effort to remove the railing was a success and the bridge was saved.

It was fairly dark by this time and the two boys decided to go back home.  Both boys were awed by the sights and experience, but they too young to comprehend the tragedy of the loss of life.  The people that drowned, four days after the hurricane made landfall in Freeport, Texas, were never counted in the “official” deaths from the hurricane that year.

Path of second hurricane in 1932 (they had not started naming them yet):