Dan's Papers - June 12, 2009 - U-Haul Hits Bridge

To get to the newly beautified shopping center known as North Main Street in East Hampton, you drive down the hill past the Hook Pond Windmill and duck under a railroad trestle that has a clearance of only 10 feet. Why this is so low is due to the failure of the railroad, years ago, to dig the underpass deep enough to allow the usual 11- or 12-foot clearance. Whether or not this was because of budgetary considerations way back then, we will never know. What we do know is that from time to time a truck driven by somebody either texting or otherwise not paying attention drives under the trestle without realizing what they've got overhead is taller than 10 feet. The trestle always wins.

I did think, a couple of years ago, when the North Main Street shopping area was being festooned with bricks and flowers and other handsome street furniture, that it would be a good idea to decorate both sides of the stone abutments and railroad trestle with flowers. They could be interwoven into wooden trellises that would just get replaced when smacked by a dumb truck driver. Nobody took me up on it. So both the abutments and trestle have remained in the state of a battered but victorious warrior whose various encounters with moving traffic are proudly displayed in a wide variety of horrific looking smacks and cuts. Welcome to North Main.

About two months ago, the railroad made a change. They decided to put a huge warning sign up on the entire length of the trestle. It would be 20 feet long, painted with yellow and black stripes, and on it would be written in giant letters, in the very center of this monstrous sign, CLEARANCE 10' 0."

At first I didn't like this, but then I realized that, if nothing else, this giant sign did cover most of the scars of prior wars, and in a sort of yellow jacket way, it certainly did serve as an entryway to the North Main Street shopping center anyway.

An oddity about this sign, and it is identical on both sides of the trestle, is that in the center, where the words CLEARANCE 10' 0" are written, the sign actually leaps out on one side, like a door partially open. It's a strange thing. I think that a traffic engineer at the railroad looked at the situation, realized that because the trestle crosses the road at an angle, the sign with the wording on it in the center would also be at an angle to motorists. How much better would it be if it were exactly four square to the road? But to do that would mean attaching it to the trestle on one side, but then putting struts on the back of it so it jutted out a bit on the other. Its appearance, indeed, was like a partially open door.

The pictures on these pages were taken by me last Sunday afternoon, when the trestle took its first new hit with this unusual signage. As you can see, the oversized truck hit and simply crushed the open door part of the sign, crumpling it up like an oversized tissue. It was a bullseye. After removing the truck that did the damage and serving the offending motorist with several tickets, the police and Town highway department went about taking the sign down, putting it on the road and bashing it with a hammer to get it relatively flattened out so it could finally be reaffixed where it had been before, but without the partially open door set up. It was a high-level highway department decision that this sign be tacked back up no matter what. The motorists had to be warned. And it was just too bad it was all crumpled up.

According to police, the hit was performed by a bright yellow PENSKE U-Haul truck driven by someone who, apparently, had his mind on what a wonderful summer lies ahead for him in the Hamptons.

This was, of course, one week after Memorial Day. The truck came from the city and was filled with sofas and chairs and rugs and lamps and artwork that would soon adorn the walls of a just-rented summer home in Springs.

The driver, of course, was late. Not only had he not gotten his act together to get out here in time for Memorial Day weekend, he had even failed to get out here for the weekend after Memorial Day. He and his co-renters had hoped to get the truck of furniture out Friday and have the whole weekend ahead in the house. But that didn't happen. Now it was Sunday already, almost time to go home. This was not good.

This yellow box truck filled with furniture had come out on the Expressway to Southampton, and then through Bridgehampton and East Hampton and it would be just a few more minutes until it would arrive at its destination. What fun lay ahead.

The driver steered the truck down North Main, past the Hook Pond Windmill and then directly under the very center of the trestle. According to police, the metal roof of the truck simply peeled itself back like a can of sardines, after which, the driver brought it to a halt.

As the police station is just a block away, the crash was heard and the police and wrecker vehicles dispatched. The fact that the truck had been opened like a sardine can was why the police knew what the contents of the truck were.

All they had to do was climb the abutment to the trestle and look down.

What a tragedy. I do not know what eager family there was waiting in this obviously unfurnished home up the road. They had been delayed twice by the dereliction of the driver. Now, of course, the matter was in hand and he would be arriving momentarily.