A vintage photo of Yankton's Meridian Bridge, aka "Todd's Bridge of Death."This is a posting I've had rattling around in my head for a year.  It is about a topic from my childhood that has bothered me for a good portion of my adult life.

When I was a kid growing up in Yankton, SD in the 1960s and 70s, because of the dangerous design of the double decker Meridian Bridge on U.S. 81 over the Missouri River, horrific car crashes were fairly common. 

The bridge had a bare abutment as you entered from the Nebraska side onto the top deck.  Then, about 1/3 of the way over the top deck, the lane made a sweeping curve.  Add to this there was no lip on the sides of the road and just a chain link fence and you had a dangerous situation.  (All of these defects have been fixed since the mid 1970s and the bridge is much, much safer now.)

On an unfortunately regular basis, people would get drunk in South Yankton, Nebraska then head home to Yankton, typically at a high rate of speed.  Some would hit the bridge abutment.  Obviously, a massive bridge anchored in bedrock and pilings isn't going to budge.  So the cars would usually get compacted with fatal results to the drivers and passengers.

If the careless driver managed to miss the abutment, then the sweeping curve at the top of the bridge would get them.  This was particularly bad, as it was 70 or so feet off the ground at tree top level.  Cars would plunge to the heavily wooded shoreline below or drivers would get hung up in the trees.  Again, tragic results.
Not an accident from my childhood but representative of how some of the cars looked at the time after a crash on the bridge.

While these accidents are bad, there was an odd phenomena.  One of the gas stations near the bridge was also the main towing company.  After these horrific accidents, they would pull the wrecks to their lot next to the filling station.  And there, people would look.  Sometimes, lines of people.

And this usually included my dad and I.  We seldom missed a bloody crash.

If the wrecker company had too many wrecks on hand, they had another lot across the street above the river they'd set the cars on.  And the people would come.  Some just stood back and looked.  Others would basically crawl in the car to see if there were any personal effects or blood.  Even as a kid I thought that was ghoulish.

I remember in the early 1970s the wrecker company had an impound lot off the public view that they'd take the wrecks.  Still, people found them.

Maybe this was a Yankton thing.  Maybe this was a 1960s and 70s thing.  I haven't noticed this phenomena anywhere else I have lived (Brookings, SD; Pierre, SD; Harrisburg, SD; Topeka, KS; Augusta, KS; Houston, TX)--people actually making a point to go look at terrible car wrecks once they've been cleared. 

I asked my wife the Ph.D. in sociology why my fellow Yanktonians did this.  Her academic explanation: because people were curious.  Gee, thanks Donna, I never would have guessed.

It is hard to recollect what I was thinking as a ten year old 37 years later.  As I think back through the haze of time, I seem to recall a feeling of not just curiosity, but superiority by those around me.  I vaguely recall comments about the evils of drinking or that so and so was a no good you know what and it's no surprise they smacked their Pontiac into the abutment.  It seems to recall a sort of dark side of "there but for the grace of God go I." 

The iconic bridge on an idyllic summer day last year.Anyway, the whole experience has been haunting me.  If any else cares to offer up an explanation of this behavior, do so in the comments.  I'm not sure I can explain this dark side of my Lake Wobegon-esque upbringing.  I don't mean to be morbid, but this has been bugging me for quite a while.