JANIE GOULD

After an industrial accident in Jacksonville caused a heavy equipment operator named Ben Wood to lose his right arm, he also lost his job and home, and his wife died.  He later remarried and in 1938 moved to Vero Beach, where he found a job running the hand-cranked drawspan on the town’s wooden bridge across the Indian River.  He and his family, including daughter Charlotte Wood DeVane, lived in a little house on the bridge.

Q: “How did your father get that job?”

A: “My understanding is he actually voted for the right governor, who I think was Spessard Holland. And Dr. Harrell, a family doctor in Vero, helped him go through the procedure to get the job.”

Q:  “In other words, it was a political job?”

A:  “It really was.  Actually, the first four years he never left the bridge. He was there seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The barber even came to our house to cut his hair. But the next election day, the state sent someone out to relieve him so he could go to town and vote.”

Q: “To make sure that Spessard Holland was returned to office?”

A: “I guess so. I was really too young to know.”

“The house was just a two-bedroom house, and they were small rooms at that,” DeVane said.  “Actually, there was no indoor plumbing. The plumbing was inside, but it was not indoor plumbing. There was one faucet in the house.”

Q. “And it was in the middle of the Indian River?”

A. “Right along the channel.”

Q. “Did it ever feel kind of scary out there?”

A. “I think I was too young to know, but even today I can’t get in water over my head without having a panic attack. Because the channel was about 18 feet deep, I grew up with these words ringing in my head: don’t get near the edge; the water’s over your head. I never fell in, but my brother and my sister did. My brother got out before we even knew what the big splash was, and when my sister fell in, a friend of the family was standing right there. They were down on a lower step and just reached in the water and pulled her back up.”

Q. “What was it like living out there?”

A. “It was very isolated. We didn’t even own a car until I was in the tenth grade at school. If someone that Daddy knew came across the bridge and we were wanting to go into town, he would stop and ask them if they’d give us a ride. As we got a little older, we thought nothing in the world of walking two and a half miles into town on a Saturday afternoon to go to the movies. In the winter if it was dark when we got out, there was a taxi service right across from the theatre. She would take us home and Daddy would give her 50 cents for taking us home.”

Q.”How did your mother do the shopping?”

A. “There was a fish camp down on the east end of the bridge. They had a phone!  Mamma would give me the list and I would go down and call in the order to Cox’s Grocery Store and he would deliver our groceries.”

Q. “Your father was really on duty all the time. Were there boats in the middle of the night?”

A. “Oh yes. He would have to get up, put enough clothes on to go outside, and open the draw. There were gates at either end of the draw, and he would take care of those at night. But during the day if we were at home, the gate nearest the house was mine, and the gate across the draw was my brother’s. We knew to go close those gates to stop the traffic.”

Q. “How did your father manage to do his job with just one arm?”

A. “Well, he was an amazing person. When he wrote, he was very precise, so it was legible. He could even tie his shoes in a bow.”

In 1950, Vero’s wooden bridge was replaced by the first Merrill Barber Bridge, which was concrete and had an automatic drawspan. Ben Wood got a job on the Wabasso Bridge, which still had a hand-cranked drawspan and also had a house for his family.

“Daddy asked to be moved up there because he could not fish off the high new bridge, and he needed to fish. What fish we didn’t eat, he sold.”

Ben Wood continued working as a bridegtender in Wabasso until his death at the age of 73. Charlotte Wood DeVane lives in White City. This interview was first heard as part of Janie Gould’s award-winning Floridays series on WQCS/88.9 FM, NPR for the Treasure Coast. To hear other Floridays stories, go to wqcs.org and click on News.