[DeTomaso] Spooky Pantera Photo

[Douglas Kelm]

If you click on the link below, you will see in the background three structures that span the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The closest  visible span (six silver beams atop concrete pillars) is a service walkway atop the dam that is adjacent to Lock #2 on the Mississippi. Directly behind that (a network of steel trusses that appear dark gray in the photo but are actually green) is the bridge that is no more. (Anyone who has watched or listened to the national news this week knows what I'm talking about.) Behind the (now fallen) truss bridge is a concrete arch bridge (light gray in the photo), a few hundred feet downstream from the stricken bridge, that is still standing and was unharmed by the 35W interstate bridge disaster. I had driven the pictured Pantera over the now destroyed bridge countless times in the last ten years, and as recently a two weeks ago. Plus, I have driven my daily driver UNDER the approach spans, also fallen, on the south end of the bridge hundreds of times in the 35 years I've lived here. I could have easily been on or under that bridge on Wednesday when is fell and, thankfully, four of the eight lanes were closed for deck repair or the carnage would likely have been twice as bad.  The linked photo was shot from a scenic parking area midway between Lock #1 and Lock #2, on the southern bank of the river as it flows west to east just north of downtown.

Doug Kelm
Yellow #2886 1972 Pre-L Pantera

  
www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=354623042&size=l