Fond Memories Of The Charlie Dye Bridge Recalled

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By Rex Burress
THS Class of 1952
I have learned that the “Charlie Dye Bridge” in Trenton is in the process of being replaced. It seems desirable that the replacement should have steel trusses like the old one that was built in 1921, but the norm now-days is to use nearly all concrete without any “covers” at all. Those concrete supports blend with the highway so well you hardly know when you go over a bridge.
The photograph that Bill Clark shared on Facebook showed the first steel beam being placed from the shore-bank to the original central concrete pier. Trenton folk will have an interesting show for several months. Sticking that pier into the treacherous sands and muds of the river must have been quite a feat for construction crews in the 1920’s before more modern methods developed.
Considerable ingenuity is involved in bridging any impasse, and we can imagine the triumphant rejoicing when the first connection was made, especially the Inca’s of South America who made swinging fiber bridges to reach the other side of a towering gorge.
The simplest way to cross a gap is on a fallen tree log, and like Amerindians, I knew where those places were on boyhood No Creek in Grundy County. There was a much-used log across old Muddy Creek, too, when we moved into the edge of Trenton. Gordon Kasperson and I crossed over into hunting spaces many times.
In later years when a deer season was established in Grundy, my dad Leslie Burress, shot his first deer (after a couple years of ‘buck fever’) on his previous No Creek farm bottomland, but it was on the other side of the creek. By the time he found a log bridge and returned, another hunter was attaching his tag. Bridges, indeed, can lead to fulfillment if you get there in time.
I was fond of the Charlie Dye bridge and the surrounding woodlands and water where outdoor adventures lurked. Used to catching small bullheads and perch in the placid waters of No Creek, going to Grand River was an adventure supreme. The whirling waters and wide channel was rather scary to a seven-year-old, and I would huddle close to a boulder as if to hide from the monstrous flathead catfish that must live there, almost hoping that nothing found my worm-baited hook.
At the same time, the veiled wonder of early-morning mist, the splash from jumping fish, the dank aroma of wet sand and mud, and the call of the cardinal were impressionable sidelights of a seven-mile trip from our calm farm on No Creek to the river. Secondary was the exciting expectation of catching a big fish. Photographer Jerald Wright’s stinking cheese bait also scented the memory, and my tackle-bag concealed some outlandish fishing rigs and lures, mostly designed to hook the fisherman…or boy as it might be. “Hooked on Fishing; Not Drugs,” an annual event at Oroville, CA, is indeed preferable.
A variety of “river-rat” fishermen were addicted to the call of the river and could be found there nearly every day, fishing near the bridge as if it was a shelter to their wildest dreams. One elderly lady was thus attached to river-fishing, and had her spot on a sand-bar near the bridge, sitting on her folding chair under an umbrella, rain or shine, patiently watching her fishing rod for the tell-take nibble or the charge of a big carp taking off in an explosive tear that could make your heart beat like a hammer. The regulars would converse, but mostly they were absorbed in the intent business of watching and waiting for a fish to bite.
The fishing fever was still with me when we moved from the farm into Trenton in 1949 and until I had a Model A car, I would bicycle out to the Dye bridge with my rod and reel, often before daylight since the best time for all fishermen is early, early in the morning. Trenton would be sleeping as I whizzed through, eager to ascend into the hypnotic trance of the river. I have retained that love of the river romance right into my senior days at the Feather River in Oroville, CA.
Other than fishing, the Charlie Dye bridge offered access from Trenton to the Dye Tavern and the adjacent road up Mockingbird Hill. An old log cabin was built on the hill above Dye’s and I remember it offered some excellent photographs once in autumn when I was visiting from California, my new home for the second stage of my life. The surrounding hillside oaks and maples were flaming red and orange-yellow, and the cardinals were still singing in spite of the resident mockingbirds.
Of course, the original roadway for State Highway 6 was threaded through the Dye bridge passageway and on to Crowder Park, Jamesport, Gallatin and points beyond before the route was altered to go from Trenton Main Street west and reconnect with 6 on the other side of the river, complete with a new concrete bridge. That left the old Dye bridge to lapse with time until the rebirth in 2016.