Here are five young women Friend Shari and I met at the Old Appleton bridge. They said they are all from Cape.
I went to the trouble of getting their last names, but in case anything they did needs plausible deniability, I’ll just go with first names, left to right: Makayla, 16; Nicole, 16; Sara, 17; Sylvia, “almost 18,” and Autumn, 16.
I dubbed Makayla The Smart One because she didn’t engage in any of the Tomfoolery of her friends. She hinted that she might do so when there would be no photographic evidence around, but I don’t know if she did. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)
The Wild Child
“Almost 18” Sylvia was quickly named The Wild Child. When I first met her, I asked what the girls planned to do. “You’re not going to do anything crazy like jumping off the bridge are you?”
“Do you want me to?” she asked.
“No, no, no,” I replied. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that. People drown here all the time.”
The next thing I heard was “SPLASH!”
The floodgates opened
After Syliva’s head popped out of the water attached to the rest of her body and she pronounced the water deep enough that she hadn’t even touched bottom, the rest of the girls, minus The Smart One, lined up. There was some discussion about jumping on “Three!”
The message was garbled
Sara, The Countess, jumped ON three.
Countess Sara was all alone
I thought maybe the other girls wanted TWO water safety checks before they launched, because Sara was on her own.
The first shall be last
The Wild Child must have heard that “the first shall be last,” because she was the last of the quartet to hit the water this time.
Getting it together
The girls lined up for another go. I heard them working out the details. “This time I count 1-2-3, THEN we all jump.” The timing was a little better this round.
Time to dry out
Shari and I left the crew hanging out and drying out. I took a careful count to make sure we were leaving behind the same number of girls we saw when we arrived at the bridge. If anything happened after that, I’d go looking for The Wild Child.
Former Wild Child Shari was content with wading in ankle-deep water below the dam. Wife Lila, in a text message, commented, “I jumped off that bridge once. Glad there are no pictures.”
I jumped it too! Before the storm in the mid-1980’s wiped out the mill and the original bridge. Have the statues of limitations expired?
Ken,
don’t you also have pics of young ladies jumping off this bridge back in the 60’s? I know I’ve seen it on your site. Seems like they even jumped from higher up on the super-structure.
Brad
You’re thinking of these photos. I got the location wrong in the story.
Strangely, I just finished reading an account of some caver friends who were swimming at this same location in the mid-1980’s and one of them found a bridge sign on the bottom that had been lost since a flood took out the bridge a couple of years earlier. They said it was metal and about four feet long. The townspeople had given it up for lost and were very happy to get it back. I wonder if it is the sign in your photo?
How do you get tattos at 16?
I shocked and appalled that Jesse James was even looking at the tattos on the YOUNG girls in the photos..I might have to reconsider this whole blog thing…that unless you have more pictures like these coming in the near future!
I read this post through my fingers over my eyes. Yikes!
Back in our day, didn’t the girls call the boy’s dumb for doing this? I guess it shows how far we’ve come.
Wow, this was 2 years ago. I love this story good memories!!!!