Swaying back and forth over a rushing river, the creaky bridge was a rattletrap of splintered lumber and rusted metal.
It didn't just bend the rules of architecture. It seemed to defy the law of gravity.
''The swinging bridge,'' as neighborhood kids called it, connected Akron's Otto Street to Ravine Street over the Little Cuyahoga River and served as a shortcut from Cuyahoga Street to Hickory Street, allowing pedestrians to avoid a two-mile hike down North Howard and across West North Street.
To the children who used it, the tiny span was as important a landmark as the North Hill Viaduct, which loomed to the east.
''Nobody in the neighborhood can remember when the bridge was built,'' the Beacon
Journal confided on April 3, 1931.
The unknown architects stretched steel cables across the river, wrapped them around wooden piers and secured them to tree trunks and a phone pole.
Builders wired rough lumber across the cables and then nailed planks to the wood, creating ''Akron's only suspension bridge'' about 10 feet above the water. Cables served as handrails for the shaky structure, which sagged in the middle.
''You actually walked with your legs spread apart,'' recalled Stan Sipka, 76, of Cuyahoga Falls. ''When you walked in a row, the bridge started moving. Eventually, you had to balance yourself.''
When Sipka was a boy in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he lived at 155 Otto St. with his parents, Stan and Helen Sipka, and sisters, Rita and Arlene.
The swinging bridge beckoned like Shangri-La. At the dawn of World War II, Sipka and his young friends liked to play soldiers in the hills along the river, protecting their neighborhood from U.S. enemies.
''We used to cross it like it was nothing,'' recalled Sipka, who taught machine shop and skilled trades at Cuyahoga Falls High School before retiring in 1996. ''I'm sure that bridge would be condemned like crazy now.''
Sipka said there was one local character, a frequently inebriated fellow from the other side of the river, who often took the shortcut while drunk.
''He would be 'feeling good,' and we would always kind of see if he would fall in, because when he started sagging back and forth, the bridge would just go with him,'' Sipka said. ''And he walked across! Everybody couldn't figure out how he never fell in, because he was weaving back and forth just walking down the street. Apparently, everything was timed just right.''
Floating treasure
After a heavy rain, kids raced to the bridge and witnessed the water level climb 3 or 4 feet.
''Up on West Hill, if a kid lost a ball in the sewer, forget it,'' Sipka said. ''The rain would wash it down the sewer system, dump it in the Cuyahoga River and it would go past the bridge.''
Boys stood on the bridge and waited for baseballs, footballs and other toys to float toward the sewage treatment plant.
''They had long poles with fish nets on the end, and as the ball came under the bridge, they would thrust the pole in the water and retrieve the ball,'' he said. ''They would then throw the ball to those standing on land. I remember having more than enough balls to play with.''
Akron resident Sonya Heckman, 71, who grew up in a house at 163 Mustill St., said the bridge was as scary as it was rickety.
''We'd kind of tiptoe across it very carefully because we didn't want it to swing,'' said Heckman, a retired flight attendant for United Airlines. ''And there was always a slat here and a slat there. I mean, there were so many that were missing. And we had to figure out a way to get around it. It was just terrible.''
A child of divorced parents, Heckman lived with her mother Mabel Vrabel, but frequently visited her father John Suscinski, a South Akron Awnings player who lived on Hickory Street.
Heckman's big decision was whether to take the safe route, which took 30 minutes, or cross the bridge and get there in 10 minutes. She often traveled with her younger friend, Arlene Sipka.
''Nobody wanted to walk the long way,'' she said.
She recalls that childhood pranksters Danny Gradisher and Donny Goliath liked to sneak up behind the girls after they stepped onto the wooden planks.
''I don't know why, but they thought it was funny to grab the end of the bridge there and shake it,'' Heckman said. ''You know, make it go up and down, like a wavy effect. . . . Somehow or other, we managed to get across it, and we never got hurt.''
Retired police officer Hank Petroski, 69, of Granada Hills, Calif., who grew up at 186 Cuyahoga St., has vivid memories of the swinging bridge in Akron.
''When I was 6 or 7, we used to go down to the river,'' he said. ''Nowadays, parents don't want their kids to do anything. All we had to do is be home by dark in the summertime.''
Other shoe drops
He had a convenient excuse to hang out at the bridge because his grandfather, John Petroski, lived on Mustill Street. He played there with his pal Larry Boser, who lived on Otto Street.
''Larry Boser's family was quite poor — not that we were rich, but he was poorer than our family,'' he said. ''I remember his dad bought him a new pair of shoes, which was a big deal.''
The bridge had strange objects hammered to the bottom, including tin Coca-Cola signs with punched-out holes, he said.
''Larry and I were running across the bridge and his foot goes down in one of those holes, and when he pulls his leg back up, his brand-new shoe went into the river,'' Petroski said.
The stunned boy watched as the shoe floated downstream. It took a long time to gather the courage to go back home.
''He said, 'I'm going to get killed,' '' Petroski said.
An unpleasant incident at the bridge made a lasting impression that may have influenced Petroski's career.
''The first dead body I ever saw, I was down there by myself,'' he said.
One day, he saw several police cars parked near the river and watched officers drag a man's corpse from the water. It had floated downstream after several days in the river.
''When I saw that dead body when I was 6 years old or 7, it was probably an omen that I was going to be a homicide detective, and I didn't know it,'' he said.
Petroski retired from the Los Angeles Police Department in 1990 after 25 years of service.
Over the decades, the Little Cuyahoga bridge underwent repairs as neighborhood tinkerers added boards and adjusted cables. An occasional flood washed it out, but people rebuilt it.
Although the bridge looked like it was ready to fall apart in 1931, it continued to accommodate pedestrians for at least 25 more years. Its precise demise is difficult to pinpoint. Heckman recalls it was still swinging in 1955 when she moved away.
''I drove down there several years ago and I was surprised to see it was gone,'' she said.
Two old piers on the west bank are the only evidence that the structure ever existed. Its former users can't believe they took such a risk for a shortcut.
''It was scary, but we did it anyway,'' Petroski said.
''Just talking about that stirs me up inside,'' Heckman said.
''I have grandkids,'' Sipka said. ''If I ever saw a bridge like that, I would emphatically say, 'Don't you even think about crossing that bridge.' ''
Mark J. Price is a Beacon Journal copy editor. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or send email to mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
