I made it.

That's the first thing worth saying. Yesterday health kept me away from the Friday evening festivities, and I'll admit I went to bed disappointed. But Saturday morning I got myself together, and my family got me there, and for a few hours I was exactly where I intended to be — on Commercial Street, sign in hand, near the South Approach of the Jefferson Avenue Footbridge, in the middle of something that hasn't happened in a hundred years and won't happen again.

It was a very good day.

Commercial Street was alive in a way I haven't seen in some time. The classic cars from the Great Race Spring Rally lined the street in both directions — decades of American automotive history parked end to end on the same pavement where railroad workers once stumbled out of Lindberg's Tavern after a long haul on the line. Lindberg's, incidentally, has been pouring drinks on this corner since 1870, which makes it older than Route 66 by more than fifty years and older than the footbridge by thirty. My son treated my wife and me to lunch there Saturday, and I'm not too proud to say it was one of the better meals I've had in recent memory. The food is excellent. The history in the walls is better.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I positioned myself near the South Approach with my sign — Moon City Dispatch across the top, Whisper of the Rails across the bottom, QR code in the middle. I had my rollator. I had my oxygen. I had no idea whether anyone would stop.

They did.

People saw the sign and paused. Several scanned the QR code without saying anything, which is its own kind of conversation. Others stopped to talk — told me it was interesting, asked what the Whisper of the Rails was. I gave them the short version: that there are stories about this bridge, that they've circulated for a long time, that I'm trying to write them down before they disappear entirely.

Most people nodded in that particular way that means I believe you and I'm not sure why.

That's exactly the right response.

Here is what I noticed about the South Approach.

It was fenced off. A six-foot cyclone fence, vendors' signs zip-tied to the chain link, no explanation offered. You could see the bridge through it — the freshly painted white steel, the cantilever arms reaching out over the BNSF rail yard, the thirteen sets of tracks below — but you couldn't get to it. The rededication ceremony happened on the other end. I didn't make it to that either.

The bridge was celebrated on Saturday. Ribbons were cut. Speeches were made. And when it was over, the fence was still there.

I want to be careful here, because I've said before that I don't want to dwell on grievance, and I mean that. There are real reasons why the bridge isn't open yet — legitimate ones, involving ADA certification, elevator testing, the particular complexity of a national historic landmark spanning an active Class I railroad. These things take time. Agencies must sign off. The railroad itself must certify. There may be entities involved in that approval process that would surprise you.

I understand all of that.

What I'll say is this: if I had to guess, and this is only a guess, I think the bridge opens on the Fourth of July. That would be the right moment — America's 250th birthday, the Route 66 centennial year, a North Springfield landmark finally returned to the people who need it. I could be wrong. But it feels right.

Now. The Whisper of the Rails.

Standing at that fence on Saturday, close enough to see the structure but not to touch it, I found myself thinking about what the bridge holds that no ceremony addresses.

The geometry. The thirteen tracks. The updrafts that come off the rail yard when the temperature drops and the trains move through. The steel that was taken apart and put back together — modified, altered, changed in ways that even the engineers describe carefully, in the language of professionals who are precise about everything except the things they can't quite account for.

I've heard, from someone I consider reliable, that workers involved in the reconstruction noticed sounds in the steel. Not alarming sounds. The kind of sounds that get waved off in a meeting. Harmonic disturbance, someone said. The bridge is 124 years old. It's been through a significant rehabilitation. Steel remembers stress differently after it's been moved.

That's probably the right explanation.

And yet I keep thinking about the people who built this bridge in 1902. They built it because neighbors were dying — adults and children cutting across thirteen sets of working tracks because there was no other way between Woodland Heights and Commercial Street, and the trains didn't slow down for pedestrians. The bridge was the answer to tragedy. It connected two communities that needed connecting, and it did that job for over a century before anyone decided it needed to be taken apart.

The Whisper of the Rails is older than Route 66. It was here before anyone named a highway, before anyone thought to celebrate a centennial, before the fence went up at the South Approach.

It will be here when the fence comes down.

A few things before I close.

I had the privilege Saturday of meeting two members of the Commercial Club's Board of Directors. They were gracious, kind, and generous with their time — and they extended an invitation to attend their next meeting. For the Moon City Dispatch, that's not a small thing. This newsletter exists to serve the people and businesses of North Springfield, and having a seat at that table, even informally, is exactly the kind of trust this project was built to earn.

I'm also working on something that I hope to tell you more about soon — a way to keep an eye on Commercial Street and the bridge in real time. Nothing official yet. But I'm working on it.

The centennial weekend is over. Route 66 turned 100 years old in the city where it was named, and the street that connects Moon City to the rest of Springfield was celebrated if not yet fully returned.

Parts 1 through 4 of the Whisper of the Rails are now complete. But the story isn't.

The bridge is still fenced. The steel still holds whatever it holds. And somewhere between the harmonic disturbance that engineers dismiss and the sounds that workers remember, there is a mythology waiting for the right moment to step fully into the light.

I'll be here when it does.

— Moon City Dispatch