Summary: Today (Aug. 1, 2012) is the fifth anniversary of the collapse of a major freeway bridge into downtown Minneapolis, with 13 fatalities. Without intending to I happened to come upon a tune I recorded for online listening when I was doing a weekly historical feature for the city's daily newspaper, the Star Tribune. The date was in November 2006, and the article was about the 80th anniversary of the dedication of the Mendota Bridge at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, which is almost 86 years old now and still hasn't collapsed (to be fair, it has been extensively updated). In its day it was the longest concrete bridge of its type in the world. Back at the opening in 1926, the newspaper held a contest for the best song about the bridge. This was the winner, written by a Minneapolis woman. I tried to sing it, accompanying myself on my 1929 Gibson TB-1, and the paper's website had it up for a while with my story.
