My Teens Built Our Bridge (after the Hurricane)

My teenage sons, you heading it up, built this bridge in one day.

Yep. Hurricane took it away and you built this bridge, brought it back and put it back together.

So tell me how this bridge works. We still got a little work to do on grading because the gravel's coming, but take a moment and tell me about this bridge.

So the first thing I did is I put rocks down and made it 12 feet wide. And I brought in the logs, put 2 on each side, and then I put boards on top of logs to make it more level. And then I put slats across and then 3 boards on the top.

So what was the hardest part?

Uh, putting the logs down and getting those levels.

This is strangely reminiscent of the time you built a water wheel right in this creek.

The axle needs to spin so it can turn the chain. This is turning into a lot more complications than I thought.

Is that gonna help?

Yeah.

How do you know? See that space right there?

Yeah, I'm trying to bolt that all the way into that.

Your boys The bridge has changed a little bit.

Yeah, it has.

Did you see the video when I sent it to you?

Yeah.

Did you watch it? A little bit. What'd you think?

I didn't watch that much of it.

Okay, here's the footage of him building this bridge so far. We are salvaging our locust. It's our locust bridge washed away in the hurricane. Look at the thickness on this guy. That one's kind of rotten though.

Yeah, but we are shortening this bridge so much. Oh, we can chop some stuff off.

14, 15. Hey, that one guy said he's got us a 15-footer, 15-incher. We might as well get some brand new locusts.

Hit that. It's like, I don't know if I'm still going strong. Age so well.

Yeah, these have— this has been a bridge that was for 30 years. This is our effort to build back Basically for $0. Can we build back a bridge for $0 with everything we have? Well, you did have to buy some screws, right? Yeah, and we might not have all our 2x4s.

Oh boy, wait, no, we're gonna have to pick this end up with the excavator. Just to get the logs mostly level so that we can put the boards across like that one.

Don't know, it's not going to be level right there.

I know, we're going to have to add a second one to put two here. Hold it there, just set it down. We got to put the big one in first. Set it down. Uh, yeah. How wide are the wheels on a car, Papa?

Center to center is 6 feet.

Well, we want it to be about like that, probably as wide as this garage.

No, you want the logs to be at 6 feet.

What is that at?

Right, the center of the logs.

So the center of the big log. That's almost right. I don't know, these logs are warped and bent. That's good. Let me unhook it, and then you got to pull this side this way like 6 inches.

What side?

This side, 6 inches. What side? What? Pull these logs, these two logs, 6 inches this way. That's good. Good.

Looks good. Doesn't look that nice when you put the two boards on there. Much higher than it was. It's kind of Easy with you guys building this back, huh? Easy. And what do we end, uh, so far? $30 for screws? Hey, he just drove over it with the machine! Hey, you're the first to drive on it! Did you see that? We just drove across the bridge for the first time. Look! Wow, no sagging. He didn't think anything of it.

He just drove right over it.

What do you guys got to do today? You got to hustle because gravel's coming. Technically, that gravel could come at any minute, and you ought to have the grading done. Just a couple more loads. Let me see the banana. It all started with Damn right there. You're gonna have your own project one day.

Me?

Yeah.

What, when I'm big enough?

What do you think you'll work on?

I'm thinking I'm working on, uh—

What will be your job?

I'm gonna cross the creek.

Going across the creek?

But that might take Papa.

Digging across the creek? They got a little sandbox right there. Yeah, it flows that way. You can do a ditch, a little ditch along through here. Put a retaining wall here to keep the water from beating up here, force it under the bridge.

I think we need an alternate route still.

Yeah, big fire truck, dump truck loaded. I'd rather not go across the bridge. They probably could. What's the problem with the alternate route? I was just gonna put those rocks there. You could put them past there anyway. It doesn't make a turn until it's passed it anyway. Looks like Josiah is bringing in more dirt for our grading. What motivated you to do that? You know, most kids aren't doing that at 15 years old. They aren't moving mountains of rocks. How did you move mountains of rocks? Just did it.

I don't know.

Jonah's cleaning up the banks. He's cleaning up the alternate route. We're having an alternate route in case we need to get a big truck there, like a fire truck or a full dump truck or something, and They don't want to go across the bridge. I love it. Jonah put him on taking this trash. And did you want this job? Tell me the truth though. He says no. Tell me the truth. Does it help that you get to drive the side-by-side? And let me ask you this: do you enjoy doing the work by yourself? Or do you want me to help you? You don't really want me to? They like it. They like the responsibility. They like their own thing. What?

Can we have hot dogs?

Yeah, tonight.

No! Hot dogs is not nighttime.

Alright, fine. That's true. That's true. That's true. Touché. I'll have Lily make you some for breakfast, but you're only having it once. Today, okay?

Okay, you don't have it once.

Okay, well, I'm gonna have her make it for you right now for breakfast. Wait, you don't want it now? Now is the morning. We're gonna have it now, okay? Lily, Lily, can you make Henry some hot chocolate to go with breakfast. Gideon, get these other two boards. There's no can't, you know, there's how can I. And then if you like really can't, you could still get it up there, and that's better than nothing. And aim for the impossible, bro.

How's he doing?

Good. How'd you get Josiah to help you?

Uh, I let him come when he wanted to. I couldn't pressure him into it. He didn't want to, so I just let him come when he wanted to.

So what do we lack to do today?

Just gotta smooth some stuff out and move some rocks around, make it look better.

Moving out some grading. The truck is coming. The gravel truck is coming. The goal is by the end of this video, we're going to be driving our truck over this thing. They got to re- build this wall here to keep the downstream water from just tearing up our, our road.

Smoothing out the edges here.

Water's gonna hit this —this road is already naturally leaning this way. We're going to direct the water into this ditch. By the way, that machine weighs 9,000 pounds, so I think that's as big as a truck, right? And it's crossed it I don't know how many times now. And go get a flat shovel, we'll clean this bridge off. That might be one there, but maybe you need to go up to the shed. Good job, bud. You, you surpassed any of my wildest expectations. Yeah, you continue to do that day after day. I'm proud of you guys. Jonah, very early on, had this idea to rebuild the bridge. Jonah, did you always want to rebuild the bridge?

Yeah, but I had to wait for you guys' crazy ideas to go away.

What were our crazy ideas?

You guys wanted to do like a pipe, a big massive pipe, and then you want to do like steel beams. Okay. Or something like that. But I just waited.

You had that idea and I thought it was crazy. I thought it would be Jerry. I really thought it would be Jerry. Finding out when we're putting that restraint on ourselves— how about, how can we fix this with zero money? That seems a bit of a stretch. But it challenges our mind and we end up surprising ourselves. And that's kind of been our— I don't know what my dad used to say to me, uh, use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. Kind of out of nowhere, Jonah was like, I'm gonna build back this bridge. Yes. Yeah, do it up here on the bank though. He just kind of out of nowhere just said, you know what, I'm gonna build this back. And I was kind of like, okay, all right, here we go. Uh, one of my philosophies raising these children has always been let them fail. I think it was back in the first vlog. Uh, Austin, pull that up. The kids, they wanted to build some cage for the chicken and Although I didn't think it would work, I just let them do it. What's going on with your chicken pen here? I don't know, but I did open this like right here.

Okay. So— Okay.

You want to keep raking? You know, because he had that time, he built something like the water wheel. Try taking this brake off. Oh! Oh! I'll be honest, as Jonah was building this thing, I was like, you know, yeah right. And he was saying he was going to build it in a day, and in my head I was like, yeah right. But I kept quiet, and he got the logs over here. I didn't think that would take long. But then, you know, you put the rock abutments on it, and I'm kind of like, okay. And then— thank you, my man— there's two logs on either side, and one of them is much smaller than the other. And I thought, yeah right, you're You know, that's going to be difficult to balance. Once he got those boards on, I'm like, this is going to happen. You know, then they're putting all the runners on, and then they're doing— Jonah's doing the cross boards, and he's like, I'm going after lunch. So, you know, their free time is after lunch. He just decided to work right through that free time. And even then I'm like thinking in my head, you're going to have to grade tomorrow. Nope, they graded that day yesterday. They've seeded, we've put down hay. One thing that was interesting, I was looking back at that video of Jonah building the water wheel and I stated— Austin, pull in when I stated— we're already to that point where I'm just like, hey, can you do this? And delegate those kinds of things to him. It's sweet, you know. So at first it was the kids are with me, I mean, they're on my back. And they're doing what I do. And then it's I'm giving them projects to do by themselves. Uh, Gideon doing the chickens. You can do it. And now it's developed into this: what do you want to do? We're doing projects in the morning, you have the autonomy there. What do you want to do? And they pick their own things and go for it. That's been a, a neat journey. All right, y'all get to quit early. You worked hard yesterday and this morning. It's the next day. We have a load of gravel here. Let's put the final touches on this thing. Jonah's already going at it, and we'll see if we can't get the truck driving over this thing before it's over. All right, the moment of truth. Doesn't this look so good? Gravel on both sides. Oh, that's a big truck! Whoa! Oh, the logs don't even budge.

Oh, they did it!

Hey, how come y'all aren't excited as me, huh? Bridge doesn't even budge. Good. You're a bridge builder, dude. Your boys did this. I know, they did so good. I'm so proud of them. Yeah, I don't worry about you if something happens to me. Nothing's gonna happen to you though. These 17s and 15-year-olds are gonna take care of you. Such a good job. I'm very proud of them. It's come a long way since that water wheel. Yeah, I know, right? Yes.