FLOOD 2008: Skybridge overflowing with spectators

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By Bill Wundram | Tuesday, May 06, 2008 |

The Skybridge provides a good view of downtown Davenport streets flooded by the Mississippi River. (Jeff Cook/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

There is redemption for Davenport’s skybridge. It has been maligned too long as the bridge to nowhere. Now, it is the grandstand for a waterscape that everyone wants to see. The skybridge is the best place in town to see the flood. It has become a city’s No. 1 tourist attraction. There is no other place where you can look down — from four stories up — and watch a flood go by.

There are school buses of kids, fascinated by the watery scene. There are people in walkers, mothers with strollers.

At high noon yesterday, it was a streaming 500-foot-long walkway of people staring, snapping pictures and gaping in some disbelief at the cocoa-colored water that has submerged familiar streets, walkways and greenspace.

This flood is an emancipation of the skybridge for people who have shunned it for too long. Stephanie Kreiter, from the hamlet of Argo in Scott County, said, “I’ve never been on the skywalk before. The kids wanted to see the flood. Now that I’ve been on the skywalk, I’m coming back.”

The rush to the skybridge has brought a renaissance to downtown. Second Street is bustling. There are few parking places. Everyone wants to get on the free skybridge. Traffic runs slow, regularly bumper-to-bumper.

“This is just like when we had Parker’s and Petersen’s downtown,” said Clover Daley, Moline, who grew up in Davenport. “I never saw so many people downtown.” There were so many people that Subway had customers in line to the door.

The skybridge has brought visitors from afar, such as Onna Dominiack, who is from Brookings, S.D. She is a lawyer, in town for a client, and said it was a must for her to take pictures of the flood from the skybridge.

There is plenty to photograph. A long-legged great blue heron stood on the roof of the Levee Inn at noontime, as if posing for pictures. Water swirled in whirlpools from a submerged gurgling manhole at the foot of Brady Street. It was eerie to look down and faintly see the yellow traffic stripes on River Drive through the brownish water.

There was no junk, no floating trees or barrels; it was a quietly eerie scene, actually serene. It even had wildlife. Two ducks were floating, ever so carefree, around a Valet Service sign for the closed island-like Rhythm City Casino. The big Alter towboat, Phyllis, was nudged against the casino, maybe to keep it from floating to St. Louis. LeClaire Park’s benches were getting a good bath; the trees around them were budding without concern of the flood.

A bunch of kids from Davenport Central High were excited after a visit. They are students of the school’s ROTC unit, on a phys-ed kind of junket, walking back-and-forth on the tall skywalk. There were so many students of Sgt. Maj. Mike Matson that they had to take their turn at the skybridge elevator.

Justine Baumer slapped a hand to her forehead and said, “I’m overwhelmed.” Paige Gomez said, “The water looks so near. What a view.” Clinton Van Damme looked smug when he told classmates, “I had a summer job helping paint this skywalk.”

It was an experience of awe for me. It was a long, cozy warm sunshine walk of glass windows, with moms and dads pushing strollers, while older kids romped ahead of them. A couple of kids were squealing, “Look, look,” as if they were seeing some “Jaws”-like creature in the water below.

Far upstream from the skybridge, the abandoned Dock Restaurant looked so lonely, and wet, and there is no question that the water is deep inside. I rode in a boat in the Dock’s dining room during the flood of 1965. The Dillon fountain at the foot of Main Street — dry for two years — finally has water in its basin, albeit river water. Not far away, there is a small dry pocket of River Drive in front of the Figge, but water has crept to the edge of a corner of the art museum’s foundation. Heaven forbid if we ever had a floodstage of almost 23 feet, like in 1996. They would have to hang the pictures higher.

Everyone had something to say. People were chatty. Dick Miller, Eldridge, walking with his wife, Jo, shook his head, “That’s a lot of water.” She said, “It’s like Mark Twain wrote, the Mississippi goes wherever it wants to go.”

From this skybridge scene, the Mississippi was going as far as the eye could see up and downstream, and it looked like every other person had a camera to take its picture. Shannon Lausen, Davenport, pointed her camera so that she could get both the river, and her 5-year-old daughter, Haleigh, in the same picture.

It is, at the moment, the best free show in town. Thousands are in the audience.

Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes. com.