Poet considers bridges crossed

<p>A poet explores the wonders and sorrows of life and the precious, diamond-like little details that sparkle but also can cut.</p><p>At 62, Santa Rosa's Tom Mariani, a limping but lively figure familiar at poetry slams and Redwood Writers meetings, writes the poems of a man aware that his life could well have vanished decades ago like frost kissed by the first rays of daylight. Or worse, he could have lost, just that quickly, some or all of his family.</p><p>“Frost covers fallen bridges, as it does ones that stand,” Mariani, a banker by trade, wrote in one poem. “The whiteness settles everywhere. It's gone when I touch your hand.”</p><p>Photos of the fallen bridge that so affected his life ran in The Press Democrat and in newspapers around the world Nov. 9, 1980. The previous day, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Humboldt County caused the collapse of one end each of two great roadway panels on a Highway 101 overpass just south of Eureka.</p><p>The temblor hit at 2:27 a.m. on a Saturday. At that instant, Mariani, then 32 and working at a Wells Fargo Bank in Eureka, was driving his Volkswagen Beetle toward his dad's place in Redwood City.</p><p>In the seat beside him was his wife, Marina. Asleep on the bench seat in back, amid pillows and sleeping bags, were twins Tommy and Marc, 9, and 4-year-old Gina.</p><p>As the VW approached the Thompkins Hill overpass, Mariani's little car shuddered.</p><p>“My wife says, ‘What's that!?' I said, ‘I think we're getting a flat tire.'”</p><p>Then he noticed the white lines on the pavement were rolling. Then, the drop.</p><p>Just as the VW passed onto a panel of the bridge deck, the southern end of that panel wiggled free and collapsed 30 feet to the ground. The Marianis' car fell with it.</p><p>“We were bouncing on it as it was dropping,” Tom Mariani said. The VW Bug hurtled downward and backward, then rolled onto its top and slid onto the ground.</p><p>When Mariani opened his eyes, he was upside down in near total darkness. The dashboard lights still were on. Mariani's dislocated left shoulder and fractured right wrist throbbed but he had to get moving and check on his family.</p><p>“The scariest thing was that I had to push my wife off of me to get out,” he said. “I was pretty sure she was dead.”</p><p>He pushed his way out of the car and turned toward the backseat. He found Gina lying halfway out of the broken side-rear window. Her forehead was badly cut by glass, but the child spoke to him.</p><p>The twins hung in their seatbelts, both unconscious but, to their father's relief, breathing. Mariani was nearly overcome when Marina opened her eyes and spoke.</p><p>Doctors at two hospitals in Eureka discovered later that morning that Marina was the worst hurt — bones up and down her right side were fractured. Mariani's eyes welled up and his voice choked off while he recalled that as the sudden terror on the bridge intensified, his wife had removed her seatbelt and tried to get to her children in the back of the VW.</p><p>He said while more composed, “The good news is that it's 30 years later and we all survived.”</p><p>All these years he has marveled that the VW drove onto that section of the bridge deck just as it collapsed, so the car rode it down. An instant later, the Bug would have free-fallen 30 feet.</p><p>He's grateful also that within seconds of the bridge failure, a Humboldt County deputy sheriff came onto the scene, summoned help and prevented other southbound vehicles from tumbling off the bridge deck and onto the Marianis' car.</p><p>After they healed, neither Tom nor Marina Mariani could bring themselves to drive for about a year. But today everybody's fine. Tom Mariani walks with a cane, but the nerve damage stems from an earlier car crash that badly injured him and killed two of his high-school buddies. That's a whole other story.</p><p>Marina Mariani works these days as a self-employed loan processor. All three of the Mariani children are married and doing well. Gina's 35 and teaching at Santa Rosa's Monroe Elementary. At 39, Marc is chief financial officer for a group of Sonoma County anesthesiologists. And Tom works at a Costco in Minden, Nev.</p><p>Tom Mariani is retired from Exchange Bank and writing poems about all sorts of things, certainly the astonishing ups and downs of the human experience.</p><p>If not for this detour</p><p>Where would</p><p>The road of life taken them?</p><p>Because of it,</p><p>Where are they now?</p><p>Such is life.</p><p>Staff columnist Chris Smith can be reached at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.</p>