Oi! Who's 'dat walkin' on me bridge? I don't know how I got there the night before, or where the scratches on my face and the traffic cone came from. All I knew was that my head hurt from another night of vigorous drinking. I awoke from my slumber around 7am or so and for some reason decided to stay awake. I picked up my sleeping bag from the metal grate that had been my bed that night and packed my backpack into some semblance of carrying order, while being careful not to step on the twenty or so people also sleeping in the room.

I could hear Screw and Demona telling jokes and laughing in the next room. I was about to join them, but MAN I had to pee! So I walked back over to the grate and a split second before I was in sight of relief, the "man in blue" passed right under me. I guess I should explain... It was the best squat we ever had. One of Portland's earth quake proof, state of the art bridges that some brilliant mind had the imagination to open up and put to other uses. About 1/4 mile long, it contained around 150-200 "rooms" (basically for workers to access parts of the bridge for repairs) accessible by six grates, three on either end, about 8 feet off the ground.

A few nights previous, some of the punks staying at the squat got into an altercation with another squatter (some stories say he was spouting off racial shit, some say it was about rigs being left around, or just a heated argument fueled by beer, I don't know, I wasn't there) which ended up with him being beaten, stuffed out a grate 50ft. off the ground, and beaten again. He crawled a half mile to a store with, I hear, a broken spine among several other broken bones. No question of why the cops were there that morning. Before going to sleep we loosened the bolts on one of the previously locked grates for quick escape if need be.

So this cop passed by mere inches beneath my manhood, and mere seconds from a much deserved "golden shower". "Oh SHIT!" "Ohshit-ohshit-ohshit!" was all I could think. I ran around waking everyone and quieted Screw and Demona. We just sat against the far wall watching the grate and listening to the conversation below. It appeared that there was only one cop and one construction worker. I heard the cop ask the worker for keys to the grate ( we had bypassed the lock and undid the bolts for obvious security reasons). Lucky us, He had forgotten the keys! Then something happened that shouldn't have... The cop pushed up on the grate, but it somehow caught on the bolt threads. It SHOULD have flopped right open! "All right, we know you're in there!", "You fuckers better come out right now, or your in DEEP SHIT!". "FUCK!".

The cop started talking to the other guy some more and tried the grate again. Our luck was great that day as the grate again failed to give. We just sat quietly, listening. We couldn't hear the conversation for a while, but then we heard their voices inside the bridge a few rooms away (the "rooms" are set up weird, so not every room is connected to every other room, making it a maze of sorts. It'd be nearly impossible to find the room we were in). Twenty minutes later we heard them back on the ground. The cop was thoroughly irate from getting dirty inside the bridge "This is your last chance! Come down here RIGHT NOW!!" We just looked at each other. Fuck that!

After a few minutes he takes out his radio, part of the conversation was muffled, but I remember "...and there's Punk Rockers inside the bridge... No, Not UNDER it, INSIDE it... But they refuse to some out.. No, I tried, they just wont come out!" He sounded like a pouty child when told it's bedtime. We heard the word "Back-up" and started worrying. (I still can't believe he used the word "Punk Rockers". That always made a great drinking tale in later days.)

So we hear this frustrated cop trying to explain where the place was, failing egregiously, they decide to meet at a nearby store. -silence-

We tried to decide what to do... Was it a clever trap to get us to come out so they could nab us, or just a dumb cop? Should we go deep inside the bridge and wait it out (thus taking the chance of getting SEALED inside), or should we drop out and make a break for it?

John steps near the hole "piggy... Hello piggy, piggy, piggy?" more silence. An excellent action for a difficult situation. The next move was to decide who goes first. After bickering awhile, I throw my pack down, jump and look around a few seconds... It was clear. So we all pile out and run down the hill to the next bridge. We sat there a few minutes, straightened out our packs and divided bus fair for each other. We all want to the bus stop and got on the bus downtown, with no problems.

On the way downtown we saw 6 or 7 cop cars heading to the squat...

A happy escape, but a sorrowful ending. The squat has been closed since, with new bolts & barriers on the grates making it impossible for re-entry.

We all left for Eugene that day for "Resist & Exist", but that's another story.



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