Tintown and Birdtown sat directly across the Wabash River from one another. Neither was worth spit, as far it goes. Poor as poor gets and worthless as worthless gets. Being born there was a straight, quick path to nowhere. Even the people living there thought that. The folks in the two towns hated each other with a passion.

The Tintowners felt that the Birdtowners thought they were better than them. The evidence would normally agree except that the Birdtowners were only a couple of rpms from dead still. These two places ranked last and dead last in every category the government could find statistics for. The schools would ask,” Can you read? Can you write? You’re hired”.

Lo and behold, the state gave them enough money from the gas taxes to build a bridge. No one knew why there should be a bridge. Most of the residents of the county avoided the two towns like the plague, which they felt they might get going there. The folks of Tintown and Birdtown certainly didn’t want to cross over to the other. Still, free money.

They hired an engineering firm to design the bridge. That was the last and only thing they were able to agree on. They fussed about everything else. Finally, they started building according to they’re own plans. That was a problem.

The two different crews met in the middle of the Wabash River. One crew was a couple of feet higher than the other. This was going to make for one heck of a bump. The Tintown part was the lower of the two. How were they going to get up to the higher part? The Birdtown drivers weren’t too unhappy. They could drive fast and sort of fly over the bump. They figured they won this round.

The Tintown men got together and paved a long ramp to even the bridge out. that should have solved the problem. It didn’t because this was Tintown and Birdtown. The men in Birdtown thought they were being tricked some way. They built a ramp to put the bridge even higher than it was. The bridge was soon getting completely out of hand. The state decided to make a move. It hired Squire Davis to arbitrate the dispute.

Squire held the hearings in both towns. No new evidence or remarks were made in the second hearing. It was word for word, argument for argument, scream for scream the same. Deputy Joe Bob actually settled the issue when he asked why either side would use the bridge.

Huh?

“That’s right”, Joe Bob went on to say, “neither of you would ever cross the dang bridge. You would drive twenty miles out of your way to avoid entering the other town. You do that now. Why would this here bridge change that?”

No one had an answer for that. There the bridge sits. One side higher than the other. The two towns are happy. They have a bridge. the state is happy. They have no maintenance costs. Squire Davis was happy. He didn’t have to be in either town again.