Even before Merriam artist and illustrator Thomas Gieseke brought the Independence Avenue Bridge to life last year, the overpass was a local folk hero to many around Kansas City.
The bridge has a fan page on Facebook with more than 20,000 followers and multiple accounts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The bridge was emblazoned on T-shirts, and one person even got a tattoo on his arm of the structure's caution sign.
Then, Gieseke immortalized it on canvas.
"They have a funny sense of humor in the Northeast," Gieseke said. "This bridge is their version of 'America’s Funniest Home Videos.'"
The old railroad bridge is notorious for foiling unsuspecting drivers who attempt to navigate their too-tall semitrucks under its 12-foot span. When trucks get stuck, the internet erupts with glee.
"Imprudent truck drivers try to defy the laws of physics and jam their over-sized trucks through this under-sized bridge," Gieseke said. "The bridge is a concrete beast, though. It will always win."
A truck-eating monster
Gieseke is known for his paintings of surreal landscapes full of fantastic creatures and frolicking monsters.
"My art is whimsical with the proper amount of terror mixed in," Gieseke said.
After he posted on Facebook his anthropomorphized version of the bridge as a truck-eating monster, he knew he had a hit on his hands. The post was shared more than 3,000 times and the painting became so popular that he's been selling prints and T-shirts ever since.
"I had absolutely no idea that it would take off like this, and I don't have any vain delusions that it's about me or my art," Gieseke admitted. "It's about the bridge, people have a love-hate relationship with this bridge."
Gieseke had been kicking around his vision of the truck-hungry traverse for years.
"I remember one time seeing a truck that had clunked its head trying to go underneath the bridge," he said. "And I may have seen a report in the news about where another truck got stuck. So I just started sketching this thing out and this was just a whim."
Independence Avenue Bridge has caused truck drivers problems for decades. But it may have feasted on its final truck.
Workers installed in February a new warning curtain system on both sides of the legendary link to let inattentive drivers know their vehicle may be too tall to pass under.
"There's this sort of sick schadenfreude that they have over there in the Northeast," Gieseke said. "I can't imagine the embarrassment that a driver faces when they hit the thing — sparks and concrete chips are flying, and then they're stuck."
The bridge, built in 1912, is owned by the Kansas City Terminal Railway and allows hundreds of trains to cross over Independence Avenue without blocking traffic. Because of the cost, raising the bridge isn't really an option, city officials have told the media.
Instead, the new curtain, made out of 26 high-density plastic rods hanging from a horizontal metal beam, will chime when a truck hits them.
Gieseke was dubious. He wondered if the new alert system will be loud enough to warn distracted truck drivers.
"Does this make enough racket to alert the driver?" Gieseke asked. "If he's got Dave Dudley playing 'Six Days on the Road' on his stereo, he might not hear it when he's crashing into that curtain there."
Yet it took less than a week for the curtain to curtail its first truck fatality.
Gieseke, nevertheless, said he'll keep on trucking.
"I'm going to die with a brush in my hand,” the painter said. “I can't do anything else. I won't do anything else.”
