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Back in July of 1997,
Turner Field's conversion from a "standard" stadium for the Olympics to a
"baseball-only" one for the Braves was complete. All that remained
was for the old Atlanta Fulton County Stadium to be knocked down to make
room for a new parking lot. Since my Mom is a huge Braves fan
and since I - being a guy - love to see stuff blow up, I actually talked
her into picking me up at 6am on a Saturday to see the spectacle. And I even
voluntarily woke up on time that morning!
It seemed that around a
thousand people were there by the time we got there - most of us were on a
bridge over the Downtown Connector, but many people sat in lawn chairs on
top of the IBEW building across the interstate from the stadium. The
crowd slowly swelled and vendors started working the crowds, selling
"special edition" Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspapers and coffee. It was strangely cool
for a July morning and the crowd seemed friendly enough. Folks
seemed to almost enjoy the camaraderie - after all, weren't we all idiots
for getting up that early on a Saturday? Slowly the anticipation
started to build as Atlanta cops shut down the Connector to protect
motorists from flying debris and the huge dust cloud to come.
The moment finally
came. I had expected to hear a warning siren or countdown or something, but
it just happened. I was saying something to my Mom when all of the
sudden a series of loud booms ripped through the crisp morning air. It sounded like a shotgun from where I was standing, but could be easily
felt in the ground. The bridge shook and the protective chain-link
fence rattled as thousands of tons of steel and concrete came tumbling
down. The demolition folks had placed charges in each of the
vertical supports (the thin white vertical lines around the perimeter of
the stadium in the pic below), so we were treated to what seemed like
three dozen charges that morning. |
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