rekkidblogga

Pardon our progress

Each morning just before I get to work, I pass Atlanta's main Greyhound bus terminal. When the '96 Olympics hit town, the city forced Greyhound to move away from Centennial Olympic Park, which is close to the true heart of downtown, farther south to the old part of the city off Forsyth Street where the sort of folks who have to take buses for long distance transportation wouldn't mingle with the sort of folks who party at Olympic events.

I take Forsyth to work because it's a little-used shortcut that allows me to skate right to the newspaper offices, located in the older part of the city. And every day when I drive the route I remember when Rich's was still Atlanta's pride, our hometown department store, located centrally downtown at Forsyth and Alabama. My mom would bundle up my niece and me as kids back in the '70s and we'd hop on the bus right up the street from our house in East Point and ride into Atlanta for a day of shopping downtown, a thrilling adventure for us which always culminated with a stop at the Rich's bakery where we both got those delicious iced smiley-face cookies in pink and yellow, wrapped in wax paper.

Each Thanksgiving, after our early afternoon dinner when our cousin Marshall had driven up from Miami, we'd all pile onto the bus and ride up to Rich's Downtown at Forsyth to watch the Lighting of Rich's Great Tree. Back then, there were no celebrities brought in to sing, only local church and school choirs set up on the Forsyth Street Bridge which connected the old Rich's store with the newer store across the street. So you had to pick a side of Forsyth on which to stand and it was always packed to the gills with people on either side. Marshall would put me on his shoulders when I was a tiny girl so I could see, but the Great Tree itself, perched atop the bridge walkway, was visible throughout almost all of the city and when it was finally lit on the high note of "O Holy Night," the crowds on Forsyth cheered and clapped, singing along reverently with the lovely hymn as the black night turned a warm glow of white, red, green and gold.

But the folks who exit the buses at the Greyhound terminal off Forsyth Street these days don't know all that. All they know is that Atlanta, once The City Too Busy To Hate, welcomes them with a squalid mini-mart across the street, flanked by the infamous Magic City strip club. This morning, an elderly black man toting a tattered, faded light blue suitcase rounded the corner away from Forsyth as I turned onto the street. He headed north towards downtown Atlanta, moving instinctively in the direction of municipal growth and success.

posted by rekkidbraka @ 2:03 PM