As it turns out, the home and subdivision were built atop an abandoned mine shaft, the remnants of a long-forgotten pyrite (a.k.a. "fool's gold") excavation operation dating to the World War I era.
No one was hurt in the sinkhole collapse, and it quickly became the subject of much speculation. Not to belittle the fear and sense of impending loss no doubt felt by the owner of the home, but if you could "play God," and could make a sinkhole swallow up whoever or whatever you wanted it to, who or what would you consign to that dark fate?
If it was up to me, the first victim would be the gold-windowed building on the corner of Marietta Square on which the county's much-lamented Victorian-era Courthouse once stood. The modernistic gold-colored office building the county put up to take its place quickly became locally renowned for its ugliness, and I doubt few would mind if the earth were to open up beneath it and it fell all the way to China.
I'd open up an even bigger sinkhole under the county's 1970s-vintage courthouse/judicial complex a block to the east. Those buildings embody the worst in the fortress-style, viewer-unfriendly architecture of that era. Anything would be better - even a sinkhole!
And now let's hop on over to the far side of Marietta Square, to the blocks between Marietta Parkway and the CSX railroad tracks. With the exception of the historic William Root House, the Walgreen's and a couple of the restaurants, most of that stretch is occupied by an "Indigestion Alley" of eateries and a seemingly endless stretch of parking lots. Talk about blight! Let's call in a sinkhole!
But it's not just places we're targeting. It's attitudes, too. Take, for example, Cobb school board member David Banks' confounded comment to the MDJ after the board was sternly admonished by a Cobb grand jury for the hostility it has so often shown the public and its repeated efforts to do the public's business in private. He told the MDJ there was no need for the board to address the jury's comments.
"The grand jury on the civil side just doesn't mean anything," he said. "I don't put any credibility into it. Somebody on a grand jury can make any statement they want."
I've been covering Cobb County politics for 25 years and heard lots of memorable quotes from lots of memorable figures - Gov. Roy Barnes, late Mayor Joe Mack Wilson and County Commission Chairman Bill Byrne to name just a few - and I don't think I can recall an elected official here ever saying anything quite so ignorant. We don't want any harm to befall Banks, so we won't plant a sinkhole under him - but we'll open one up under his words and attitude.
I'm sure some readers along about now are thinking, "Hey, let's open up a sinkhole under the Cobb County School District Central Office on Glover Street!" Yes, that building (which Banks, incidentally, has called for replacing with fancier digs. So what if these are hard times?) seems to be hexed. Good people run for school board, promise to do the right things, then within months of being sworn in start to "go native" and think in "Educrat-ese," the language spoken by career educrats as they prepare to use your tax dollars to implement the latest fad cooked up by some Education Ph.D. from Mars who's never been in a classroom on a daily basis but wants to use your kids as the guinea pigs to prove his new pet theory.
Maybe if the board of education would just steer clear of Glover Street and maybe meet in a parking lot somewhere, with staff kept to a minimum, they could both dodge the hex and be better able to stick to their original - and correct - instincts about how to manage a school system. Plus - and this is the best part for the board - they wouldn't be anywhere around when the sinkhole opens on Glover!
Joe Kirby is Editorial Page Editor of the Marietta Daily Journal and co-author of the new "Then & Now: Marietta Revisited."
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