>>8757490 LB
>GM. Moved to Marietta in mid-1980s and moved into the apt complex where that jet crashed into and killed a little girl. The runway was just off my building’s parking lot. First time a C-130 landed I was getting out of my car and dove underneath it I was so terrified! Loud as hell!!!
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/11/09/A-Navy-training-jet-whose-pilot-had-ejected-moments/1989626590800/
That was a terrible day. There were others; my late father knew some of these guys who were killed in '93, right before he retired from Lockheed (and fuck Martin, that merger just forced a bunch of California idiots who had no idea what the hell they were doing onto longtime Lockheed people, who detested them):
https://www.mdjonline.com/opinion/columnists/mdj-time-capsule-the-dobbins-crash/article_5b4646f0-b232-5af6-acd6-235cf46e1dce.html
Lived here all my life, so did my parents and grandparents. We all remember what a giant target this area was during the Cold War, with Cuba so close. So much changed after Rip Blair, Jimmy Carmichael and George McMillan somehow made the Bell Bomber Plant materialize on that old cow pasture land. They were great guys, just regular old boys, and they stood up and made that shit happen.
https://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/the-bell-bomber-plant-transformed-cobb-county/article_3ea6841f-d9f1-5bae-9c07-15021f0d9f70.html
The biggest houses in Marietta were turned into boarding houses that rented rooms in 8 hour shifts to WWII workers, and I know people who live in those houses. The population grew so insanely fast that it was tough to find a place to sleep. The town was ravaged by Sherman, then Reconstruction, then the Depression. At that point, everybody was just relieved to see anything at all, anything good, happen to it. People had really suffered, been without food unless they knew how to farm, no public money for anything at all. My mother's mother had to go to boarding school (at McEachern, which was a Berry College system, A&M school) just to obtain a high school education, because most state public schools only went through the 7th/8th grade in the early 1900s. People have no idea, the utter lack of any kind of anything in the South after the Civil War. It really didn't break until after WWII and not many people grasp that. The growth that I've seen in the last 10 years, though, this insane growth in the last few years especially, is something my grandparents wouldn't believe. You'd think somebody would have figured out that everybody doesn't necessarily HAVE to live in one concentrated area (hello, internet) but people are still stuck in the past. I've really enjoyed getting out and driving the old beater car around in the wonderfully open roads lately. And every day, I wish the family hadn't sold off the really old farm back in the 1960s. "Nobody would ever pay more than $1,000 an acre!" I have actually heard those words coming out of relatives' mouths. Spouse's family has major roads named after them, but they're not what anybody would call rich. Que sera, sera, I reckon.