When we first moved here, my wife worked in a building called Tower Place. It was the tallest building on that part of Peachtree because it was three stories. Now, of course, it's dwarfed by buildings all around it, and they don't call it "Tower Place" anymore but "Waffle House."
When the Hotel Niko went up next door, people thought you had to be crazy to put a hotel there, what with the chickens and all. (There used to be a poultry processing plant next door, and people said you had to be crazy to process chickens on Peachtree because it was so far away from everything, you had to drive all day just to get there.) I ran across Mr. and Mrs. Niko themselves once. I was running the Peachtree Roadrace - these days it's a big deal, but back then there was hardly anybody running it. My number was "2." They thought you had to be crazy to have a road race down Peachtree in those days, what with having to climb over the barbwire when you came to Johnson's farm and jump over the creek that used to run down West Paces Ferry.
I met Mr. and Mrs. Paces themselves once at a Braves game. Hardly anybody showed up for the games in those days, and in fact, me and West had to take turns playing outfield because they didn't have enough players. I told West to his face he had to be crazy putting up a ferry across the Chattahoochee, which in those days wasn't more than a trickle, especially since the steam engine hadn't been invented yet, but West just shrugged. I guess it just goes to show.
After the game (I scored a double in the third inning. In those days, people thought you have to be crazy to have three innings, it wasn't til later they added a fourth.) the Paces took us to the Sundial, the fancy rotating restaurant downtown that looks like a blue flying saucer landed on a grain elevator. What most people don't know is it really was a grain elevator, and people said you had to be crazy to stick a grain elevator out in the middle of nowhere that way, and double crazy to stick a rotating restaurant on top of that, but I guess it just goes to show. Now, of course, the Sundial doesn't seem as tall as it used to, and now it's not a restaurant anymore but a Jiffy Lube, but in those days you could see all the way from the Sundial to the Pacific Ocean, and everyone said you had to be crazy to put an ocean all the way over there where no one would be able to reach it, and you could also see Six Flags, which in those days of course, was just Flag, and people wondered what they had to be thinking to put a flag out there when no one was going to see it unless they were in the Sundial, which you'd have to be crazy to go to in the first place, except for the fact it got you so high above the street and all the noise from the goat farm.
I guess it goes to show.
