tim’s thought property

Wow.
I am in shock.

There was a buzz humming from the talk of customers, employees and friends all weekend, waiting for this morning. In fact, there were a great many people who came out so early on a Sunday morning, even my good friend Mike Friesen from Springstien had called at 6:30, from one of the crowds to try to find us.
Fast on the heels of Saturday night, the beep of my alarm clock came. With Adam on the couch, and Marc and I sharing a single mattress on the floor, I woke up from not sleeping, to realize that it was morning, and I should be getting ready to get out to Empress to witness what I had hoped to be an enjoyable explosion. And I did, in a way.
We had parked the car in the FutureShop parking lot, thinking that we’d take a short jaunt to get to the Arena. However, there were police barricades to block off the specific un-safe blast radii. We had to walk up to St. Matthew’s Ave to get to the Home Depot parking lot instead. There was a steady stream of onlookers milling around the creek bed, in the lot and making their way to get a good view. As Marc and I ran on, we made our way to a decent site on the Home Depot property. With a secret sigh I glanced at the Chapters building, not more than a hundred meters away. To be on the roof would have been the most ideal, but it was in the first radius, the dangerous one, and the police kept it vacant.

__________
As we picked our way to the snowbanks, we were in a fairly large crowd of all ages. Families awake at the burgeoning dawn, elderly pairs, all touqed up. And littered throughout the crowd were various photographers, with their tripods and zoom lenses. People were set up all over, the lucky ones had spots on the display sheds, with their tripods all set up.

Chars, Rhea and Adam had found us after about ten minutes, and we were all still early for the blast.
Many other pockets of people were muttering about the time, and about the arena, each group sharing their own comedy among themselves. The sirens went off, and the camera men all became more alert. The various technicians on quads raced down Empress, and after a minute or two, the second siren went off.

There was a little pause then-
KRACK-KA-BOOM!!!

Although it wasn’t pictured, the bright yellow of the dynamite lit up the poles to which it was fastened to, and all of a sudden, the smoke and dust billowed outwards. I had slipped on the snowbank with perfect timing, for it looked like I was knocked over by the sound. Using Marc’s shoulder as a makeshift crutch, I stood again, and snapped. With a slow fall inwards, the frame gave way, and the north and south sides of the building had dropped. A couple of pigeons had taken flight before the blast and had circled round to roost once again on the rafters. As the crowd waited and stood, expecting to see the centre fall inwards, the dust slowly moved off westwards, towards the airport, I suppose. And as the dust gradually vanished, the frame centre still stood. The crowd, ever-faithful stood as well; but confused. Many of us thought there would be a second blast, to finish it off.

Sirens went off a second time, but something was wrong.
There was to be no second blast, and soon the police left their posts, and the crowd dispersed. Everyone trudged away, many muttering, many disappointed. The stubborn nature of it all made me chuckle. It was a definite Prairie attitude: to hang on, against all opposition. And that Arena held on. Near 10:30am, the remaining frame was wrapped with cable and pulled down by loaders and construction machines. The finale is by all means anti-climactic, and few were around to witness the demise.

___________
So as the crowd made its was back to parked cars, waiting beds and eventual breakfasts, I found myself wondering what I had really expected. The arena wasn’t a very large structure, the paper had said that the collapse would take three seconds (theoretically), and then all would have walked off in the same manner. Did I build up the significance of this in my mind too much? It was something different to do, and the first dawn I had seen for a while.
As we drove off, Marc put on Radiohead’s “Let Down”, which seemed to articulate the event.
Let down and hanging around/
crushed like a bug in the ground/
Let down and hanging around…

Oh, it turns out I’d rather the pun from the last post not be intended. It was not a blast. Not really.