Just Another Saturday Afternoon

In 1864, Sherman's Federal troops fought Confederate troops led by General Johnston right here in Morningside.  Being spatially challenged, I have a lot of trouble following the description that the neighborhood association posted years ago, but our neighbor Scott took this photo of a map at the Atlanta History Center, showing the Confederate and Federal entrenchments.  When Iain was working on the Boy Scout Eagle projects on Morningside Presbyterian's grounds, he said that they thought there was a Civil War-era entrenchment line there.

Yesterday afternoon most of my neighbors were watching the UGA-LSU football game, but someone posted a question on the neighborhood Facebook page, asking what was going on at the end of the street.  Our street is not very long so it seemed to me it would be pretty straightforward to figure that out.  But at the Cumberland Road end of the street, a police car was blocking access and I thought I could see more blue lights up toward North Highland.  This was distinctly unusual.

It turned out that a neighbor up the street had unearthed something unusual while planting a rose bush earlier that afternoon.  The police officer who had responded to the 911 call was by then making sure that no one went past Morningside Presbyterian toward North Highland.  He told us it was a World War II- or Vietnam War-era mortar, and the Atlanta Police Department's SWAT Team and bomb squad were there now.

We saw the man in the protective suit -- the kind of suit you'd want to be wearing, if you had to move something explosive -- carrying a box and a pole back behind the house, and later he came out.  The police officer said the device was probably in the box.  Later we saw the man in the suit without the box -- you can just barely make him out in the distance, between the two vehicles with blue lights -- and the police officer said okay, that was it, the street would be open soon.

All of which begs the question of how a World War II- or Vietnam War-era mortar came to be buried in the backyard of one of our neighbors.  Tom asked me this morning if they had checked with a metal detector to see if there were any more.  I told him I didn't know.  But it does raise a substantial question about the wisdom of going in with a backhoe knocking down houses on the street.  Just a thought.