It was a first, or at least the first as far as I can remember. Members of our small city conspired to host a magical few weeks of Winter Wonderland festivities on our town’s square, culminating in a countdown and drop at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
They installed the ice skating rink in November, on the corner of South and West Park Square, along with the usual garlands, red-velvet bows, and twinkling snowflake lights on each lamp post between Atlanta and Church Streets. The charming attraction, a real life ode to the Peanuts special, entertained us until December when unseasonably warm weather kept the ice from staying frozen. It had to be shut down as a matter of public safety.
“More of a paddling pool than an ice skating rink,” we laughed. Someone made a comment online, “I’ll grab my inflatables and a pitcher of margaritas and meet you there!”
After a muggy Christmas and a week of relentless rain, I had never felt so grateful for a crisp, clear night, and an excuse to wear my long winter coat.
A few minutes before 10 o’clock on New Year’s Eve we walked up to the Square with our hands in our pockets, marveling at the weather, the crowds of families, and the unusual police presence.
“I heard there are snipers on six buildings.”
“Really? Well, I’m not surprised because it looks like the whole of the MPD has hunkered down in the Baptist Church parking lot.”
“Oh, look! Putt-putt!”
“Did you see that the coffee shop has a line fifty feet out the door?”
Restaurants served beer and champagne from tents on the streets. Families camped out in folding chairs in the park. A couple danced a cramped honky-tonk under the shared cover of a sleeping bag wrapped around their shoulders; they looked like a parachute with four left feet.
On the corner of North Park Square and East Park Square there was a white tower hoisting a large green cube, emblazoned with the city’s new logo, a well-meaning but unattractive emblem conceived by local do-gooders in attempt to make our town seem like a more amenable tourist attraction and not just a cloister of oddly persistent mom-and-pop shops.
From the terrace of the Strand Theatre the cube was in perfect line-of-sight. I asked my friend who was making me a whiskey soda, “So, what’s the story with the cube? Are they going to drop it at midnight? ‘Cube Drop Twenty Sixteen’?”
“There’s a man in there.”
“A man?!”
“Yea,” he nodded.
“He must be freezing.”
We mosied back down to the park. I sipped my cocktail from a plastic cup. The Whiskey Gentry fiddled a rosy rendition of Radiohead’s Creep and wrapped up their set with Auld Lang Syne. Then with six tumblers of bubbly in our hands, my friends and I pushed our way through the cold and anxious crowd until we were back under the bright bulb lights of The Strand where we had a better view of the looming green cube.
“10, 9, 8, 7…”
“Happy New Year, darling.”
“…6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!”
And then the most miraculous thing happened. There was a widespread state of confusion.
Indeed! There was a man — a half-naked man in shiny gold pants — descending from the bottom of the green cube. His muscles gleamed in the soft glow of electric light. His hair seemed so perfectly coiffed. He swung and contorted himself into marvelous poses as he hung on ropes from the sky.
Children giggled. Grown men scowled.
“What is it?”
“Why…it’s a man!”
“What is he doing?”
“I… I’m not sure…”
“Wow…”
If there was music playing we couldn’t hear it. There was a supernatural silence and then the slow, growing wave of commotion.
It was then that a young man with a headband in his hair leaned towards us with an expression of victory on his face and began chanting, “USA! USA! USA!”
Now you should know that there’s a Facebook Group: the Marietta City Neighborhood Group. It’s a sort of unofficial, ongoing town hall comprised of more than nine thousand people who may or may not live within the city limits. It’s the most prominent sounding board for all matters of opinions.
As I sat on a stool at the only pub in town, watching folks hoard the lone bartender, hungry for anything to hold in their hands that might give them the courage for war or romance, I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the reactionary comments:
“2016 came in like a big gay wrecking ball!”
“We should have dropped an egg from a Big Chicken!”
“I thought it was gay. And lame.” “More like lamé.”
“If you want to see something different for next year you should volunteer…”
“Nut drop 2016! #nudedude”
One thread quickly ballooned to 123 individual comments either defending the planning committee, suggesting alternative items to drop (It should have been a Lockheed jet! Or, a giant donut!), or making sly sexual jokes at the young man’s expense.
Today as I labor over hot pots of hoppin’ john and collard greens, my mind is bubbling over with questions:
Was this an artistic interpretation of Baby New Year? Or, a nod to Rocky Horror?
How is the young man who was dropped from the ball handling this public examination of his character? Is he a member of Cirque du Soleil? How long was he out there in the cube? Was he very cold?
Somewhere is the poor fool who proposed this idea cowering in the corner of a pine-paneled study, rocking back-and-forth under a desk, lamenting the decision that provoked our decidedly unprogressive community to chaos? Or, are they having a good laugh?
If they had dropped a half-naked woman in a gold lamé burlesque costume would anyone be complaining or making rude conjectures about her orientation on the internet?
This, my friends, is the stuff of legends. Marietta, Georgia: the city that raised Joanne Woodward, the resting place of JonBenét, home to The Big Chicken and the Gone With the Wind museum, one of the “Top 25 Places to Retire,” and now the city that dropped a half-naked dude out of a box on New Year’s Eve.
Someone wise once said, “The way you spend your New Year’s Eve is how you’ll spend the rest of the year.” I hope we’ll spend 2016 together, Marietta, in the shiniest pants we can find.
