Wall casts a long shadow

Ronald Reagan being unavailable, the time perhaps has come to call upon Roger Waters to sort out this business of The Wall. The rock opera released under that name precisely 30 years ago by Waters’ Pink Floyd still sells, a symbol of progressive music’s rise. The other wall, made of real bricks and mortar and just as well-known here, still stands, having risen in 1971, a symbol of how things sometimes don’t get done around here.

Erected by the city alongside a structure owned by Paradiso Properties at 329 W. Main St., Waynesboro’s Wall overlooks a pedestrian mall with every ounce of portent neglected masonry can muster, as if to say, “Go ahead, pal, take a chance. I’m feeling kinda wobbly.” The Wall is a perfect companion to a pedestrian mall, like a hit man for a witness against the mob.

Vice Mayor Frank Lucente says The Wall, somehow, became a city problem in the 1970s, a thing he contends never should have happened, and we are compelled to agree, given the city’s relentlessly remarkable record of efficiency in responding to problems of this sort. Hey, how about a greenway? Well, give the city 10 or 20 years. Tear down a wall? Where do people think they are, East Berlin? This kind of thing just can’t happen overnight.

So last April, a city work crew tore down some bricks from The Wall. The public works department had deemed the structure unsafe. Gee, do you think? And then the work stopped. What? You wanted the whole thing down? Well, that’s going to cost extra. And so The Wall stands.

Perturbed by this, merchants took their case to the City Council on Monday. Councilwoman Lorie Smith remarked on the refreshing unity of the speakers. Councilwoman Nancy Dowdy said she was disappointed that the demolition of The Wall had not yet happened. Lucente said the problem grows more bothersome each year.

So The Wall persists in just standing there rather than crumbling to rubble, then leaping into the back of a truck and driving its shattered self off somewhere (who cares where?) never to be seen again. Here’s an idea: How about tearing it down, the whole thing, we mean.

Officials say there are structural implications to consider since a section of The Wall links to the Paradiso building. Again, maybe it’s more crazy talk, but we’ve heard tell of engineers who can figure out these sorts of things, something to do with protractors, compasses, rulers, blueprints, etc. People build roads, canals, bridges, walls even. Surely they bring down the latter without turning Earth off its axis.

The city manufactures excuses the way Invista once did nylon, in long, winding spools.

Here is a metaphor for Waynesboro, a wall that stands while others muse in its shadows over what to do about it and tumbleweeds roll through a downtown. The Wall’s existence can be saddled neither on this council nor that body’s previous incarnation. Its continued presence, though, is another matter.

The council has much to do. Tearing down the wall at 327 West Main – and doing it now — will be an indicator that the council is perhaps preparing to dismantle the other unseen walls that block the River City’s rise from ashes of its own devising. The council should start by giving us a date for when The Wall will fall or be gone. We’ll anticipate that day and celebrate it. In the meantime, The Wall’s stain grows.