DECATUR, Ga. -- The streetcar and its tracks were
fixtures in downtown Decatur for the first half of the twentieth century. Bubber Adams, a radio engineer with a documentarian's
instinct, shot it with his eight millimeter film
camera.
"It was 1946," said his granddaughter,
Allison Adams, who lives in her grandfather's old house south of downtown.
"And he had heard - he probably read it in the paper - that the street
cars were going to be shut down and taken out. So he wanted to capture them for
posterity."
Adams' family recently unearthed the footage, a rare
collection of color movies depicting Decatur in the late 1940s. Adams shot a
steam locomotive on the tracks that still bisect the city. A decade later,
steam trains would give way to diesel.
"It was several times a day that we could hear
the whistle as it approached the crossings," said Doug Adams, the
photographer's son.
The film also shows a fleeting glimpse of what used
to be the Decatur square-- which was all but
obliterated by the construction of MARTA. The film shows the façade of the
Decatur Theatre - which Doug Adams remembers showing double feature cowboy
movies on Saturday mornings.
Allison Adams says the theater building is gone now.
It was located on McDonough St., in what's now a parking lot next to the bar
called Eddie's Attic.
The Adams film's comic high point may be at Winnona Elementary School. That's where Bubber
Adams documented a football game between competing teams of leather-helmet
wearing seventh graders, buoyed by a very modestly dressed group of cheerleaders.
Portions of this footage first appeared in DecaturMetro.
Read more local Decatur news here.
Follow Doug on Twitter: @richardsdoug
