Our Youth Taken Over By Amazon: Remembering The Pontiac Silverdome

I have fond memories of the Pontiac Silverdome.

I used to live very close to the Pontiac Silverdome, in fact I remember my father loading my trail bike on his station wagon and driving me to the site of the Silverdome.

I may have lost some of you when I said station wagon, Google or DuckDuckGo it and you will see what I mean.

Before the Pontiac Silverdome was on that site there was a huge hill there that bikers, by that I mean people who owned motorcycles, would attempt to drive their trail bikes up that very high and steep hill, I did.

I also played my first football game on AstroTurf at the Silverdome as a senior in high school back in 1981.  Back then no high school and not many colleges had AstroTruf for their stadiums.  In fact I remember getting to go and practice on the University of Michigan’s AstroTurf field to get a feeling for playing on the material.

I then remember our bus pulling up to the Silverdome on a Saturday next to a very nice bus that had pulled in ahead of us.  As we disembarked from our school bus these very large men were disembarking out of their very nice bus.  Those very large men happened to be the San Francisco 49ers who were going to play the Detroit Lions the next day; that was pretty cool.

I also remember going to see the Rolling Stones on their first retirement tour at the Silverdome, yes they actually were going to hang it up back in the early 1980’s or it was a great marketing trick.  I even remember one of the warmup bands for the Stones was Santana.  Truth be told Santana’s set was much better than the Stones.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Well it appears the site of my younger days memories could be bought by Amazon.

What a fitting metaphor on how times just keep rolling on and how technology companies will someday take over everything and rule the world.

As the Stones say “Yes time, time, time is on my side, yes it is”, Mick that was just a lie because time is not on our side it is fleeting, remember that all you young whipper snappers!

Pontiac city officials announced yesterday that the tech super giant Amazon, is expected to develop the site of the Pontiac Silverdome into a distribution center as part of a $250 million project that the say will bring 1,500 jobs,.

City officials did say that a final decision on closing the deal is months away, but the plan details call for Amazon’s proposed delivery station to be operational by the third quarter of 2020.  An Amazon fulfillment center is expected to be running a year later.

Pontiac Mayor Deirdre Waterman in a statement said:

The former Silverdome site is an ideal location and Pontiac is poised with a ready workforce…Landing Amazon will bolster Pontiac's continued economic success and further our pipeline of pairing industry with talent.

The Silverdome was opened in 1975 and was not only home to the Detroit Lions but did you know that the Silverdome was also once the home of the Detroit Pistons.

Good luck to Pontiac, they need a break and this would help the city and more importantly their residents greatly.

As Bob Seger might say and certainly I would:

I woke last night to the memories of younger
How far off I sat and wondered
Started hummin' a song from 1982
Ain't it funny how the night moves
When you just don't seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves

Yes Bob strange not only how the night moves but how our lives move on.

That made me think of another Bob Seger song and how fitting their words are to this walk down memory lane.

I was eighteen
Didn't have a care
Working for peanuts
Not a dime to spare
But I was lean and
Solid everywhere
Like a rock

My hands were steady
My eyes were clear and bright
My walk had purpose
My steps were quick and light
And I held firmly
To what I felt was right
Like a rock

“Thirty Eight” years now
Where'd they go?
“Thirty Eight”

I don't know
I sit and I wonder sometimes
Where they've gone

And sometimes late at night
When I'm bathed in the firelight
The moon comes callin' a ghostly white
And I recall
I recall

I will stop here.