Call it serendipity, yin-yang, or an accident of timing, but on the same day that work began on the new Touchdown Jesus, the old Peach on a Pole fell.
Touchdown Jesus stood in Monroe, Ohio, the Peach on a Pole in Byron, Georgia. Both were titan-sized icons built to grab the attention of interstate travelers. Both were destroyed by violent weather: a bolt of lighting fried Jesus in June 2010, a freak windstorm toppled the Peach in April 2011. Both went with a bang; neither was expected.
There doesn’t seem to be a link between the two, although you never really know.
A giant apple on a pole would have been a more biblical fruit to fall than a peach — but maybe Touchdown Jesus was in fact Peach-Picking Jesus, frozen in the act of plucking a delicious Flavorcrest or Ruston Red? We may need a real-life Robert Langdon to figure it out, or our ignorance could set ourselves up for another headline-grabbing calamity in 2012.
And yes, we noticed: the new giant Jesus holds his arms in a different position — more like he’s telling a whopper of a fishing story. “You should’ve seen the lightning bolt that hit the last guy!”