Man, there is nothing like a good building implosion.

The Paramount Theater, years ago, that was a good one. My photos prove that dust billowed down the street in fine fashion. Then there was the Montgomery Ward building, which stood where Capital Square is now. Big, big audience showed up for that one; early on a Sunday morning, I think it was. Not a pope-sized crowd, but more than you get for any downtown parades.

Ah, the anticipation, the noise, the unreal look of it – construction can be impressive, but destruction, you have to admit, is exciting.

Or, if you want to take a higher view, the demolition of a building forces us to stop and think about its place in our lives. When they ignite the charges in the Knapp and Storms residence halls next week on the Iowa State University campus, lots of the people watching there and via TV replays are going to be running through all kinds of memories of things that happened in those collapsing rooms. Most of which we really don’t need to hear about.

It’s a magic trick made real, the disappearance of a place where you or others like you once walked and talked and slept in perfect safety. Hmm, you think; something so solid and reliable can go away just like that. Amazing.

Unfortunately, destroying buildings is not quite the pure thrill it used to be. In our minds, we can still see the twin towers coming down. Oh my God, we thought that day, they can do that to us? Shocking.

But we shouldn’t have needed 9/11 to realize how history’s course is plotted. The past hundred years or so have been a matter of making points with explosions. Shots fired from rifles, hand grenades, mortars, artillery pieces, naval guns, one ingenious method after another of wreaking havoc from the air, and now the age of the suicide bomber.

But demolition is different. It’s a matter of progress — or just America’s endless dissatisfaction — and nobody gets hurt. We enjoy the spectacle and go back to work.

One does wonder why an engineering school slaps together buildings that are only expected to stand for 30 or 40 years. Or why it constructs a basketball arena on a flood plain.

But shortsighted planning is another hallmark of human history, along with our extreme interest in gunpowder, so let’s not worry about that, either. Let’s plant those charges and move on.

“I don’t get why lighting a fuse is such a big deal,” my daughter said as her brothers happily competed to set off fireworks on the Fourth of July. “Guys like to have the power to make things happen,” I told her.

Hitting a ball, steering a car, sending a bullet toward a target, it’s all the same thing. Being the cause of an effect, that’s what counts.

And when the effect is the reduction of a big, solid building to rubble, that is one big firecracker.