Author Archives: Bob Lawrence

About Bob Lawrence

artist, photographer, reader, animation fan, jazz listener, poet who dislikes rhyming

Coming Down!

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wardsfeed

It looks like this old building on the corner of East Main and Cherokee Streets is coming down…literally.

Back in the 50’s, this building was mostly Ward’s Feed Store & Hatchery.  There were some other businesses downstairs and apartments upstairs.  I delivered the newspaper to a lady who lived in one.  She always had a snuff stick in her mouth.  But she always paid her subscription on time (I collected weekly for the paper delivery).

It appears that there are condemnation notices on the whole building, but only the back portion is blocked off.

Google in Kingsport

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google

I saw this going in on Sunday afternoon and, for a moment, I felt a faint quiver of excitement, then I remembered that the City was having a Google enterprise workshop on Monday (8/13/18).  That’s what the people in the background are doing: loading in chairs for the event.  Anyway, it was kind of different, though.

Older Huddle Sign

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olderhuddlesign

Much faded now, this is an earlier Huddle Electric Sign, possibly from when Kyle Huddle had this building constructed in 1947.  Just barely visible is a image of a late 40s Bendix dryer.

Side note: when this building officially opened on May 16, 1947, there was a beauty salon on the second floor.  It was operated by Mrs. R. S. Owens, who had opened the first beauty salon in Kingsport, on Boone Street, in the mid-20s.

In this new salon, she had seven operators ready to curl your hair: Lillian Ford, Audry Hale, Kay Wilkes, Minnie Curtis, Nelle Miller, Jerry Bevins and Beulah LeRoy.

A cold wave was $35.

Incidentally, Kyle Huddle had installed Kingsport’s first Electric Eye Automatic Door to this new appliance/photography/film/boat store.  I remember it.  It was, by today’s standards, pretty clunky, but it was quite the novelty.

Huddle was a film enthusiast, also.  He was no Virgil Q. Wacks (Wacks shot film of businesses for his TV show; Huddle shot vacation and family footage).

(source: a May, 1947, article in the Kingsport Times/newspapers.com)

Huddle Electric Sign

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huddlesign

A sudden re-emergence of an old sign.  Kyle Huddle built this building in 1947, moving from his previous location on Broad Street (he started out on Shelby Street).  I was never introduced to him, but I knew him by sight.  He was short and ageless.

He and Clifford Sanders, a lawyer, started Tennessee Cable Television Corporation, said to be the second-oldest cable TV company in the United States, in 1951.

According to Brianne Wright, Kingsport City Archivist, he had an 87-year stay on this good Earth, from 1904 to 1991.

Side note: the parking lot on which I was standing when I took this picture was, when I was a kid, an empty foundation filled with water.  Mom and I would go by it on our way to the library, then at the corner of Shelby and Center.  There was a fence, but you could look in.  I always wondered if there were fish down there.

 

Bennett & Edwards Insurance

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letter

Carl Swann, who gave this to me <thank you, again!>, said this copper alloy letter opener belonged to his grandfather.  It’s 8 inches long, slightly over 1 inch wide at the handle end, weighs 23 grams and is a little over 1 mm thick (that’s inconsistent, but I didn’t want to go to all the trouble of spelling “millimeter”).

Copper letter openers are still top-drawer specialty items today, but I think this was early B&E, maybe mid-30s.

Broad Street, 1946

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broadstreet

Summer, 1946.  Looking toward Church Circle.  The movie playing at the State Theatre is “The Enchanted Forest” (Maltin gives it 2-1/2 stars), released in December, 1945.

The war had been over for a year.

This is a real photo postcard (RPP).  EKC paper (available from 1939 – 1950).