A couple of items bobbed up at an area flea market mall.
About 5.5″ long. Blank on the other side. Sturdy, by golly.
This store was located in a row of shops that has long been demolished. It was on the land now occupied by a car washing operation. Kent Potts owned the store. The Jarman shoe brand is still being made, but the company in Nashville is now known as Genesco.
Coming down Industry Drive on a rainy day, I shot this view of Bays Mountain shrouded in clouds.
Yesterday (May 18), this building was completely gutted by fire.
It’s latest label had been as an IGA, before Food City opened their downtown location on the former Kingsport Press property. The IGA closed shortly thereafter. Earlier, it had been a White’s Supermarket, but it had been built as Oakwood Market #2 in 1949 and was the first of the grocery stores to make up what would be known as Supermarket Row, along Canal Street. Wallace Boyd, Sr. had come into Kingsport from Kentucky and had opened the first Oakwood Market in Greenacres in 1947 (this is from a story in a 1947 issue of the Kingsport Times).
The store in Greenacres had an “exotic” canned food section that mom and I would drop by and snicker at. Chocolate-covered grasshoppers and snails and the like. But, like some of the things you see in antique stores, they hadn’t moved in years.
Btw, when Oakwood #2 was built, it had a waterfall on top. It was a triangular structure over the middle of the building. At the top of this, say, 20′ waterfall was the Oakwood sign, painted by Carter’s Art Shop (I used to know a guy who did some of the painting), and under it, on either side, was a continuously-cycling flow of water down a simulated rock waterfall. Most amazing. It is the nature of water to go anywhere there’s an opening, so I suspect that it leaked.
World War II had ended a little over a year before this ad was published in the July 1946 Intermountain Telephone Company Telephone Directory for Kingsport, Gate City and Sullivan Gardens. Dobyns-Taylor was, in essence, priming the pump. Little did they know the flood of products that would soon wash over them.
This corner building, the red brick part, was once known as the Shaheen Building and home of the Palace of Sweets, owned by Charles Joseph, Sr., who had come here from Lebanon (the country). He and M.F. Kabool (of Iager or Iaeger WV) opened the Phoenix Restaurant here (302 East Sullivan) in 1927. It was remodeled in 1937, to much celebration in the local newspaper. Apparently, it was a quite well respected eatery.
It was still open in 1948, but I lose track of it after that. It wasn’t the open as the Phoenix in 1957-1959, when I lived downtown, but the large sign over the doorway was still there. Years ago, I asked my stepdad if he knew anything about the place (he’d been in Kingsport in the 30s) and he recalled staying in one of the rooms upstairs.
Down from the Phoenix…I think where the other red brick building is, was the Liberty Cafe (305 East Sullivan), also owned by Mr. Joseph. The building in the light tan brick was, in 1959, part of McKarem’s Department Store.
In 1947, the Phoenix Grill advertised aggressively in the paper that it sold beer by the case for off premise consumption…and they’d deliver!
I’m thinking that this key fob was a one-off to test the stamping machine. I hope it never got into circulation.
There’s nothing particularly special about this 3,5″ x 3.5″ ashtray. There were probably hundreds made during the two or so decades Skoby’s World was in business. The unusual thing is that it showed up in a sports equipment – clothing – antique store in downtown Pound (across from the Pixie – and don’t even come up to the ordering window with a cigarette!*).
*For the few of you who haven’t passed through Pound recently: there’s a handwritten sign by the ordering window at the Pixie warning cigarette-smoking citizens to keep away. Not smoking? Order away!
My buddy came up with this. He found it a some flea market. A reliable source tells me it’s from the 80s. WQUT and a certain fizzy drink maker’s local distributor had this balloon for events around the area. I was told that, maybe, 250 of these were made, so there’s a whole bunch of them still…wait for it…floating around. (faint laughter off)
It’s got a pin-and-butterfly-clasp on the back. No maker name or mark.
First Night, a project of Kingsport Tomorrow, was a deal back in the 90s. On New Year’s Eve, there were tents around the downtown area, with music and dancing, all with people as sober as all get out. I was elsewhere, but we did watch the fireworks at midnight.
Grubby, but unbowed. It’s kind of difficult to date this money bag. The downtown drive-in branch closed sometime in the 60s, maybe early 70s. It was on the corner of Clay and New Streets, across from where Chef’s Pizza is now. You can still see the traffic direction arrows for the drive-in lanes sunk into the concrete (they were originally filled with yellow concrete, but it’s mostly eroded away).
Storied history of this bank: established in 1916, as you can see. J. Fred Johnson was a VP in ’23 and President by 1931. In 1963, First NB of Kingsport and First NB of Bristol merged and sometime later the group became First NB of Sullivan County. In 1981, it became First Eastern NB; in 1982, it was First American Bank-Eastern and on and on It might be Regions Bank now.
The bag is 10.5″ x 6″. It really could do with a good washing, but that’s not going to happen. HIstoric integrity and all that.
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 