Mills Motors movd to this location in 1963, having first been at the northeast corner of Market and Commerce in 1926. Then, a new building was built across the street in 1929.
In 1936 the company built the building on Commerce Street (opposite the current WKPT studios). Several years ago, you could still see the Mills Motors sign painted on the back of this building.
Harry Mills Volkswagen opened on the new Stone Drive in 1964.
WJHL’s top show that year was Dallas, just behind ABC’s Dynasty
I ran across this at an estate sale. It’s 7″ x 10″ with 55 pages and some b&w images. Published in 1987 by Overmountain Press. It contains text, statistics and full index.
J. Fred Johnson & Co. was on the corner of Broad and Center Streets in downtown Kingsport. My family didn’t shop there. We tended more toward Belk’s or Penney’s. However, in J. Fred’s, there was a roasted nuts kiosk at the bottom of the escalator that always carried roasted, salted jumbo pecans. A quarter’s worth would do me for an hour or so. For me, that’s a fine memory.
The Christmas Club was a fairly common deal in the ’60s. This booklet even has a couple of pages where you could add, in very small letters, a list of your loved ones and the loot they’re going to get with your Christmas Club accumulation.
It was still going strong when I began working in ’67, after I returned from my stint in the Air Force. I think I may have set up an account once. I didn’t make a lot of money then and was generally happy just to cover my expenses.
Checking through an estate sale, I saw this and at first I thought it was just a matchbook, then I looked a little closer and this is what it actually is:
Dalton’s Men’s and Women’s Clothing opened in 1956 as Dalton’s Men and Boys Clothing. The original building had a small parking lot to the rear. I would occasionally park there after hours when I was pulling a late shift at WKPT radio. A later renovation subsumed that area.
The store was owned by Maurice and Dot Dalton. They added the women’s section in the 70s. I cannot recall when the store closed.
Back in the 1950s and earlier, these folding fans from the U(sher) O(rlando) Colson Company in Paris, Illinois, were quite the thing. There were dozens of designs, but this one caught the eye of the management of Broadstreet Furniture Company, telephone 150.
I can’t remember if this was a feature of the first or second iteration of Kingsport Grocery Company. The owners/managers valiantly tried to make a go of the restaurant, but it just didn’t have legs. I fondly remember Benedictine and brandy on a Saturday afternoon…a long time ago.
No mud, no lotus.
In 1963 this location at 1017 West Stone Drive was a spanking new Howard Johnson’s. By 1970 it was a Best Western/Tennesse Motor Lodge, then in 2002 it was Westside Inn. Now it’s off to the dustbin…
The Original Cheers! Funeatery, operated by Funeateries of Johnson City, came to Kingsport in 1987 and exited in the early 2000s (if you know the date this restaurant actually closed, please leave a comment. thank you). The Johnson City location closed in 1997.
When Cheers! came to Kingsport, it occupied a location formerly housing Ciatti’s Italian Restaurant and Bee Bop’s – a theme restaurant.
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 