JBR Buick GMC

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jbrknife

A 2.25″ pen knife.  These were generally given out to customers or potential customers who were a little above the ordinary “hearty handshake” group.  I’ve received several of these over the years, not from auto dealers, mind you.  The blades will cut butter, once or twice.  After that, the joins begin to decouple.
JBR, owned by the Belle family for three decades,  was absorbed by Courtesy Chevrolet in 2010.
I did at least one remote broadcast from JBR on Lynn Garden Drive.  I was in the showroom, facing the street through those big windows.  It was a morning remote and business was slow. At one point, the manager came over and handed me five one-dollar bills.  “Tell ’em that the next five people who come in for a test drive will get a one-dollar bill,” he said, “that’ll bring some in.”
Sure.  I recall that one guy straggled in after I’d put out the word a couple of times.  The rest of the time, I could almost hear the crickets outside.

I can hear Daffy hissing, “Ingrateth!”

General Shale Brick Display

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generalshale

Back in 2011, before the police got touchy about people wandering around the old General Shale property (there had been a LOT of vandalism), I would walk over there with my camera and take pix of stuff lying about.  This is apparently a display showing the different colors that General Shale could product on exposed brick surfaces.  These are all stringers.  No headers are shown, so I don’t know if they were also treated or if these were just for decorator areas.

Center and Cherokee

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Now that Bank of Tennessee is breaking forth from the constraints of the past and is going to land a big new footprint, so to speak, on the half-block of land they own between Cherokee and Cumberland with Center Street frontage.  This is what that area looked like around 1975.

cherokeeandcenter

It’s got crappy resolution.  I was living in a, er, low-rent apartment at the time and was playing around with a Polaroid camera I’d bought somewhere.  Anyway, this shows the corner of Cherokee Street (see the Kingsport Camera Shop sign mid right?  That’s all been taken over by that other bank) and Center.  There was a service station there, and one across the street.  They used to everywhere, for some reason.   Like pharmacies now.
The tower just under the wires on the right is where the telephone company is.
Roberts Tire & Recapping occupies the buildings low in the picture.

CIrcle

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bankblotter

It’s always pleasant to come across a CI prefix on advertising.  The two-letter Ci (Circle) prefix – it was the two-letter, five number system – meant that you had an early phone (assigned to your residence or business).  I think Ci5 was very early because I don’t recall ever seeing a Ci4.  But I was a kid, what did I know… The two-letter, 5-number system was replaced by the 10-number system sometime in the 60’s.
This piece, a bank blotter (I think), is 7.5″ long and 3.75″ high.  My Colorblind Assistant (great program!) names the color as “Midnight Blue” (good oldie, too).

Rock on.

Holston River Bridge

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bridgeholstonrvrfull
“K.24 BRIDGE OVER HOLSTON RIVER ON U.S. 23, BETWEEN KINGSPORT AND JOHNSON CITY, TENN”

Verso: He (unreadable) Since I didn’t send that card from Knoxville I promised you, I will send you one today as we are in Johnson City having a swell time.  Marie

Mailed to Miss (?Nepall?) Rader, Route 2, Greeneville, Tenn.

PM: Johnson City August 10, 1945.

Work didn’t begin on Ft. Patrick Henry Dam until six years later.  The person who took this picture was probably in a boat or had water wings on or something.  This is looking south, more or less.

Hello, Bank!

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oldbank

Construction work brings to light the facade of a structure built in 1927 at 209 Broad Street.  The date is in the escutcheon above the remains of the front door. Originally, there were white columns on either side of the building, in front of the facade.

There was a building boom on Broad Street in 1927 and both Kingsport National Bank and this, The Farmers and Merchants Bank, opened up around June of that year.  In 1945, it became Sullivan County Bank. At some later date, it was home to Harris & Graves Insurance.  By 1959, it was the Moore & Walker Insurance building.

Garrett & Garrett Attorneys, as you can see, had the upper floor.

Diamond Cabs

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diamondcab

In the 1959 City Directory, the address of “Gillam (sic) and Diamond Cabs” (it’s Hinch Gilliam again…he was also managing Friendly Cabs up on Brooks Circle) was shown as 328 East Sullivan Street.  It was behind the old Trailways (Union) Bus Terminal on Cherokee Street, where the Greyhound Bus Station is now, sort of.

Anyway, there were seven cab companies listed for Kingsport in 1959: Friendly Cabs at 1725 Ft. Henry Drive, Gilliam and Diamond Cabs at 328 East Sullivan, City Cabs in Highland Park, Lynn Garden Cabs, 1212 Lynn Garden Drive, Nick’s Cabs in Highland Park, West View Cabs at 140 Fairview and Yellow Cab Company at 124 West Market (I think it was behind where the Nutty Java shop is now).

The “Roberts” was my stepfather.  He drove a cab off-and-on, until his ship came in.  After he was escorted off the ship later, broke again, he never went back to driving cabs.  He told me once that, back then, he never went into Long Island after dark.  It was a rough place, he thought, awash with bootleggers and blackguards.