From Wednesday, February 13, 1957. Kingsport News
As I’ve noted before, my Kingsport Times paper route took me down Shelby Street, behind the Post Office (it became the library in ’61). The tempting smells coming from Pal’s made my stomach rumble. Still does, even today.
For the record, $1 in 1957 would be worth $9.36 in 2021(CPI Inflation Calculator)
In my previous (August, 2015) posting on Parkway Plaza, I was a little dismissive of it, which was wrong. When this Plaza was built, in 1961, it was poised to take advantage of the fire hose of traffic heading into Kingsport from the Southwest Virginia/Southeast Kentucky region. Well, then I-26 (completed in 2003) went in, bypassing Kingsport and taking the fire hose with it.
In an article written by Frank Creasy for the Kingsport Times-News edition of June 4, 1961, Greene Investments announced that the new Parkway Plaza was scheduled to open that October and would feature anchor stores Kroger, Grants, and W.B. Greene Ladies Fashion Shop. The Plaza actually opened in November and included One Hour Martinizing #4, Reba’s Coiffures, Potter’s Barber Shop, Armour Drug, Top Value Stamp Store and Dutch Oven Bakery.
Kroger and Armour Drug store kept their downtown locations, also. The other Kroger was located approximately where the church-owned building sits across from Mafair UMC at Prospect Drive. Armour Drug had their store a little to the east of that building.
For its time, it was a happening place.
From March, 1966 Kingsport Times-News
These are from an unopened deck of promotional playing cards produced by Carta Mundi (“Cards for the World”) when the company had a location at 10444 Wallace Alley Street in Kingsport from 1996 to 2007.
According to a business website, Carta Mundi provided wholesale playing cards, game books, lotto games, memory games, game kits, educational games, board games, playing cards, video games, puzzles, dice, and classic games.
The facility moved to Dallas in 2007.
I picked this up at Kingsport Camera Shop, then on Cherokee Street, at some point while I was drooling over the new Nikon cameras. This was when photographers were beginning to acknowledge that the Japanese were rolling out excellent cameras and lenses. Single-lens reflex cameras were still fairly new in 1969 (a year earlier, I had shot Pentax SLRs at the Times-News).
Look at those prices, which I thought were sky high even then. This is just the cover. The leaflet goes on to price lenses, camera bags, medical lenses, viewfinders, photomicrographic lenses and so forth. Prices range from a high of $895 for a 220 degree Nikkor fisheye (f5.6) to fifty cents for a plastic case for a 52mm filter. The plastic body cap ran you $1.35.
When I returned to Kingsport in 1967, fresh from a posting in Germany while in the care of the United States Air Force, I needed to get myself a driver’s license. I asked Dad to drive me to the Highway Patrol office on Brooks Circle, where I picked up this manual to study for my license test.
Complete with these charmingly archaic illustrations.
The photo of Governor Clement apparently had been taken sometime before the 1963 – 1964 General Assembly (it appeared in their program). He was governor from 1963 – 1967, his second term, so I suspect that this manual, complete with the clunky diagrams, was published in 1963 or so, in plenty of time for me to pick it up in 1967.
Later, I took the test, driving Dad’s old Chevy. Passed it and then only drove Dad’s car into a ditch once before buying my own (regrettable) Corvair.
According to usinflationcalculator.com, a dollar in 1954 would be equal to $9.62 in 2020.
Gosh, costs have increased a bit since then, huh?
This badge, shown as made by Stoffel Seals of Nyack NY, is undated. However, Stoffel Seals moved to Tallapoosa GA sometime in the early 2000’s and was acquired by TydenBrooks in 2010. Check the link for all the gory details.
Interestingly (to me), Stoffel Seals made almost all of the domestic airline “kiddie wings” during the heyday of air travel. I ought to know, since I’ve got a ton of them.
This is what your bill from J. Fred’s would have looked like in 1954
In 1918, as WWI slowly ground to a halt in Europe and the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic began raging out of the foul trenches of that war, Kingsport was building its first combined school building. The building, much remodeled, still stands at the corner of Watauga Street and East Sevier Avenue.
This post card, probably printed in the early 1920s, is another of the series commissioned by T. J. Stephenson.
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 