Tag Archives: Argus camera

Kingsport Brick Company

This is a Kingsport Drug Store issue, printed by Curt Teich Company in Chicago (as best as I can tell, from the dating system for CT, this is an AD (for Doubletone) card from around 1917).  Kingsport Brick became General Shale.  This plant is no longer operational and has been seriously vandalized.  Those round kilns have been gone for years.
In the late 50s, from our apartment in downtown Kingsport, I noticed a fire at this plant.  I grabbed by Argus camera and hurried over there.  As I was taking a picture of the building on fire, a man walked up to me and introduced himself as Ellis Binkley, editor of the Kingsport Times-News.  “Come see me, boy,” he said, “when you graduate and I’ll have you a job as a photographer.”  I said I would.
Turns out, after I got out of service, I hired on at the Times-News, then on Market Street, as a night shift photographer.  Mr. Binkley, by that time, was mostly retired and I don’t think I ever reminded him of the encounter at the brick plant.
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