Tag Archives: broad street

The Unfortunate Mr. Oswald

If you go upstairs at River Mountain Antiques on Broad Street and amble as far back as you can go, you’ll see this sign. Why did this business end so quickly in 1919?
That’s because Mr. L. J. Oswald was murdered at this location, then the Nelms Building, in 1919. The alleged culprit was M. D. Stallard. Oswald lived long enough to tell that he had been shot in the back (a later account states that he appeared to have been shot in the side). Stallard’s .32 pistol was found beside Oswald. A property dispute was the apparent cause.
At a trial in Bristol, Stallard claimed self-defense and was declared not guilty on Wednesday, December 10, 1919.

Broad Street, 1946

broadstreet

Summer, 1946.  Looking toward Church Circle.  The movie playing at the State Theatre is “The Enchanted Forest” (Maltin gives it 2-1/2 stars), released in December, 1945.

The war had been over for a year.

This is a real photo postcard (RPP).  EKC paper (available from 1939 – 1950).

Midnight Sun

midnightsun

Forty-six years ago, I began the first permanent rock show on WKPT-AM.  John Dotson had “Sounds of Summer” the previous year, but it ended when he went back to school or left town or something.  It was a good show and broke the Easy Listening hold on that staid, NBC-affiliated station.  So, I swooped in the next year, ditched “Teenage Terrace”, (which I had been on when I was in high school, from 5:00 to 6:00 pm, as I recall, with Marty running the board and we students, when we showed up, sitting at the table in the news studio) and had the 6:00 pm to midnight slot all to myself as “The Midnight Sun”.
Since this was before 8-track tapes in cars became widely available, I was a success, as it were, with the kids cruising Broad Street.  Then, the tapes came and I eventually moved into the afternoon Drive Time slot.  The fact that, for the most part, I had to buy my own records for the show and management had the nerve to put something like this cloth sticker out helped me leave it behind.  “Like it is”, my ass.  The phrase was a joke by this time.
The ellipse is 4″ on the horizontal axis and 2-1/2″ on the vertical.

Bank building

This, of course, is on the corner of Main and Broad Streets.  It was a bank off and on for decades.  Back in the 70s, there was a watch repair shop across the front of this building (the portico and columns were gone at that time).  An earlier pencil drawing I did of this location shows the marks of where the roof of the watch shop was.

bankredone