This was probably 1982. Jim wasn’t at the Ft. Henry Drive all that long and, by 1993, the next time a Thursday fell on September 30, he had moved to the Eastman Road location.
I miss camera shops. Back then, I couldn’t afford much in the way of cameras and lenses. I made do, thanks to some horse trading with Jim, but I really yearned after the new cameras and the fast (for then) lenses.
Jim and Janet and Paul and Jeff. Great people to work with (I did some camera repair) and to talk with.
World War II had ended a little over a year before this ad was published in the July 1946 Intermountain Telephone Company Telephone Directory for Kingsport, Gate City and Sullivan Gardens. Dobyns-Taylor was, in essence, priming the pump. Little did they know the flood of products that would soon wash over them.
This corner building, the red brick part, was once known as the Shaheen Building and home of the Palace of Sweets, owned by Charles Joseph, Sr., who had come here from Lebanon (the country). He and M.F. Kabool (of Iager or Iaeger WV) opened the Phoenix Restaurant here (302 East Sullivan) in 1927. It was remodeled in 1937, to much celebration in the local newspaper. Apparently, it was a quite well respected eatery.
It was still open in 1948, but I lose track of it after that. It wasn’t the open as the Phoenix in 1957-1959, when I lived downtown, but the large sign over the doorway was still there. Years ago, I asked my stepdad if he knew anything about the place (he’d been in Kingsport in the 30s) and he recalled staying in one of the rooms upstairs.
Down from the Phoenix…I think where the other red brick building is, was the Liberty Cafe (305 East Sullivan), also owned by Mr. Joseph. The building in the light tan brick was, in 1959, part of McKarem’s Department Store.
In 1947, the Phoenix Grill advertised aggressively in the paper that it sold beer by the case for off premise consumption…and they’d deliver!
This Haynes Distributing Company postcard shows two aircraft sitting on the tarmac: a Fairchild F-27, which Piedmont flew from 1958 to 1967, on the left; and the tail portion of a DC-3, which Piedmont took out of service in 1963.
Since Joyce L. Haynes, the photographer, was undoubtedly an efficient person, I think she took all four of these photographs around the summer of 1962.
I have a number of cards published by Haynes (and printed by Dexter). I think there were at least two series of cards done: the earlier ones with photos taken by Joyce L. Haynes and a later series with photography by C. H. Ruth.
I also think Ms Haynes had a knack for choosing days with brilliant blue skies and fluffy white clouds (The Orb!).
I have several views of downtown Kingsport taken from Cement Hill. Several years ago, when I was new to postcards and rather dismissive of chromes, I thought this was a recent card and, based on seeing the old City Hall, I dated it to the early 60s. But I didn’t realize until today, when I was looking at it again, that I could date it really accurately. The red arrow points to the old City Hall (and library) and the yellow arrow indicates the Downtowner. The Downtowner opened for business in 1961 and The Kingsport Times-News (November, 1962) reported that the old City Hall was mostly demolished. The photo for this card was taken in summer of 1962.
It was published by Haynes Distributing Company in Roanoke and was printed in West Nyack NY by Dexter Publishing Company. Joyce L. Haynes took the photo. I’m not turning up any information on Haynes Distributing Company, nor of Joyce L. Haynes. She does, however, show up as the photographer for many postcards of this period.
This card is called a GRTS, an abbreviation for Greetings.
The card was published by Blackburn News Agency, but it was printed by Curt Teich in Chicago in 1951 (there’s a list of inventory numbers/years on the web). If you look closely, two of the images shown in the big letters are not even Kingsport. The picture behind the “K” has to be Chickamauga Dam and the bridge behind the “O” looks like one down on Cherokee Lake.
Grubby, but unbowed. It’s kind of difficult to date this money bag. The downtown drive-in branch closed sometime in the 60s, maybe early 70s. It was on the corner of Clay and New Streets, across from where Chef’s Pizza is now. You can still see the traffic direction arrows for the drive-in lanes sunk into the concrete (they were originally filled with yellow concrete, but it’s mostly eroded away).
Storied history of this bank: established in 1916, as you can see. J. Fred Johnson was a VP in ’23 and President by 1931. In 1963, First NB of Kingsport and First NB of Bristol merged and sometime later the group became First NB of Sullivan County. In 1981, it became First Eastern NB; in 1982, it was First American Bank-Eastern and on and on It might be Regions Bank now.
The bag is 10.5″ x 6″. It really could do with a good washing, but that’s not going to happen. HIstoric integrity and all that.
