Tag Archives: Kingsport TN
Home Improvement building
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Back in the day, this was J. Fred Johnson’s headquarters. When I did this, Arcata was there. It houses city offices now.
Charles store
When I got out of the Air Force and back from Germany in 1967, this was the only place in Kingsport that had pants close to the bell bottoms I saw all over the place in Europe. The pants I bought here looked like mattress ticking and didn’t have back pockets, but, hey, I was forward fashion!
Bank building, previously
The is the same building as in the previous entry, just 20 or so years earlier. The line across the building is where the roof of the watch repair shop joined the brick of the main building. Upstairs were apartments. That’s me, back when I smoked a pipe, sitting in the window (artistic license: I didn’t live there).
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.
State Theatre
I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” here. Came out wondering just what the hell I’d seen. Special effects were great, though. This was how it looked before the, um, renovation.
The Indian
This used to be on Memorial Boulevard, roughly between 93 and Harbor Chapel Road, on the right as you’re ascending the hill. Later, it was Abe’s Pies (the pies were pretty good). I’ve heard that John Barker had a speaker in it connected to a microphone so he could surprise tourists (this was, after all, originally a tourist attraction). It’s now in pieces somewhere. I’ve also heard that, at one time, a fun-loving family of wasps built a nest under the loincloth, resulting in some startled expressions from people who happened to glance up ‘twixt the faux Native American’s legs.
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 