This sign stack was spotted on Bloomingdale Pike (Kingsport TN).
Author Archives: Bob Lawrence
Man With a Pistol
The actual picture is small – 2.25″ x 2.5″ and very faded. I believe the stern man is a police officer, since he’s holding a Colt Police Positive, popular in the 1940s.
Bonsai Trees
These bonsai trees were on sale at Smiley’s Flea Market in North Carolina.
Clouds
Clouds are heavy. They really are.
I mean, they’re water, that’s all –
8.34 pounds per gallon, that’s all.
According to scientists – thus spake Googlethustra –
Your standard cumulus cloud weighs in at 1.1 million pounds.
120,000 gallons of water, give or take a quart or two.
Looming overhead. If it all came crashing
(Hahaha! “Cloud crashing”…a concept)
Down, it’d do more than just mist your glasses.
And then some.
Keep a wary eye on that cloud…
Framed boxcar
These boxcars are parked on a little-used spur line in Ridgefields Industrial Park in Kingsport.
Pet Dairy Products Five Cent Token
Just found this one. It’s the five cent version of the Pet Products token from Johnson City. The ten cent token I posted a little while ago has a diameter of 16.5 mm, while this one is 20 mm.
Morristown TN in the Early 20th Century
This is a railroad post office franked postcard. The mark reads “BRISTOL & CHATTANOOGA TR 4 JUL 11 1917 R.P.O.”
It was printed by Curt Teich of Chicago and published by The Novelty Store in Morristown.
If this is looking west, then the old Kingmyer Hotel is up there somewhere on the right.
Oh, and I hope Miss Sarah Stonecypher of Limestone knew who “Guess Who?” was…
Pet Dairy Products Co. Token
I found a few of these tokens at a local flea market. Each token is 16.5 mm in diameter. They appear in a token catalog as originating in Johnson City TN, where Pet Dairy has had a milk processing facility since 1929. I think they’re pre-WWII. The token catalog notes that there was a 25 cent and a 5 cent version, too. The 5 cent token is posted here.
Crazy Cat
I have two cats. Believe me, I take signs like this seriously…
This is in Toecane NC.
Phlox
“Mom! The Good Fairy got drunk and threw up under the tree…again. (Weird, he did this last spring, too)”
Early Real Photo Cards
I can’t tell you who this stylish couple is. I can’t tell you where they lived, but I can tell you when the photos were taken, within a 4-year period – 1903 to 1907.
The paper these real photo post cards are printed on is an Ansco product called Cyko. The process of the printing is chlorobromide, yielding a warm brown tone. Cyko came on the market in 1903 and the undivided-back era ended in 1907, when the Universal Postal Conference agreed to allow a message area on the left side of the back, not just the address. There’s probably a little slippage on the end date, since, as far as I can tell, the U.S. Post Office didn’t ban these backs, just let them fall out of favor.
The blank area to the right of each picture was there for a message of some sort. These are either one-offs or part of a very limited edition.
Bristol Caverns
This linen finish card was printed in 1950 by Curt Teich in Chicago. It was published by Bristol News Agency, Bristol Tenn. And that’s a lot of gassy prose on the back. Compare:
This card was published ten or so years later. It’s a modern chrome postcard printed by Haynes of Roanoke. While much terser, the wording the back is more atmospheric. The top one is a paragraph from a text book – this one is a clever sell piece. I don’t know how “mysterious” the cavern is, but the adjective gets the mood across.
Uncle Bob's Pix 