Looks like some photo artist at Curt Teich decided to make a rather bland post card more dramatic by drawing in what looks like a 10B in a power dive over the factory. Scary looking, though.
Anyway, the card dates to 1939.
Tag Archives: post card
Tobacco Sale
Tobacco sale. 1940. Big whoop, huh?
Well, as I write this in September of 2019, there are four instances of post cards on ebay that feature this exact picture, but for four different sales…and not one of those cards is this one. Curt Teich in Chicago really got a lot of use out of this photo, which was shot in b&W and colored in at the print shop, as usual.
WSM Radio Tower
WSM Radio in Nashville went on the air in 1925, but didn’t construct this tower until 1932. As it states on this post card from 1935, the tower was 878′ tall…until 1939 when, for technical reasons, the height was reduced to 808′. Read all about it here.
Vickers Viscount
The graceful Vickers Viscount as was flown by Capital Airlines, previously Pennsylvania Central Airlines, in the early ’50s.
They flew into Knoxville McGhee-Tyson, too. I still find Pennsylvania Central Airlines stuff here and there (and buy it whenever I can).
VA Administration Center
Much old, great tan. This 1950 post card views the VA Center from the south, taken on an extremely tall tripod, or possibly from an airplane, whatever. The Curt Teich date code is just under the words “Place Stamp Here”.
Zimmerman & Torbett News Agency. I don’t find any informational citations on the web about this business. I seem to remember that it was a news stand.
You can get a good view of this area as it is now on Google Earth.
Cunard White Star Lancastria
The ship was sunk just six months after this card was sent. Read about her terrible fate here.
And I hope the lady with the excellent handwriting was able to see Gone With the Wind fairly soon up in Marion.
Soldiers’ Home, Johnson City
This was probably printed in the early 1900s – 1907 – 1910 or so. “Commercialchrome” shows it was printed by Curt Teich in Chicago using their 4-color, halftone, lithographic process.
This vendor wrote their booth number and the price in ink. Annoys the hell out of me, but post cards are hard for vendors to control with too many people either altering the price or just slipping them into their pockets. It’s a hard-knock life, no?
Look, Ma! No Pods!
All the skinny on this aircraft is here.
After a disastrous, but highly educational, experience with its first Comet iteration, de Havilland has a 30-year success with this 4B.
Sleek aircraft, but there was some concern (from aircraft manufacturers who preferred engine pods) about the engines and the fuel tanks buried in the wings. Flew right well, though.
The card has been folded along its vertical axis. Still a good-looking card, I think.
Eight Names, One Ship
Before this ship was launched as a troop transport in 1944, it was briefly named General R.M. Blatchford (Spanish-American War, WWI). Upon launch, though, it was the General W.P. Richardson (explorer and geographer for the U.S. Army in Alaska). Then it was the LaGuardia, then the Leilani then the President Roosevelt. After that it was the Atlantis, then this Emerald Seas (1972 – 1992), and, finally, the Ocean Explorer I before it was scrapped in India in 2004. The full history is here.
I think the card dates to between 1963 (when Zip Codes went into effect) and maybe 1970. It was printed by Koppel Color Card Company in Hawthorne NJ, which operated in the 1960s, and distributed by the Color-Ads Productions noted on the reverse.
’56 Chevy Bel Air
I grabbed this card as soon as I saw it. It was $1. That Chevy, in 1956, cost the princely sum of $3,500.
Not Too Subtle…
I can’t make out where this was mailed from, but it’s a not-too-subtle message from your friends back in 1910.
- American Post Card Company in New York went out of business in 1910.
- Blue Eye MO got its name, reportedly, from the eye color of the first postmaster.
United Mainliner
This nice postcard is from the late 1940s. United used that logo from 1940 to 1954. “Mainliners” were DC-3s. With world-wide production, some 16,000 of these planes entered service somewhere…and some are probably still flying.
First Methodist Church, Johnson City TN
Other than the original photos being taken from different viewpoints (or using different lenses), there are four differences between these two cards:
The lower one, obviously, is the earlier. I think it may have been taken pre-WWII. The upper one, probably late 40s.
The differences I see: First, the plate numbers are different (I can only date Asheville Post Card Company cards by inference. I found another card in the E-7417 range that had a 1948 post mark). Second, the shrubbery. Third, the sign on the corner in front of the church. Fourth, the early one is titled merely “JC-71 Methodist Church, Johnson City, Tenn.” and the later one is “JC-75 First Methodist Church, Johnson City, Tenn.”
Let’s Go to Galax!
Asheville Post Card Company issue called a “Pennant Landscape”
The “Galax, VA.” is an overprint for a standard card.
It was mailed in 1943, when Galax had half its current population. It’s hard to read the writing, but I did find Sgt. Marrion W(oodward) Fisher. Camp Santa Anita was a dog racing park in Arcadia CA that had been taken over by the Army for ordnance training. Sgt. Fisher was born in 1920 in Bath VA. He died in 2011 in Covington VA.
I think the signature on the card is “James”
Smoky Mountains Trailways Bus
I don’t know squat about pre-WWII buses (or any other buses, for that matter), but I was curious about this Smoky Mountains Trailways bus. By the shape of the windshield, I think it may be a Mack. I welcome a correction on that. The card was printed in the early 40s (Smoky Mountains National Park was dedicated, by FDR, no less, in 1940.
I read a posting that stated the “founder of Trailways” had a lodge up in the mountains. I couldn’t track down who that may have been, but there was no real Trailways. It was Trailways Transportation System, comprising five individual companies, that was set up in 1936.
Darn nice-looking card, though. Asheville Post Card Company, natch. It’s linen finish, but borderless. I thought it might be a Curt Teich, but that inventory number doesn’t match up (I get a lot of that. APCC used other printers).
As I post this, the Smoky Mountains are actually quite smoky from the numerous forest fires we have going on.
Nickels Department Store, Gate City, VA.
The writing is all in pencil. The postmark is double stamped and blurry. The interesting thing is that the card, in the upper left, is dated “Feb. 2, 1912”, but the postmark shows it was mailed on January (something) 1912.
Reading on: “Hurry answer soon Hello Hazel how are you by this time I am just fine and having a fine old time tell Bess to send me a card will be home in next month” The author was not big on punctuation.
Mailed to Miss Hazel Lessley, Arcadia, Tenn. Arcadia, formerly known as Reedy Creek Settlement, is one of the earliest clumps of humanity along Bloomingdale Road. We always used to call it Bloomingdale Pike (indicating at some time in the past it was a private road…you had to pay to have the pike across the road lifted so you could get through).
Anyway, there are 36 men, women and children all lined up across the front. The photo was maybe taken in April or May, since the people aren’t wearing winter clothes and there’s some sign, perhaps a circus sign, in the show window to the left advertising an upcoming May 30 performance.
As is common with cards of this vintage, there’s no publisher name shown. There may be an inventory number or other information under the stamp, but I’m not even going to try to steam it off.
Uncle Bob's Pix 