The First Tennessee-Vanderbilt Football Game in 1892

 

The 1892 University of Tennessee Football Team

The First Time Tennessee Played Vanderbilt - 1892

I called Bruce Haney in November 1982, the day after Vanderbilt defeated Tennessee in football 28-21. I wanted to know what my old UT roommate thought because Vanderbilt hadn’t beaten Tennessee since 1959 and usually could be counted on as a reliable win for the Vols. “I knew Vanderbilt would beat us again sometime,” he said. “I just didn’t think it would be in my lifetime.”

Logical thinking from an engineer. In Bruce’s lifetime, between 1947 up until that 1982 defeat, Vanderbilt's football record against Tennessee was 2 wins and 33 losses. Vanderbilt won in 1948 (28-6), when Bruce was one, and 1959 (14−0). 

And then the shocker in ’82.

It wasn’t always that way, as students of Vanderbilt football – if there are any – know. Vanderbilt was once a Southern football power. General Robert Neyland was hired by UT in 1926 to “get Tennessee football up to the level of Vanderbilt.”

With Tennessee and Vanderbilt set to face off this Saturday in a game that actually means something, it might be a good time to look back at the rivalry’s beginnings in 1892. The in-state rivals actually played twice that season, home and away.

It was only Tennessee’s second year of fielding a football team and the first year had not been promising. Tennessee lost its only game.

But 1892’s season got off to a smashing start with Tennessee traveling to nearby Maryville College and prevailing by a score of 25-0, the first win ever for a Tennessee football team. (Not really a big deal since the team had only played that one official game in its inaugural season of 1891.)

Next up were the lads in Nashville and Tennessee fans, what there were of them, were optimistic.

The anonymous scribe of the Knoxville Sentinel noted of UT’s “Crack Football Team:” “The University of Tennessee has the best football eleven this year that the institution has ever been able to boast, and the boys think that last Saturday's victory at Maryville of 25 to 0 in favor of ‘our side’ will be followed by many others. E. A. Cannon, of Harriman, an ex-Yale man, has been engaged to coach the crack eleven and will doubtless bring the team up to its highest possible degree of development.”

Since sideline coaching was banned at the time, coaching essentially meant playing. Cannon (who was actually Princeton ’89, not Yale) would play fullback after that first game with the team. Eligibility was apparently not a thing then.

Scheduling and scoring were quite a bit different in 1892, too.

College football at that time was less a sport and more a polite excuse to legally maim your classmates. The forward pass was still illegal (thus no “Manning” on the UT roster), so the “strategy” mostly involved everyone smashing into everyone else in formations like the famous Flying Wedge - basically a human battering ram that occasionally produced a touchdown and frequently produced concussions. Protective gear was optional, meaning most players suited up in whatever patched-up laundry they owned, plus maybe a leather nose guard if they were feeling daring.

Yale’s legendary coach Walter Camp had started shaping the rules - downs, the line of scrimmage, five-yard grid marks - so sportswriters could call it “scientific” football with a straight face. But most of the game boiled down to 22 guys on a field making it up as they went along. And amazingly, most of them lived to tell the tale.

 

1892 Vanderbilt football team

 The Crack Eleven of UT would take the train (no buses or cars yet) over to play Vanderbilt on Friday Oct. 21^st  - game time was 10:30 a.m. That’s right, in the morning. Then the Crack Eleven would take the train south to play Sewanee College’s Crack Eleven on Saturday morning. Football games on consecutive mornings.

“Foot ball,” as it was spelled then, was such an alien sport that the Knoxville newspaper writer felt compelled to educate his readers:

“So many attempts have been made to explain the American-Rugby game of foot ball to the uninitiated on paper and the result has been always attended with such partial success that it has come to be said of this sort of football as of many other things: ‘IT HAS TO BE SEEN to be fully appreciated or even understood.’

“To the ignorant observer a modern game of foot ball looks very much like a friendly free fight over a brown watermelon and the more you learn about the game the more you are disposed to adhere to this first impression, with a slight correction regarding the watermelon part of it.”

 

Let’s just say the trip west to Nashville and on down to Sewanee didn’t go as the few football followers in Knoxville had hoped. (How few? 200 would attend the Vanderbilt rematch in Knoxville a month later.)

 

The headline in the afternoon Nashville Banner told the story:

After a Hard Fought Battle the Home Boys Win by the Score of 22 to 4.

Yes, Tennessee scored 4 and no, it wasn’t two safeties. Scoring was different in 1892: a touchdown was worth four points, the kick after counted for two points. A field goal was worth 5 points, a nod to the name foot ball. And the game was played in two 45-minute halves.

Here’s sportwriting 1892 style:

“A splendid crowd saw the formal opening of the fall athletics at Vanderbilt University to-day, and cheered and waved hats and fluttered handkerchiefs.

“Vanderbilt opened the game with a poor attempt at a wedge, going ten yards through a hole in the centre. Now well into the fight Vanderbilt picked up and in short rushes beat their opponents back, Allen, Barr, Jones, Fletcher and Craig figuring prominently. Jones fumbled the ball once, but Knoxville kept it but a moment, and when Vanderbilt again got possession of it, Jones broke through in a mighty effort, backed and guarded beautifully by the whole eleven, and scored the first takedown. Time, 5 minutes; score, Vanderbilt 4, Knoxville 0. Throne kicked good, score, Vanderbilt 6, Knoxville 0.”

What followed in the newspaper was a running summation of the scoring. Give the writer a break; he had a deadline to meet. After all the story of the morning game appeared in the afternoon paper!

Here are the highlights of the rest of the game, most of them lowlights for what the Banner called “the Knoxvilles.”

Tennessee scored on a 25-yard scamper by C.D. Brown with 38 minutes left in the first half but the kick by George Marfield failed. Score 6-4.

A series of short rushes lead to a Vanderbilt touchdown, a failed kick, and it was 10-4 at the half.

“The Knoxvilles” wouldn’t score again.

The Banner wrote, “During the intermission the Knoxville sympathizers were sure their men had the best wind, and would outlast the Vanderbilts, and the Vanderbilts were of the same opinion. But the balance of the game showed differently.”

The only excitement came thirteen minutes into the second half.

“When Vanderbilt got possession of the ball they began again their trick of short, hard rushes, and after ten minutes of steady advance, Burch pressed over the goal line. But the ball happened into the air. It was a critical moment. But it is safe for Vanderbilt. Throne reached up, clasps the flying leather and slides over Burch to the third touchdown.”

The score was now 16-4.

“Knoxville seemed to have lost heart. They fumbled the ball, ran heavily and made weak breaks against centre.”

Vanderbilt scored once more and it was over. Had there been a scoreboard it would have read 22-4.

Back in Knoxville the game merited only a single paragraph and that seeming to offer an excuse for the loss:

“NASHVILLE, October 21 -- The foot ball game between the Vanderbilt and University of Tennessee team resulted in defeat of the University of Tennessee team by a score of 22 to 4. Marfield, of the Knoxville team, sprained his ankle.”

And thus began the 133-year history of Tennessee-Vanderbilt football.

It continued in Vanderbilt’s favor until the Knoxvilles hired General Robert Neyland in 1926.

From 1892 till 1926 Vanderbilt won 18, lost 2 and tied 3.

Since Neyland’s arrival the record is 79-14-2 in Tennessee’s favor.

Tennessee has won the last six.

Going into Saturday’s game, Tennessee is ranked 18^th, Vanderbilt is ranked 12^th and vying for a spot in the college playoff. For a change Tennessee is looking to play spoiler.  

Tennessee is a 2.5 point favorite.

The game is at Neyland Stadium, named for the man who turned the rivalry around.

 

The V or Flying Wedge from the 1892 Harvard-Yale game (no photos exist of the 1892 UT-Vanderbilt game)

 

Who was UT’s first football coach?

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, it was J.A. Pierce who was hired in 1899 and guided the team for five years.

The Knoxville Sentinel of 1905 would disagree.

Here’s the proof from an October 11, 1905 story:

COMES BACK TO KNOXVILLE.

E. A. Cannon Will Engage In Business Here, After Absence of Ten Years.

E. A. Cannon, who was the first football coach at the University of Tennessee, being in charge of the team in 1892, is in the city, and will make Knoxville his future home. He has been residing in Syracuse, N.Y., for the past ten years, where he has been very successful in the engraving business.

 

Who was on that 1892 team?

Tennessee took 14 players on its travel team to Nashville. For a frame of reference, the current Tennessee Athletics Department has listed on its staff directory 19 assistant or associate athletic directors.

Here’s how the Knoxville Sentinel described that 1892 squad:

“THE CRACK ELEVEN:

“James Fisher, center rush; ‘Daddy’ Brown, right guard; Lynn White, left guard; Charles Farris, right tackle; Edwin Werts, left tackle; Albert Wegener, right half back; C. D. Brown, left half back; John Cox, right end; George Marfeld, left end; Howard Ijams, quarter back; Charles Moore, full back. Substitutes, C.H. Reed and William Bates.” Plus newly engaged E.A. Cannon.

 

About that very first game a year earlier in 1891….

Here’s how the Knoxville Journal and Tribune described it:

SEWANEE WON.

Our University Boys are Not in it With Them.

Special to the Journal.

CHATTANOOGA, TENN., November 21. — The down train this a. m. brought forty-six Knoxville boys from the University of Tennessee, who came to meet the Sewanee boys and contest for the foot ball championship of the state. The Sewanee team came the night previous. Sewanee wore purple colors, Knoxville the orange and white and the two teams have owned the town. A heavy rain had been falling all day and the boys played in the rain. About one hundred people witnessed the game. Sewanee won easily by a score of 24 to nothing. After the game all of the boys took in the theatre.

 

Theatre!

It wasn’t a Marvel action film. There were no movie houses in 1892.

But Chattanooga did have an Opera House and the boys probably took in the matinee production of the play “From Sire to Son,” starring “distinguished Actor and playwright Milton Nobles with the gifted ingenue Dollie Nobles.”

 

Where did Tennessee play their home rematches with Vanderbilt and Sewanee (both also losses)?

They played on their new home field “purchased by Dr. Dabney [University President] for this purpose in the Riverside addition. This field is situated on a level piece of ground midway between the terminus of the Riverside street car line and the river and is in every way admirably adapted for the purpose.”

It would be a wonderful ending to this story if Riverside Field had grown to become Neyland Stadium. It didn’t. It is now a parking lot on the edge of the Tennessee River, near the east side of the modern-day Neyland.

But there is a bit of a happy ending. The week after the second loss to Sewanee, Tennessee defeated the Chattanooga Athletic Club 16-6 giving Tennessee a 2-5 record in just its second season of football. 

 

 

Turkey Lore

In 1975 I visited a turkey farm in southwest Virginia to write a cover story about turkeys for the Kingsport Times-News’ Weekender magazine. Here is that story.

 Tom Turkey, being held by Lee Akers, was captured on film at the Kyle Akers farm near Gate City by Times-News Chief Photographer Earl Carter.

 Eight-year-old Lee Akers inched forward, picking his steps, gingerly tiptoeing around the fallen cornstalks. Carefully, he stalked his prey.

Closer, then closer, his fingers curled in anticipation.

His steel-blue eyes never flinched. One more step and he’d make his move.

But his prey moved first. Without hesitation, Lee dove, his golden hair falling over his eyes and obscuring his vision.

He’d touched the turkey’s claw but once again the bird had eluded him.

Back up quickly, as if on a bounce, Lee Akers was off and running. But the turkey was too quick. Lee Akers stopped, breathing rapidly. He was overmatched.

And as he slowly moved closer to the westward ridge, the Weekender cover looked more and more in doubt.

Turkey catching was more than a one-boy job.

Lee Akers returned from the barn of his family’s southwest Virginia farm with a fishing net. He drove the eleven turkeys toward the sunlight as the photographer and the writer positioned themselves to cut off any possible line of retreat.

Five of the smaller turkeys hurried by Lee, but he didn’t notice. He was out for bigger game. Tom, the biggest turkey on the Kyle Akers farm. Only thirty pounds, sure, but enough for the three to handle. The photographer remembered two years earlier when a bird twice this size had attacked photographer Charles Dean, ripping his shirt and cutting his lip. The writer remembered the photographer telling him about the severe thrashing the turkey he had given Charles Dean. Neither was ready to give his life for a Weekender cover.

The smaller hens slipped out of the triangular web until only Tom was left in the underbrush. The web tightened slowly, more tightly on the Lee Akers’ side, looser on the writer’s side. The turkey was desperately circling, looking for a hole. Could he possibly sense the weak spot in the web? (The writer.)

Lee lunged with his net, half-trapping the bird.
The turkey flapped his way out of the net and into the waiting arms of 8-year-old, 95-pound Lee Akers. Any of three directions would led to safety — the turkey, as is his custom, chose the only wrong one.

The turkey is a turkey.

Even his rise to most-favored status on the Thanksgiving menu came in a round-about way. When the Spaniards invaded Mexico, they found the turkey being bred in captivity. They exported the bird to Spain and from there to England and France. When the Pilgrims came to America, they brought the bird back with them. The turkey was already a staple for English Christmas feasts — so it was only natural the Pilgrims would use the turkey for the first Thanksgiving.

So let’s talk turkey. And while we’re at it — the origin of the expression “talking turkey.”

Legend has it that an early settler and an Indian were hunting. When it came time to divide up the kill, the settler said:

“You take the buzzard and I will take the turkey.
Or I will take the turkey and you can take the buzzard.”

The Indian replied: “Not once did you talk turkey to me.”

If Benjamin Franklin had had his way, the turkey, not the eagle, would be the national bird.
Franklin reasoned the turkey, by virtue of the fact that it was native to every state in the union, should represent the country on the national seal.

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, or that we’d have the Auburn War Turkeys. Advance Boy Scouts would be Turkey Scouts. Philadelphia’s football team would be the Philadelphia Turkeys. Planes would soar like a turkey. And the 101st Airborne Division would be known as the Screaming Turkeys.

Americans consume over two billion pounds of turkey meat each year — more than double from a generation ago. One hundred and thirty-five million turkeys are grown each year in the United States.

Rockingham County, Virginia modestly refers to itself as the Turkey Capital of the world. More turkeys are grown and processed there than any other place in the world. At the county line on U.S. Highway 11, the citizenry have erected a large monument, a bronze turkey on a stone pedestal with the words “Turkey Capital” emblazoned on the stone.

Each year, the Poultry Association sponsors the Friends of Feathers Festival in Harrisonburg. There’s a parade, with turkey-related floats, the International Chicken Breeding Contest, and the crowning achievement of a Rockingham County girl’s life, to be named Poultry Queen.

Rockingham County is the home of a number of major turkey farms — virtual perpetual motion machines. Here turkeys are raised without ever seeing the light of day or touching the earth.

Turkeys are fattened in wire cubicles in giant barns. When grown, they are hung on a conveyor belt and slaughtered, scalded, plucked, processed and frozen. Turkey rendering is extremely efficient with no by-product going unused. Turkey blood is used for fertilizer. And the bones and organs which can’t be sold, are dried and ground and re-processed into turkey meal to feed, what else, other turkeys. If humans could do that, they wouldn’t have to eat turkeys.

No one will claim that the domestic turkey has much intelligence. John Hudson of Harrisonburg, says turkeys on his family’s farm will stick their beaks toward the sky, watching it rain, and will remain in that position until the rain stops or the turkey drowns.

For this reason, many turkeys are now kept indoors.

The turkey will starve to death while surrounded by vast quantities of food, simply because it doesn’t occur to him to eat. On the other hand, some turkeys, when they do decide to eat, will keep right on eating until they founder, strangling to death on their own crops.

Turkeys will run all over each other trying to escape loud noises — often ending up in the same corner of the pen in a pile with their fellow turkeys, smothering the turkeys on the bottom.

When a turkey decides to roost, nothing can change his mind. In the old days when turkeys were driven to market, they could be coaxed onward once they decided to roost. During hurricane Carla in 1961, eleven turkeys tried to roost at their accustomed spot in a tree in the Welder Wildlife Refuge. Eight were blown out.

Thomas Morton, in New English Canaan published in 1637, wrote:

“Turkeys are easily killed at rooste because the one being killed, the others sit fast nevertheless. If the turkey has his head out of sight, he feels safe and will permit a dog to point him.”

The turkey’s digestive system is a marvel. Grand Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany forced turkeys to eat glass balls, hollow lead cubes and wooden pyramids to test the bird’s gizzard. The next day when the experiment was concluded, the turkeys were found to have crushed the glass to a powder, flattened the lead cubes, and worn down the wooden pyramids.

No one knows how the turkey got its name. The name turkey was in use in Europe long before the present bird was found and referred to peafowl. In the sixteenth century the turkey was often confused with guinea fowl and both were referred to as turkey. The early Spanish explorers were no help — at various times, they referred to the crested guan, the horned guan, the curassow and the chachalacas as a turkey.

Columbus was the first European to see a turkey. And also the first to eat one. He was hospitably received by the Honduran natives on August 14, 1492 and treated to a feast of native fowl including the turkey.

Some have suggested that the bird was so named because it was thought to come from Turkey. Others think the name comes from the bird’s call note, which they say sounds like “turk, turk, turk.” Other derivations range from the Hebrew word for peacock — tauas — to the Malayab word — togei. The Indians had over twenty names for the turkey — none of which was turkey.

Wild turkey hunting is permitted in Tennessee during certain weeks of the spring. Limit one gobbler to a person. No hunting after dark.

Eldridge Hawks at City Poultry in Kingsport says he was unloading a truckload of frozen, processed turkeys at a Rogersville market when a flock of turkeys gathered around his truck — to watch.

 

After 36 clicks of the shutter, the Weekender cover session was over. “I don’t know what I’ve got but I’ve got something,” said the photographer. “I hope so,” said the writer, as he backed up in anticipation of a rogue turkey being turned loose. “O.K., Lee, you can put the turkey down now,” the photographer said to Lee Akers.

The turkey’s drumstick barely touched ground before he was off and running. But after ten steps, the bird stopped. He lowered his head and curiously eyed something on the ground. The fish net that had been used to snare him.

 

From the November 1973 issue of Knoxville Magazine (I was the editor and even then fascinated by turkeys)

 

The Eternal Car Pool

 

Cindy Ketron 

1947-2025

Every school day morning my dad and I would head out a couple of minutes after 8. He would head the car up Conway Street hill to pick up Cindy Ketron. As she climbed in the backseat, he would give her his usual cheerful greeting: Good morning, little yellowbird, if she were wearing a yellow dress; good morning, little redbird, if she were in red.

Every school morning for 12 years, Cindy Ketron and I rode to school together. The cars would change over the years as my father traded, the other members of the car pool would grow and shrink as neighbors moved in and out, and the driver would change after I got my license, but there were the two constants: Cindy Ketron and me.

Every school day.

On Sunday I would see her in church.

And many Saturday nights our families would get together with a couple of other families for a dinner party.

I don’t remember a time in my life that I didn’t know Cindy Ketron. She was in my nursery class at Bethel Presbyterian. She was in my catechism class. She was in my high school graduating class.

And then I woke up two days ago to the news that Cindy had died. She was Cindy Mitchell now, had been for 50 years – of course I was at her wedding. (There was this one cute bridesmaid!)

Vince and Cindy Ketron dancing at the neighborhood's first boy-girl party - 1959

Off and on all day yesterday I would be overcome by a memory of Cindy. We had had one date, a seventh-grade cotillion dance, the cap to a six-week ballroom dancing class. One-two-three-slide, one-two-three-slide. We were not supposed to date, never were. We were friends, lifelong friends.

Cindy Ketron as Statue of Liberty in 1955 Johnson school play. Vince is Abe Lincoln. Johnny Murray is George Washington. 

Just when I thought I had shuffled through all the memories, all the reflections, one last one came to me, one that made me laugh out loud.

It was Christmas 1964. We were seniors and we had worked our way up the Bethel Presbyterian Church Christmas Pageant ladder. After stints as a shepherd tending his flock by night, one of the three wise men (as wise acre teenagers we called them the three wise guys), I had ascended to the role of Joseph. Cindy had worked through the Multitude of Heavenly Hosts and she was now the Angel of the Lord, a vision in a white robe, with paper mache wings and a halo of silver tinsel.

We practiced two nights a week for the month before the pageant. Toss twenty teenagers, most of them boys, in a church rec hall and mischief is sure to ensue.

It was always a challenge finding the Baby Jesus. He seemed to disappear at least twice a night. Gold, frankincense and myrrh were often replaced by toilet paper. The shepherds discovered that their rods and their staffs were perfect for sword-fighting. And the narrator seemed to have found a different Bible version every practice, none of them King James.

Joseph had his own contribution to the chaos. When the narrator read, “And, lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them,” Joseph would begin a sound effect. Instead of whistling out, I would whistle in, creating a whizzing vibrating noise that sounded like a flying saucer was descending along with Cindy the Angel of the Lord.

The first time Joseph did this the Angel began laughing hysterically, her shoulders shaking. It was something that was not mentioned in King James.

Joseph knew a good thing when he found it.

Every practice from then on the Angel arrived to the sound of a flying saucer. And every practice it cracked Cindy up. Her shoulders would begin shaking and she would start laughing before I even started my whistle. Soon a couple of shepherds and a wise man or two learned the whistle. So that as the Angel of the Lord descended, it would sound as if the church were about to lift off.

Arrived the big night. Everyone was in costume. Cindy actually looked like an angel. The shepherds were complaining about the scratchy feed bag tunics and bare legs. Joseph had on the robe of a poor carpenter and a twinkle in his eye.

The procession moved through the Nativity without incident. Mary and Joseph were at the manger where, surprise, the Baby Jesus rested peacefully on a bed of straw. As the narrator began to read “And lo the Angel of the Lord…” Mary and Joseph turned their heads upward. There was Cindy. I caught her eye. I smiled. She smiled. Then I quickly averted my eyes to stare prayerfully at the Baby Jesus.

Afterward everyone in the congregation told us they thought it was the best Christmas Pageant that Bethel had ever put on.

I caught Cindy’s eye again. This time she had a full smile. I knew her so well after 12 years of the Eternal Car Pool that I knew exactly what she was thinking: If they only knew….

The Queen of Cool

 

Paula Bennett

Feb. 8, 1947 – Oct. 26, 2025

 

Her arrival in Kingsport was announced in the February 1961 issue of the junior high newspaper, the "Robinson Review":

New Personalities:

Paula Bennett

The first new personality to Robinson is Paula Bennett. She lives at 229 De Lee Drive in Colonial Heights. The school she used to attend is Disque Jr. High in Gadsden, Alabama. Paula is 5 feet 3 inches tall, has green eyes, black hair and loves to dance. Her favorite colors are lavender, green, and red. Shrimp and hamburger are her favorite foods, and her favorite record is “Surrender” by Elvis Presley. Paula has one sister, Rea Bennett, who attends Judson College in Marion, Alabama. Paula’s ambition is to become a teacher. Paula is fourteen and she is in Miss Riley’s homeroom.

But the boys of Ross N. Robinson Junior High School didn’t need an introduction from the school newspaper. We already knew she was at Robinson. She’d been the object of much conversation in the hallways:

“Who’s that new girl?”

“Golly, she’s cute.”

“She got a boyfriend yet?”

I could only admire Paula from afar. I wasn’t in Miss Riley’s homeroom.

But the next school year she was in my Latin class. And that began a lifelong friendship. 

We didn’t have many classes together over the years but it seemed she was always dating one of my friends.

Paula Bennett, 1965, Student Body, recording secretary

We did have one date in college. She came to Duke my junior year. We went to a dance on Friday night – boy, could she dance! That Robinson Review article was right! - and to a Dionne Warwick concert on Saturday night.

And through the years we always kept in touch: mail, phone, later email, then text. I just got a text from her a month ago. She had lost my phone number.

It seemed a little confusing: my phone number is my text number. But I knew Paula was now prone to moments of confusion. She had been diagnosed with a brain tumor a little over a year earlier and had undergone some brutal treatments. Still she was optimistic.

She had texted me in May with the shocking news that our mutual friend Jeannie Williams had died of a heart attack. The three of us had been fast friends over the years. We overlapped one summer quarter at UT and I had spent many afternoons at their apartment.

During college I would get letters from Paula who was at Columbia College (in S.C.), catching me up on her campus life and how Jeannie was doing at Salem College (N.C.). We always kept up.

When I was on David Letterman’s show in 1990, I think she was my only high school classmate who actually stayed up to watch.

I visited my grandkids in Texas a few years ago and Paula called on the cell with museum recommendations in Dallas that she got from her sister.

It was Jeannie who had kept me updated on Paula’s cancer treatments this past year. But then it was Paula who brought me the bad news about Jeannie. She told me she and Jeannie had just had an hour conversation about life’s challenges and life’s rewards. End of life kind of stuff.

On Wednesday I got the text I had dreaded: End of life had come for Paula. She had succumbed to her brain tumor.

I had known that news was coming but I wasn’t ready for it.

I had a note on my computer to send Paula my new book, just as I had sent her all the previous ones. And I had been trying to plan a trip to visit a friend in Charlotte and then swing by to see Paula in Brevard on the way home.

Paula did fulfill that junior high ambition: she became a teacher, 26 years in the classroom in Birmingham. But she became so much more: an author (“GRITS: Girls Raised in the South”), a world traveler (she loved Africa), a travel blogger (she, husband Garry, an RV and the road) and a caregiver during her husband Garry’s long battle with Parkinson’s.

When she and Garry left Alabama in 2009, she jumped into everything in her new hometown Brevard: church, AAUW, book club, college classes (taking and teaching), museums, theater, frequenting the local coffee houses, restaurants and book stores.

It was the same as always. Wherever Paula was, she made it a better place.

Now she’s in the proverbial better place. And I know she will make it an even better place.

Paula and Garry in 2023

The House The Newspaper Built

 

About 15 years ago, while cleaning out her parents’ house, Mary Porter found an old Kingsport Times-News envelope postmarked 1960 and addressed to her late father, Edward Gustafson. Inside was a brochure titled “House of the Week Study Plan: X-94.” Knowing that I was always looking for things to write about in my Times-News column, Mary passed it along, thinking I might find it interesting. She was right.

But alas my time as a columnist ran out before I ever got around to writing about Ed Gustafson’s House of the Week plans. But since my retirement, I’ve been revisiting ideas I never had time to explore, posting what I call Columns I Never Got Around To on my blog. And this week, I found myself staring at that house plan ordered 65 years ago - a relic of a bygone era when newspapers helped people build homes, literally.

I remembered those Sunday features well - weekly stories showcasing “dream homes” for the aspiring homeowner.

Apparently, House X-94 had caught Ed Gustafson’s eye enough that he sent away 50 cents for the study plan. He never got around to building the “Big Family House in a Small Package” as the newspaper described it, and the house Mary was cleaning out turned out to be the same address on the envelope, the house her parents moved into on Morningside Circle in 1943.

For decades, newspapers featured house plans every Sunday, catering to every dreamer with a hammer and a plot of land. Some weeks, the featured home was a cozy cottage, perfect for newlyweds or retirees. Other times, it was a stately two-story meant for a growing family, or a “rambling ranch,” as they often called them, full of sliding doors and picture windows looking out onto a generous backyard. Each rendering was accompanied by a glowing description of the home’s merits - how the kitchen was “perfect for modern living” or how the open floor plan allowed “for easy entertaining.”

At the bottom of the page was a small coupon.

For a low price – by 1960 it was 50 cents - you could send away for a “study plan” - a small-scale blueprint that included a materials list, giving you a rough idea of what your dream home might cost. And if you liked what you saw, another form allowed you to send off for full blueprints - detailed construction documents that could be had for the princely sum of eight or ten dollars.

It seems quaint now, in an era where house plans can be downloaded with the click of a button, but at the time, these newspaper house plans fueled a building boom across the country. The concept wasn’t new - the earliest versions of “House of the Week” articles appeared in the 1900s and 1910s - but the golden age of newspaper house plans was in the 1950s through the 1970s, when homeownership was an essential part of the American dream.

These plans were perfect for ambitious young couples, the kind who weren’t afraid of rolling up their sleeves, enlisting the help of handy relatives, and spending nights and weekends hammering their future into existence. They were for families stretching a dollar as far as it would go, for people who had land but needed guidance, for folks who dreamed of four walls and a roof that belonged to them.

No architect with a sophisticated portfolio. No draftsman hunched over a drawing board. No high-powered real estate firm guiding the process. Just a Sunday feature, a clipped coupon, and a few dollars sent through the mail.

And yet, somehow, it was perfect.

I don’t know when newspapers stopped running house plans. Maybe it was when home design became more complex, or when buyers preferred pre-built developments over custom construction. Maybe it was when the Sunday paper itself began to shrink, losing pages and sections to the digital age.

But every now and then, when I see an old newspaper tucked inside a flea market bin, I thumb through it to see if, somewhere in those yellowed pages, there’s a house waiting to be built.

All it needs is a dreamer, a hammer, and maybe a little pocket change.

The blueprint that came in Ed Gustafson's "study plan."

And the materials list.

House of the Week from April 23, 1947 Kingsport Times-News.

An early House of the Week from a 1924 edition of the Kingsport Times.
 

The Nicknamer

Tony Drakos as a senior in high school

My class - D-B '65 - lost a treasured classmate on May 13. Tony Drakos died that day at age 78. 

Maybe Tony wasn't named Most Popular on Class Day but he was popular. Everyone knew Tony, that big smile, ever ready with a wisecrack. 

I just had dinner with Tony and Bruce Haney a few months ago and Tony was as sharp as ever, full of stories. 

As always with Tony, I learned something new. I knew Tony was a star baseball player, second baseman on D-B's state tournament team. I knew he was a champion billiards player, top in his age group in the Boys Club Upper East Tennessee tournament. 

I did not know Tony was a top notch violinist, who was performing with the Kingsport Symphony Orchestra while he was still in junior high. He would have continued if not for an incident one day after baseball practice. A football player saw him carrying his violin case and began making fun of him. Ridicule is tough to handle for any 14-year-old and Tony went home and announced he was giving up the violin to concentrate on baseball. 

Tony was famous to his classmates for one more thing: nicknames. He gave half the members of the class of '65 their nicknames, most famously he named Eddie Grills "Ratt." Eddie is in my phone's directory, not as Eddie, but as Ratt.

In 2004 I wrote a column for the Kingsport Times-News about nicknames and Tony was the star of the column!

Here it is: 

To his mother, he’s Eddie.

But to his pals, he’s “Ratt,” and has been since the 9th grade.

Joe King was Joseph on the class roll  but “Winger” in the locker room.

Nicknames used to be a big part of growing up. Kids were proud of their nick-names. I remember Enos Lord stood up in seventh grade art class and corrected Mr. Buchanan, “Call me ‘Junebug.’”

Lynn Johnson (D-B ’58) remembers the nicknames from his youth. “Bob Strickler was a year behind me in school and from the earliest days we called him ‘Pot.’ A lovely girl in my class, Mary Belle Cox, was known as ‘Mert.’ Dr. Bill Locke, President of Northeast State, was known as ‘Cooter.’ Charles Sproles, an excellent football player at D-B in the early 60's, was known as ‘Poochie.’ Kenneth Cross, a dentist from my class, was known as ‘Bump.’ Of course, we had some nicknames for coaches, teachers and principals that are not very flattering so I won't mention those.”

Name calling was an honor not a disgrace.

I played high school basketball with a Snake, a Putty Butt, a Scrounge and a Zora Molla. And they all answered to those nicknames.

Snake wasn’t sneaky, he was six-six and lanky; Putty Butt was slow; Scrounge was always diving on the floor; and Zora Molla took his name from his favorite fighter, Zora Folley.

Now those were nicknames. Not like the nicknames of today.

Pro basketball player Kevin Garnett has got game. But his nickname - K.G. - doesn’t. It’s uninspired and nondescript.

That’s the trend now: call someone by initials. How inventive. Allen Iverson is A.I. Jennifer Lopez is J-Lo.

If Carl Switzer were to arrive in Hollywood today, he would probably be tagged “Cee.” Or maybe the even less imaginative nickname “C.S.” Fortunately Switzer arrived six decades ago and was given the forever-memorable moniker “Alfalfa.” (His hair looked like alfalfa.)

Had John Wayne been born a half century later he would probably have been nicknamed “J.W.” Or even worse, “J-Way.” Not the Duke.

But something happened, a laziness of language. Strong, descriptive nicknames have gone away.

And that’s how it is that the greatest basketball player of the last 20 years is nicknamed “M.J.”

M.J.

How long did it take you to come up with that one?

We cherished our nicknames.

Sometimes kids wanted a nickname so badly that they would create one. Johnson says Melvin Joseph nicknamed himself “Jose” by writing the name on his football helmet. “Melvin was a freshman Spanish student at the time. Jose was Spanish for Joseph.”

But usually the nickname comes from someone else.

In my day one kid was responsible for most of the name-calling, Tony Drakos.

I asked Tony the other day how he came to be the Arbiter of the Epithet. (Actually I asked him why he gave so many people their nicknames.)

“It may have been partly a reaction to my own nickname. Everybody called me ‘Greek.’”

His first nickname was 'Carson Oats' for Allan Rice. Tony doesn’t remember where it came from but you can see a logic: Rice, Oats. “But once I figured out I could get away with it, I just kept doing it.” He nicknamed Eddie “Ratt” and Joe “Winger.”

And when Eddie balked at being called “Ratt” Tony assured him it was okay.

Eddie says, “Tony told me it was spelled with two t’s and that if you pronounced it backwards it was Ta-Tar!”

And who wouldn’t want to be nicknamed Ta-Tar!

Tony playing drums in the Key Club Faux Rock and Roll Band (staged for a yearbook photo)

Tony Drakos, gone, but still assigning nicknames from beyond.

Tony Drakos made his first appearance (of many) in the Kingsport Times News in 1948 

The Big Indian - Can Kingsport Put the Pratt's Mascot Back Together Again

He was known as Honest John or the Big Indian but he was known by everyone in Kingsport.

He was the 33-foot tall fiberglass and wood Indian who towered over Honest John's Gift Shop on Bristol Highway beginning in 1954. When the Super Highway (the new 11-W road to Bristol) opened in 1960, Honest John Barker saw the handwriting on the wall and moved his business over to the new highway. Later the Pratt family bought the business and opened a barbecue restaurant to complement their Big Indian. 

And now the Big Indian has crumpled, falling apart when a crane attempted to lift him off his longtime perch to move him to a new home at a miniature golf course. 

I've written about the Big Indian many times over the years, most recently in 2018 when his Big Head tilted forward. 

Here is that 2018 column, which explains much about the history of the Giant Chief.

(There is a GoFundMe page to raise money to help put him back together again:

 https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-honest-john)

The rumors have been flying ever since The Big Indian’s head fell forward.

The Big Indian – for the uninitiated - is the iconic Chickasaw chief statue that has towered over West Stone Drive since 1960, first over Honest John’s service station and souvenir stand and now over Pratt’s Barbecue.

My Colonial Heights correspondent Susan Pool says this is all the folks out her way are talking about. She has heard:

1 - The Indian used to be located on Center Street.

2 - The Indian used to be four feet taller.

3 - The Indian fell flat on his face onto Stone Drive once.

Correspondent Pool continues, “This thing has been the talk of the town - but hey! it sure beats Washington politics, etc. and other headlines of late. And better than a lot of other grocery store, barber shop, (beauty parlor), water cooler gibberish too.”

Here’s the real story of The Big Indian by someone who has known him since he was born: me.

I can remember when The Big Indian suddenly appeared on Chestnut Ridge, right up the road from my house.

It was March 30, 1954 and a photo of The Big Indian being hoisted up appeared in the next day’s newspaper.

“The biggest Indian ever seen in the Cherokee country showed up on Chestnut Ridge Tuesday Morning. Standing almost 33 feet tall in his moccasins this giant redskin has taken his permanent place on Chestnut Ridge. John Barker built the yet unchristened Indian of plywood, tar paper and mesh wire. When finished the Indian will have a coat of plaster and paint. The work was done in Barker’s basement with the help of Bill Moody and Wayne Hunt. Weighing an estimated 10,000 pounds the Indian actually stands 25 feet 8 inches tall. His height is increased by a three-foot pedestal and a four-foot feather. When finished he will speak to passers-by with a loudspeaker.”

Barker was a clever fellow, a Seebee during World War II, who was a master cabinet maker. Not only did he build The Big Indian, he built his gift shop and service station.

The Big Indian was eventually christened Kaw-Liga, after the Hank Williams song, but the name never seemed to stick. He was always just The Big Indian.

Realtors would even use him for directions. There are many Times News ads from the fifties saying “Turn right just before you get to The Big Indian.”

The Big Indian’s official address at that time was 3949 Bristol Highway.

When the Super Highway – that’s what everyone called Stone Drive -  opened in 1960, Barker moved Honest John’s Shell Service & Gift Shop – and The Big Indian to Stone Drive.

In 1971 he decided it was time to retire and sold his gift shop and restaurant – along with The Big Indian – to the Pratt family, who had Pratt’s Farmland on Supermarket Row.

There was some talk at the time about getting rid of The Big Indian. After all what did a 33-foot tall Chickasaw have to do with a restaurant?

Tom Pratt told me a few years ago, “Dad thought about dumping him in the back and he thought about giving him to Dobyns-Bennett to put in the stadium for a mascot.”

In the end the Pratts just left him standing.

And there he is today, still standing, if not as upright as before. After all The Big Indian is 64, retirement age for many. That’s a long time to be standing in the rain and heat and cold.

Tom Pratt said in the newspaper last week that he has reached out to Pal Barger who has experience with big statues; see the Big Pal holding a hamburger atop the Lynn Garden Drive Pal’s.

Let’s hope that brings a solution. Kingsport wouldn’t be Kingsport without The Big Indian.

XXX

Those rumors:

He was never on Center Street but he was in a different location, on what is now Memorial Blvd.

How tall he is depends on whether you count the three-foot base and the 48-inch headdress. But the Indian himself hasn’t grown.

Since he has been on Stone Drive he has been too far from the road to fall over and block it.

But there used to be a lot of jokes about him blocking Bristol Highway. None of them are suitable for a family newspaper.