The Man Who Saved Wallace News

 

Marty Mullins saved a Kingsport landmark in 1974 and he never got credit for doing it.

That’s probably because at the time he did it, no one realized it was a landmark or that his purchase was saving it.

But in early 1974 Wallace and Launa Crum had announced they were retiring and closing Kingsport’s long-running newsstand, Wallace News at 205 Broad Street.

The Times-News even ran one of those front-page stories that newspapers love to run: farewell to our beloved local business, so long, it’s been good to know you.

No one, at the newspaper or in town, gave it a second thought. A newsstand was closing, a used clothing store would probably be moving in. There was still Russell News in Five Points.

But it was worthy of front-page notice.

“Spring never arrived officially until Crum rolled open the big door,” staff writer Joan Roesgen waxed.

She quoted an unnamed patron as saying, “Without Wallace there wouldn’t be any downtown Kingsport.”

At one time downtown Kingsport was filled with newsstands. There was Kingsport News on Main Street and Broad Street News on, naturally, Broad Street, and Russell News in Five Points. And Wallace had its main competitor, Palace News, almost directly across Broad Street.

In their hey-day newsstands didn’t just sell newspapers, they also carried fruit and tobacco and even a few cosmetics and snacks, an early version of the convenience store without the gas pump.

The newsstand was a place to buy the newspaper but also to get the news. Large crowds turned out in 1919 in front of City News Stand on Broad Street as the clerks posted periodic updates on the Dempsey-Willard fight. And in 1939 when the D-B football team was playing Jacksonville High in Florida – this was before WKPT and Martin Karant – Broad Street Fruit and News promised fans could call the stand any time that night and get the score.

The newsstand was a gathering spot for downtown workers, a place to swap stories and catch up on the news.

But times changed. Palace News, which had opened in 1933, hung on till 1966, even adding jewelry to its stock (!!) before closing down. Russell News’ 8-foot tall stuffed bear, which had frightened small children since Bud Edwards bagged it in Alaska in 1959 and displayed it in the shop, was getting ratty and so was Russell’s merchandise. It would close in ’78.

So when the Crums announced in 1974 that they were closing the overheard door for the last time, it wasn’t a shock. Newsstands weren’t an integral part of Kingsport life like they once were.

And downtown wasn’t the integral part of Kingsport life that it had been.  

The Charles Store across the street from Wallace’s in 1974 was slashing prices: “Everything Must Go.” The Revco next door to Charles Store had a moving sign in the window, and on down the block Kress’s window said “Gigantic Sale - Store Closing.”

Wallace was the only Broad Street newsstand left – in the thirties there were as many as five at one time - and soon it would be gone.

But then Arvin “Marty” Mullins stepped in to buy the place and keep it going.

He would tell me years later, “I just always loved newsstands. When I was going to Lynn View, I’d head downtown after school and hang out at Palace News, playing the pinball machines and shooting the breeze.”

Marty Mullins as a student at Lynn View High

That’s why he decided to buy Wallace News. Not to preserve a landmark.

But he did preserve a landmark. He kept Wallace going for the next 40 years, sitting there like a time capsule from a long-ago era. There were fewer magazines – often only one copy of each title – and fewer newspapers. Even the Bristol paper stopped sending copies to Wallace by 2010.

There was still the popcorn machine, right up front almost touching the sidewalk, and the soft drinks in the cooler and a modest stack of fresh copies of the Times-News and the Johnson City Press (which was printed in Kingsport by then).

And there was Troy Brown, who by 2014 had manned the front counter for 47 years and was as familiar a face on Broad Street as the Meter Maid once had been.

Troy Brown at front counter of Wallace News

Then in 2014 after 40 years Marty announced he was retiring, closing the newsstand down. Marty had run Wallace News longer than the place’s namesake Wallace Crum had. He was 77 and told me he wanted to do more camping.

When I moved back to Kingsport in 2002, Wallace News was one of the few Broad Street businesses left from my childhood. The rest of downtown was consignment shops and antique stores and vacant store fronts.

There was the usual gnashing of teeth and renting of garments when word got out that Marty was closing Wallace: so long, been good to know you.

Then Thom Throp stepped forward to buy the place, keep the downtown landmark going.

It was a valiant effort. But times had changed too much. Keeping a newsstand open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week was arduous work for little reward. Thom closed Wallace News Stand for good in April 2018. It’s been sitting there like a flat tire ever since.

Two weeks ago Marty Mullins died; Marty was the last link to Wallace of Wallace News.

Marty

Maybe someday times will change again and there will be a newsstand on Broad Street. But I doubt it will sell newspapers.

 

 

A Brief History of Newsstands in Kingsport

Kingsport’s first newsstand was City News and Fruit, opened in 1917 by J.H. “Daddy” Long at 114 Broad Street, next to Kingsport Drug.

In 1919 City News advertised itself as the local distributor for the Knoxville Journal and Tribune, Bristol Herald Courier, Johnson City Staff and Kingsport Times.

City News was only a few steps from the train station and soon it added a number of out-of-town newspapers including the Chicago Sunday Tribune, the New York News, and the Atlanta and Richmond papers.

In 1925 Long sold the newsstand to J.C. Zarnes and George Earles who renamed it Kingsport Fruit and News. It would stay in business at that location until 1954 when Earles’ widow, unable to find a buyer, closed it down.

 

Wallace News traced its roots back to 1932 when Bill Richardson and Paul Bailey opened the Broad Street Step-In, a combination pool hall and newsstand, in its familiar Broad Street space, then next to Western Union, which was on the corner of Broad and Market. In 1935 they changed the name to Broad Street Fruit and News.

Fire completely destroyed the newsstand in January 1941 and it was two months before it reopened. By then Richardson and Bailey were ready to sell and Wallace Crum, who had been working at Palace News since 1936, was ready to buy. He announced his purchase and renaming in the Sunday Kingsport Times of April 20, 1941.

And thus Wallace News was born.

 

Palace News was founded in 1925 as Palace Barber Shop, operated by John Tranbarger. In 1933 Charles Coley opened Palace Fruit and News in the front part of the shop. By 1939 Palace Barber Shop and Fruit and News Stand was owned by Paul Nottingham and advertised 13 employees including legendary Kingsport barbers Floyd Cavin, Pat Clark, B.B. Sullivan and Tommy Thompson and shoe shine men Oscar Goines and Chayman Meeks.

Sidebar: I played for the Palace News basketball team in the City League when I was 14. Our uniforms were red tee shirts, Palace News silk-screened in white on the front, with shiny red shorts. (I averaged ten points a game; the team averaged 23 points a game. Lest you think I was a big star: my teammate Jimmy Sams averaged eleven points a game.)

 

Fred King left Kingsport Fruit and News in 1927 to open his own newsstand on Cherokee Street next to the Palace of Sweets. He conducted a contest to name the business. The winning entry from T.J. Pierce elicited this wonderful headline in the Kingsport Times: “’King’s Palace’ Is The Winning Cognomen.”

 

My favorite Kingsport  newsstand that I never visited would have been Star News, which operated at 131 Broad from 1937 till 1939. (I never visited because I hadn’t been born yet.)

Star News advertised in the Kingsport Times that it sold Bluebird Records for 35 cents each, 3 for $1.

Among the titles were the Blues records “Didn’t It Rain – Part 2” by the Heavenly Gospel Singers and “Angel Child” by Walter Davis, and the Hill Billy records “The Hottest Gal in Town” by Three ‘Baccer Tags and “What Would You Give in Exchange – Parts 2 and 3” by the Monroe Brothers (yes, Bill Monroe with his brothers Charlie and Birch).

 

As a kid my favorite Kingsport newsstand was Russell News in Five Points because of its wide selection of paperbacks. I bought “My Brother Was An Only Child” by humorist Jack Douglas there. A month or so later I went back and bought the sequel “Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver.”

They were not children’s books.