Hat Trick

 

This is my favorite picture of my mother and father. She was 19, he was 24, they were newlyweds, young and in love, and dressed to the nines! Check out her outfit. Check out her hat!

 

The Hat of My Mother

Earlier this year my longtime friend Paula Bennett-Paddick sent me a short story she thought I would like titled “The Hat of My Mother” by Max Steele. She knows me well. It’s a wistful little period piece about a mother’s troubled trip to buy a hat.

In many ways it reminded me of another favorite short story of mine, Wendell Berry’s “Nearly to the Fair,” also set in the thirties and also about a thwarted journey.

“The Hat of My Mother” made me think of my mother's hats, of which she had many. But even more it made me think of her hat boxes, which were stylish in themselves. I remember them better than I do the hats. She must have had nine or ten hats and a shelf in an upstairs closet just for her hat boxes. (My mother was a very stylish woman.)

Every Sunday she would carefully select the appropriate hat to match her outfit. We couldn’t leave for church until Mother had her hat placed carefully atop her hair, bobby-pinned to hold it in place.

I don’t think every woman in Kingsport in the fifties had ten hats but my mother had an advantage over most women. My father worked at Penney’s so she got a discount.

I can still hear Mrs. Minnie Kizer, the Penney’s elevator operator, calling out, “Second floor, Layaway, Ready to Wear, Alterations, Ladies’ Hats.”

I found a story in a 1950 edition of the Kingsport Times about Kingsport women in the fifties and their hats.

 Kingsport Times, Sunday August 13, 1950

By ELEANOR DIVINE

Why do the ladies of Kingsport have an antipathy toward wearing hats?

Walk down the street any day and scan the horizons. Few hats are in sight.

Even if you do glimpse a woman sporting a chapeau, chances are she is from out of town. Many Johnson City ladies go to town equipped with both hats and gloves. So do Bristol shoppers.

But Kingsport women just won't wear hats.

However city milliners say that doesn't stop the ladies from buying hats. Revealing a strange paradox, the merchants hail greater bonnet sales than ever before. At the same time they admit in bewilderment that women consistently shun wearing them in town.

Saleswomen shake their heads. "Even we don't wear them to work," they admit shamefacedly.

"Every well-dressed woman should wear a hat to and from her job,” says Mrs. Tina Anderson, J. C. Penney milliner. "But no one else does it. How can we?”

Mrs. D. L. Marion, J. Fred Johnson hat department, agrees. "Many customers have told me they would like to include this important accessory in their casual costume, but they won't because none of the other ladies will."

This vicious circle is but another example of the “all we like sheep" attitude of fashion slaves which men deplore and scorn. Those who want to be chapeau wearers bow to the will of those who don't.

How can those who really don't like to wear hats be distinguished from the ones who don't simply because of the others?

It all boils down to dividing Kingsport women into two opposing camps—the Bonnet-ists and the Anti-Bonnet-ists.

Some of the more militant Bonnet-ists are proposing a "Hat Day" or "Hat Week” to set aside headgear donning for downtown.

But there are some Anti-Bonnet-ists who would never submit. Among them are the type who will not purchase a hat for an occasion less than a wedding or funeral!

Mrs. Anderson quotes an old refrain of her customers. "I never buy a hat unless I have to. I have to get this one for a wedding, but I know I'll never use it again."

A Parks-Belk hatter, Miss Betty Walters, says the women complain, "I know I'll only wear this hat once. I buy hats and then stick them in the closet after one time."

The men's angle is seen in Parks-Belk manager John K. Arrington's reply. "Women only put on hats for dress-up occasions. That they avoid wearing them isn't because they don't have any." Adding that sales show an increase instead of slump, he says, "They have hats; they simply don't wear -them."

Shrugging their shoulders, many are at a loss for reasons Kingsport’s feminine population scorn of covering their heads for down town wear.

"I think it must be a small-town habit," one sighs, "although women in other nearby towns dress in them for shopping."

Another says resignedly, "Women here are simply more casual dressers – especially in summer weather when it's so much easier just to run downtown hatless."

Penney's Ladies' Hats ad from 1941

Miss Bertha Peoples of Fuller and Hillman has another idea. "It's these young teen-agers," she asserted. "The younger people are particularly reluctant to wear hats, although some college girls go for them." The girls who are just beginning to wear dress-up outfits go into millinery departments, try on hats, look in the mirror, and giggle in ridicule at their reflections. But they buy the hats. Stores continue to herald booming chapeau business here in spite of the contrary ladies’ disinclination for covering their craniums.

With the introduction of many new modes in head wear, from the beanie to the babushtka, sales have been steadily climbing. Local merchants agree with trade magazines which report prosperity, unblemished except for a recent hue and cry caused when Margaret Truman abandoned hats for a scarf over her head this Easter.

Straw Boaters

 

Daddy's straw boater

My father wore hats. In my lifetime he only wore fedoras, usually gray or green. But he wore them almost every day.

But in his younger days, he styled a straw boater (see above photo). Many men in the thirties and forties in Kingsport did. 

I’ve never been a hat guy. But there was a brief period in junior high when I wore a hat, a straw Panama hat, that I hoped would make me cool. Of course it didn’t work. Even loaning it to my dance partner – see photo – didn’t help. She looked cool. I looked like a dork.

I don’t see straw hats much anymore. But there was a time, as I recounted in this column in 2013:

 

Straw Hat Day was a big day – at least for haberdashers – for almost a century.

Straw Hat Day was popular when, well, hats were popular.

I’d never heard of Straw Hat Day until I stumbled across a half page ad in a 1929 edition of the Times News for “Straw Hat Day.” Then I started digging around and found ads for Straw Hat Day as early as 1889 (in a Syracuse newspaper). The last time Straw Hat Day was “celebrated” in Kingsport was apparently in 1966.

Straw Hat Day in 1929 was May 1st but it bounced around on the calendar, sometimes occurring as early as April 24th and other years as late as May 15th.

“Keep in Step with Style and Wear a Straw on May Day,” the 1929 ad advised. The sponsors were J.C. Penney, Parks-Belk, Fuller’s, J. Fred Johnson, J.C. Cope Clothing, Cooper Bros. and The Acorn Store, all of whom just happened to have a nice new selection of straw hats for spring.

Why a Straw Hat Day?

It started out as a comfort issue and turned into a fashion issue.

Straw hats were supposed to be cooler in summer.

Just as women weren’t supposed to wear white until after Memorial Day, so too were men supposed to keep their straw boaters in the closet until Straw Hat Day. Then they could put away the felt fedoras until fall.

I have to admit I haven’t owned a straw hat since a Panama number that I thought was high fashion when I was a teenager. (The song “Pink Shoelaces” was a hit at the time with the line, “And a big Panama with a purple hat band.”)

Straw hats went away because hats in general went away. Some blame President John Kennedy for that, because he didn’t wear a hat at his inauguration and in general eschewed the hat.

But as Neil Steinberg points out in his book “Hatless Jack,” “Dress-hat sales did not tank after Kennedy's inauguration. They had tanked long before - decades before. The peak year for men's hat manufacture in the United States was 1903, a year that also saw a widespread hatless fad. By the mid-1920s, hatlessness was a major problem for the industry, which was in a free fall by the late 1940s and early 1950s. Men's dress-hat sales in the United States in 1960 were half of what they had been a decade earlier.”

So the reason we don’t have a Straw Hat Day in Kingsport or anywhere anymore isn’t because straw hats have fallen out of favor, it’s that hats have fallen out of favor.

If we had a Hat Day now it would be Ball Cap Day, the day when you switch from your winter solid ball cap to your summer mesh.

 

 

 Cowboy Hats

Bat Masterson

 Back when the West was very young,

There lived a man named Masterson.

He wore a cane and derby hat,

His name was Bat, Bat Masterson.

-- Theme from the TV show “Bat Masterson”

 Ignoring the lyric about “wore a cane,” the TV series Bat Masterson (1958-1961) may have been the most accurate portrayal of cowboy millinery.

Cowboys, or most of them anyway, didn’t wear what my generation thinks of as a cowboy hat. Those wide-brimmed, high crowned chapeaus – the ten-gallon hat - would have been unwieldy on the open range, always blowing off.

Bat Masterson’s derby hat may have made him look like a bit of a dandy on TV but he fit right in in the Old West.

Check out this famous photo of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch Gang (Butch, real name Robert Leroy Parker, is front row, far right. The Sundance Kid, real name Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, is front row, far left). No Stetsons, all Bowlers (derby hats).

According to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, “Cowboys rarely fought Indians, they were more likely to die from falling off a horse than in a gunfight, and they didn’t wear those tall, wide-brimmed cowboy hats you see in Westerns. Most photographs from that time feature men wearing bowler hats and one of the reasons they were popular is because they stayed on in windy conditions.”

So Bat Masterson wasn’t a dandy, he was a typical Old West denizen.

And as for “he wore a cane,” there are no photographs of Masterson carrying a cane. He apparently did carry a cane, a result of a – what else? – gun shot injury.

As for his reputation as a gunfighter, that may be on the money. He was reputed to have shot to death 26 men by the age of 26.

He downplays that number but still fesses up to quite a few gun fights in this profile from the Kansas City Journal of Nov. 24, 1881.

(After a long-winded introduction that said, in short, there were many gun-fighters walking the streets and populating the pews of Kansas City, the correspondent got to the interview.)

 BAT'S BULLETS.

Bat Matteson is Referred to

Some of his More Tragical Exploits.

The iron-clad reporter of the Journal met the famous H. B. Masterson, of Dodge City-known, by those whom he has not shot, as “Bat" Masterson. Mr. Masterson (it is well to be respectful) was met at the door of a Main street restaurant about 8 o'clock last evening. He was in company with Mr. H. E. Gryden, prosecuting attorney of Dodge City. An introduction all around followed, and the reportorial magnet was applied to Mr. Masterson to draw out whatever reminiscence he was willing to relate of his crusade in the interests of law and order. It may be well first to describe Mr. Masterson's appearance.

He is a medium sized man, weighing perhaps 150 pounds, and reaching five feet nine inches in height. His hair is brown, his rather small mustache is of the same tint, and his smooth-shaven cheeks plump and rosy. His eyes are blue, and gentle in expression, his attire modest but neat, and withal he is about as far removed in appearance from the Bowery frontiersman as one could well imagine. Strange as it may seem he is grave and quiet in demeanor, and polite to a fault. This latter characteristic was evidenced not only in his demeanor to the news man, but to an impertinent admirer (!) who wished him to go down the street and confine his attentions to him.

In answer to a very leading question, Masterson said he had not killed as many men as was popularly supposed, though he had “had a great many difficulties” and had in fact been tried four times for murder in the first degree and acquitted each time.

"How about shooting some Mexicans cutting off their heads and carrying the gory trophies back in a sack?"

"Oh, that story is straight, except that I did not cut off their heads,” replied Bob. He then related the account of the "affair,” which is in substance as follows:

A Mexican and his son became very troublesome in the camp where Bat was then sojourning. They were good shots, and always worked together. They had murdered many a miner, and relieved him of his outfit and dust. A reward of $500 was offered for their heads, and Masterson, both for the sake of the money and for the purpose of ridding the camp of their dreadful presence, concluded to annihilate them. Their cabin was in a little clearing in an almost inaccessible place in the mountains. Before daybreak one morning Masterson crept to the verge of the clearing with a rifle in his hands, Behind a bush he reclined on a blanket until sunrise, when the door of the cabin opened wide and the ugly visage of the old man protruded. The sharp black eyes swept the horizon, and the head was withdrawn. Before many minutes had elapsed, the head reappeared, followed by a body with a brace of pistols strapped around the waist, and a rifle resting on his shoulder. The old man was accompanied by his son, who was also fully armed. The old man was covered by Masterson's rifle over a path to and from a spring a hundred yards or so from the cabin at right angles. The father and son were conversing earnestly, seemingly unwilling to re-enter the cabin, before the door of which they stood for some time. Thirty minutes passed, which seemed hours to Masterson, before he could obtain what he considered a favorable shot. Finally the old man made a move which uncovered the son. Masterson took advantage of his opportunity, and the young man fell to rise no more. Before the smoke revealed from whence the shot come the old man was a corpse alongside of his boy.

On May 14, 1878, Masterson’s brother Ed was murdered in Dodge City. Ed had tried to arrest a man named Walker, for some offense, and had grappled with him, seizing him by both shoulders. Walker was known to be a dangerous man, and meanwhile a desperado named Wagner had come to the rescue. “Bat" heard of the trouble, and rushed to his brother's relief. Meanwhile an army of roughs had gathered to the rescue of Ed's prisoner and affairs looked dark Just then Bat arrived, and taking in the situation, he shouted "Ed, shove him away from you." At that moment Walker drew a pistol and shot Ed through the body, inflicting a wound from which he died in about fifteen minutes. Bat immediately began firing. His first bullet laid Walker low, his second struck Wagner in the breast and glanced around, inflicting a dangerous but not fatal wound. His third and fourth shots laid low two more of the mob, and three more were forever forbidden to come to Dodge City by Masterson. They walked out of town and never returned.

In April, 1881, Bat's second brother was killed in Dodge City by two men named Updegraff and Peacock. These men remarked after the killing: "The Mastersons were born to run.” Bat was then in Tombstone, Arizona, and was telegraphed of his brother's murder. Though eleven hundred miles away, he packed his grip and started for Dodge City. On his arrival he learned that one of the men had said "the Mastersons were born to run," and this infuriated him more even than the death of his brother. The story is related in a very few words. Bat Masterson shot Peacock and Updegraff dead, disproving, at least, the assumption that the Mastersons were born to run."

Regarding his exploit in Texas with the soldiers, Mr. Masterson was quite reticent. In answer to a direct question he said, "I had a little difficulty with some soldiers down there, but never mind, I dislike to talk about it," It is popularly supposed that he annihilated a whole regiment, and this belief is strengthened by the fact that there was an urgent call for recruits about that time. Only West Point graduates escaped, and being officers, they sought places of safety early in the engagement.

Alluding to the killing of Ed Masterson, Mr. Gryden said: The man walked some distance before he fell. I saw him coming, and in the darkness of the evening he seemed to be carrying a lighted cigar in his hand. I remarked to a friend that the cigar burned in a remarkably lively manner, but as the man drew near we saw that the fire was not at the end of a cigar but in the wadding of his coat. He fell dead at our feet.

Three years ago a gang of men attempted to rob a Santa Fe train near Dodge City. Bat, who was sheriff at that time, pursued them, and single handed and alone brought in three of the robbers at the muzzle of his revolver.”

H. B. Masterson, the subject of the above sketch, came to Kansas in 1869. He is now but twenty-seven years of age; so that he was a mere boy of fifteen when he reached the State. For a time, he shot buffalo for the government. In 1876 he was elected deputy marshal of Dodge City, and in 1878 sheriff of that county. He is a wonderful shot, and possesses the rare ability to shoot with equal precision with either hand. When he has a large audience to entertain, he crosses his wrists like a letter X, and enters the action firing with two revolvers at once.

Masterson leaves the city today, but returns in a few days and gives a brief sojourn here. Whether he has killed 26 men as popularly asserted, cannot be positively ascertained without careful and extensive research, for he is himself quite reticent on the subject. But that many men have fallen by his deadly revolver and rifle is an established fact, and he furnishes a rare illustration of the fact that the thrilling stories of life on the frontier are not always overdrawn.

Remembering Kingsport's Old Neighborhoods

 

The Old Neighborhoods

While digging around on my computer, I found a folder of old photos I used in 2004 (17 years ago!) to illustrate a speech I gave to the Friends of the Kingsport Archives. Many of the photos are from Kingsport’s first neighborhoods: Fairacres, White City, The Fifties.

I titled the speech REMEMBERING KINGSPORT’S NEIGHBORHOODS.

So let’s do that again, let’s Remember Kingsport’s Old Neighborhoods. 

How many people here have a photo like this in their family album? Or maybe I should ask how many people don’t have a picture like this in their family album?

This is what is known as the OUR FIRST HOUSE photo. And it’s a staple of photo albums, always has been.

That’s my mom.

And that’s my dad.

And right there – at her belly line - that’s me. She was pregnant with me.

And that’s our first house, 1433 Pineola Avenue.

Except I never lived there but more about that in a minute.

Is there anybody who doesn’t know where Pineola Avenue is?

I’ll bet Pineola is the most famous residential street in Kingsport - or at least the most famous that isn’t a thoroughfare, like Watauga.

I’ve looked through a lot of old city directories at the City of Kingsport Archives and I’ve been amazed at all the people who lived on Pineola, or its sister streets, Carolina and East Sevier (which was originally known as Walnut): doctors, lawyers, business owners, captains of industry and factory workers, all living side by side.

And that’s the first house that my mom and dad owned.

 

The Fifties (top), White City (middle), Shelby Street (bottom)

The first residential neighborhood in Kingsport - so I’m told - was the Fifties, those Tudor style houses up the hill from West Sullivan Street. For longtime residents, the houses up the hill from Supermarket Row. It was called the Fifties because there were plans for fifty houses, although the section ended up a few shy of 50.

The top picture in the group photo above is Hammond Park in the Fifties.

There were a few permanent houses before the Fifties - in particular the row houses on Shelby Street, behind the library. Those are in the bottom picture.

But the Fifties was the first planned neighborhood and as such was designated - of course - Neighborhood No. 2 on the first city plan.

Most of the houses in the Fifties had six rooms, three of them bedrooms, a linen closet -- oooo! -- a bathroom, which was a welcome and by no means standard feature in 1916, and a coal bin …and sold for $2,300. A 1916 Model T, by way of comparison, cost $290.

Neighborhood Number 3 on that first city plan was White City, that group of white wooden houses across from Sevier - old Dobyns-Bennett to folks like me - primarily on Yadkin. Deed restrictions in the neighborhood required that all the houses be painted white. And they still are.

That’s the middle picture in the photo above. George W. Bush’s grandfather Prescott lived in White City for six months in 1922, two years before George H.W. was born, at 906 Norwood. You can’t see it in the picture. It’s just to the right of where the photo ends. There are only two houses on Norwood and it’s the one on the west side of the street with the screen porch.

John Nolen, who planned Kingsport, took photos of "hilltop houses" in The Fifties (top) and Shelby Street apartments (bottom) in 1918.

Neighborhood Number 4 in the old plan was called Armstrong Village, although it would be renamed Borden Mill Village in 1924 when the cotton mill came to town.

Armstrong Village was to be a segregated black section with homes of a high order, according to the original plan. But this met opposition and eventually the black neighborhood was situated in Riverview.

Early photos of Linville, Watauga and Oakdale (Borden Mill Village)

As the population exploded more residences went up.

J. Fred Johnson built his three-story mansion on the hill above the Bristol Highway, at 1322 Watauga Street in 1916. Bill Todd told me it was the first house on the ridge. The nearest neighbor was Flem Dobyns a half mile away in the old farmhouse on James Wiley Dobyns’ 250 acre stock farm. The Dobyns House is now 1434 Watauga.

People of my age refer to the Dobyns farmhouse as the Finucane house because it was for fifty years home to the wonderfully eccentric Finucane family, Tom and Charlotte and their thirteen children, eleven of them boys.

I went to school with Dan, who was somewhere in the middle of the pack of kids. He frequently came to school without socks. And once I visited his house I understood why. There were boys everywhere, on the couch, on the steps, on the porch. It would have been a task each morning just to find pants and a shirt.

When my class had a reunion, we invited Dan because he is pictured with our class in the yearbook. He wrote back, thanking us for inviting him but noting: “I was actually in the class ahead of you but I didn’t graduate until the class behind you. I was just passing through.”

It wasn’t for lack of smarts that he graduated late. He was just shall we say unfocused.

The father was a chemist at Eastman, a noted bird watcher famous for his absences from work. I have been told that he would be driving to the plant, spot a rare bird, and chase after the bird, neglecting to call and tell anyone he wouldn’t be in.

Homes in Fairacres

 

In 1926 the Dobyns Brothers hired architect Earl Draper in Charlotte to help them subdivide the farm. Here’s what the original plat map looked like.

You can see how Crescent Drive got its name.

What we know today as Dobyns Drive was on this plat map called Windsor Avenue.

There were also streets named Brentwood and Milltonia that never made it to the paving stage.

Fairacres quickly became Kingsport’s most desirable neighborhood.

More Fairacres homes

Soon more folks were moving out near Mr. Johnson. Colonel Palmer who ran Kingsport Press, built a large green house at the corner of Watauga and Longview.

Mr. Baylor of Baylor Nelms Furniture built on Watauga. His old house at 1224 Watauga was for sale in 2004 for $290,000, W.B. Greene of W.B. Greene Hardware built on the other side of the street.

I didn’t grow up in Fairacres but many of my friends did. I unfurled many a toilet paper roll into the trees of Fairacres. I nervously approached the front door of many of those houses, hoping against hope that my date’s father was not home.

I’ve lived in a lot of other cities in my life and I don’t think I’ve ever been in another neighborhood with more architectural variety than Fairacres.

 

Which brings me to the arrival of my family in Kingsport. We are newcomers. We didn’t get here till the thirties.

My father graduated from Fall Branch High School in 1934, president of the first chapter of the Future Farmers of America chapter at the school, and immediately took a job at the old Army Store on Main Street. He worked in sales in Kingsport for the next half century. He never farmed. Fact is he couldn’t even grow tomatoes in our back yard, not that he didn’t try, over and over and over he tried.

When he got that first job in Kingsport, he commuted to town from Fall Branch, riding the bus at first and debarking at the city bus terminal, a couple of blocks away from the Army Store.

Main Street Bus Terminal

Later he car-pooled with a few Eastman employees in Fall Branch. He didn’t move to Kingsport because he couldn’t find a place to stay. Housing was in short supply once Eastman started gearing up in the thirties.

And that gave a lot of people ideas and began the great development period of the forties. Build and rent. Build and sell.

My mother and father got married in 1939 and moved in with his parents in their Fall Branch farmhouse.

A few months later my mother met my father at the gate and told him, “This isn’t working.” I think you could say it was an ultimatum.

So he began looking for housing in Kingsport.

He finally found two rooms for rent for $14 a month.

Many people back then rented out parts of their home without fear of ending up on “Dateline: Kingsport.”

In November 1939 they moved into a home at 112 Morgan Street in Litz Manor owned by Herb and Walter Shankel. For the next 65 years they would either live in the same house or in the house next door to the Shankels. Talk about a lifetime of friendship. 

Soon my father was drafted and while he was in the Pacific Theater my mother took the money he was sending home and bought a small house, moving our family from renters to homeowners. The dream of owning a home had been realized.

My mother bought a house in Winston Terrace.

Entrance to Winston Terrace (top) and typical house

I was born in Kingsport at Holston Valley Community Hospital. I grew up here and went to Johnson Elementary in Greenacres. And I had never in my life heard of Winston Terrace until I read in the city directory of that time that our house was in Winston Terrace

I’ve heard that neighborhood referred to by a lot of names, Greenfields, Greenacres - mistakenly - but I had never heard of Winston Terrace till I saw it in the old city directory.

I asked my friend Rod Irvin who grew up on Carolina Avenue if he had ever heard it called Winston Terrace and he said no. So I asked him what they called his neighborhood. He said, Carolina Avenue. 

Why was it Winston Terrace? N.H. Winston, a New York developer, read about the housing shortage in Kingsport in a national magazine and began building here. He tucked tail and went home after building 31 houses around the old Kingsport Golf Course. Including my family’s house.

Other developers, both here and elsewhere, heard about the housing shortage and raced to Kingsport to build homes.

Cherokee Village

A local company, Cherokee Development, built Cherokee Village at about the same time: 110 buildings, all duplex. The two-bedroom units rented for $44 a month, the three-bedroom models for $52.50 a month

Kingsport Gardens, those apartment buildings opposite the Civic Auditorium, were also built about this time. It was the city’s first large scale apartment house development, built by J. Fred Johnson’s Kingsport Development; there were 52 apartments and 34 rental homes.

I would call this photo the Our First Family Home Photo. I’m in this photo, too, you just can't see me because I was inside where any toddler should be in a snow storm. My mother and father had moved into our house the week before I was born.

The house is in the Ridgeway neighborhood although I didn’t know that until I was ten or eleven and the boys in my neighborhood formed a baseball team. We didn’t know what to call our team because our neighborhood didn’t have a name, as far as we knew. If someone asked where I lived, I always said, “Just past Garden Basket.” And you can’t name a team the Just Past Garden Basket Raiders. So we went to the neighborhood intellectual Ruth Isley for guidance. She’d helped us name our neighborhood newspaper, the Clover Klatch, after Clover St.

She informed us we lived in Ridgeway and we became the Ridgeway Hurricanes, mostly so we could use the slogan, “All our games are a breeze.” We were clever kids.

This was 1947 and this marked the big postwar boom in housing and also the big postwar housing shortage in Kingsport. Margy Clark and her husband Dick moved here in 1950, the year that Eastman hired 50 PhD’s, and they couldn’t find a place to live. Eastman was putting people up in the Kingsport Inn and Majer’s Motel, anywhere they could find space.

John Nolen photo of Kingsport Inn

And with the housing boom came another boom, the baby boom. To give you an illustration, in 1956 D-B graduated 211 students. Ten years later in 1966 as baby boomers started graduating that number doubled to 437 graduates. It didn’t go below 400 again until 1982.

To accommodate this growing population Kingsport needed more neighborhoods. Greenacres was developed around Johnson School. Preston Woods rose out of the woods along Orebank Road. Sevier Terrace was carved out of a hillside on the west side of town. Ridgefields was built on farmland along the Holston. And Winston Terrace was continued without its name. These were great places to grow up.

I know because I grew up in one and used to visit friends in others.

My favorite neighborhood to visit when I was a kid was Carolina Avenue. There were kids everywhere, spilling out of houses, onto sidewalks and vacant lots. Of course this was before air conditioning, cable TV and video games.

Rod Irvin’s mother Inez told me she counted once in the fifties and there were 86 kids living within a block of their house.

No wonder it was such a fun neighborhood. And a great era.

 

A few months back I did a deep dive on my old “Ridgeway” neighborhood:

The reason My Old Neighborhood exists is because of the rock quarry, the one our mothers warned us about. “You can go play with Lance Harris but don’t you two go near the rock quarry,” my mother would say. (Of course that made us want to go near the rock quarry even more.)

Harvey Brooks, a pioneer of Kingsport, thought that east Kingsport needed more homes. And to build those new homes he would need rock and sand to make concrete. So in 1931 he opened a rock quarry just off Bristol Highway in what was then called Hillcrest. He called the company Central Rock and Sand. (The gravel road that led up to the quarry would later be named Central Street.)

Soon the company was doing so well that he installed floodlights at the quarry so he could employ a second night shift of workers. He told the Kingsport Times he would add 15 night shift workers to his payroll to keep up with demand.

Brooks is most famous today for his mansion on 11-W west of town, Allandale. In 1927 he had built a residential log house on Orebank Road (it’s still there).

In 1937 he renamed his company Brooks Sand and Gravel.

And that’s when he began to develop the hillside property around the quarry.

He announced this new development, the Ridgeway Addition, in an April 9, 1937 ad in the Kingsport Times. Ridgeway opened with three “modern” homes on Ashley Street.

The first two streets in Ridgeway were Conway and Ashley. Among the first residents, as announced in the Kingsport Times, were J. D. and Agnes Wininger and Mr. and Mrs. David Pyle and newborn daughter Patricia Ann. (Both lived on the new Ridgeway Street, which ran parallel to Ashley.)

Soon lot sales in the Ridgeway Addition were regularly appearing in the Times. In 1939 lots were advertised for $550.

Eight years later my family moved into the three-bedroom brick house in Ridgeway. Then we were “just past the Upper Circle” because the Garden Basket hadn’t been built yet.

It would be another ten years before Ruth Isley told me it was really called Ridgeway.

 

 R.I. P. Reggie Moody 1947-2021

 

Reggie, who died last week, was in my second grade class at Johnson and graduated with me from D-B in 1965. He studied engineering at UT and spent his career with the North Carolina Transportation Department.

I remember a halftime show from a football game in '63 or '64. The D-B band marched out on the J. Fred Johnson field and lined up in concert formation. They were playing some romantic theme when tuba player Reggie Moody started a slow, dreamy spin out of formation. Drum major John Stone chased him back in line. It was hilarious.

Tuba section with Reggie in the middle in 1964

Gunfight Six Houses from the O.K. Corral

 

Netflix suggested I might want to watch a biography of Wyatt Earp.

So I did.

Then Netflix suggested I might want to watch a biography of Doc Holliday.

So I did.

That made me want to watch the original Kirk Douglas-Burt Lancaster movie “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”

So I did.

And that made me want to look up the original newspaper story about the gunfight in 1881.

So I did.

And here it is, from the Tombstone Nugget of Oct. 27, 1881.

The Nugget is not as famous as Tombstone’s other newspaper at the time, the Tombstone Epitaph, which was featured in the TV western “Tombstone Territory,” but it was a daily, while the Epitaph was a weekly.

Also after the gunfight was over, the Nugget editor H.M. Woods and his press foreman helped carry a wounded Billy Clanton to a nearby house.

Woods would sell out his interest a month later while Epitaph editor John Clum would continue in his post and years later be featured in the TV series.

Note that the most famous gunfight in the Old West lasted only 25 seconds but has lived on in dozens of movies and TV shows, hundreds of books and thousands of newspaper articles.

To help in reading the original newspaper stories, you need a cast of characters:

County Sheriff Johnny Behan (never heard of him before, right? That's because he wasn't an Earp.)

Town Marshall Virgil Earp

Special deputies Wyatt Earp and Morgan Earp (the Earps were brothers)

Temporary deputy John Henry “Doc” Holliday (called Doc because he was a dentist by trade)

Ike and Billy Clanton a.k.a. The Clanton Brothers were ranch hands on their father’s ranch 12 miles west of Tombstone – they were known for cattle rustling and general trouble-making..

Frank and Tom McLowry (also spelled McLaury) were ranch hands for the Clantons before buying their own ranch outside Tombstone.

The Clantons and McLowerys were called The Cowboys and frequently turned up in Tombstone to stir up trouble.

Here is the story from the Tombstone Nugget of Oct. 27, 1881:

 

A DESPERATE STREET FIGHT.

Marshal Virgil Earp, Morgan and Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday Meet the Cowboys - Three Men Killed and Two Wounded, One Seriously - Origin of the Trouble and its Tragical Termination.

 

The 26th of October will always be marked as one of the crimson days in the annals of Tombstone, a day when blood flowed as water, and human life was held as a shuttlecock, a day always to be remembered as witnessing the bloodiest and deadliest street fight that has ever occurred in this place, or probably in the Territory.

THE ORIGIN OF THE TROUBLE

Dates back to the first arrest of Stilwell and Spencer for the robbery of the Bisbee stage. The co-operation of the Earps with the Sheriff and his deputies in the arrest causing a number of the cowboys to, it is said, threaten the lives of all interested in the capture. Still, nothing occurred to indicate that any such threats would be carried into execution. But Tuesday night Ike Clanton and Doc Holliday had some difficulty in the Alhambra saloon. Hard words passed between them, and when they parted it was generally understood that the feeling between the two men was that of intense hatred. Yesterday morning Clanton came on the street armed with a rifle and revolver, but was almost immediately arrested by Marshal Earp, disarmed and fined by Justice Wallace for carrying concealed weapons. While in the Court room Wyatt Earp told him that as he had made threats against his life he wanted him to make his fight, to say how, when and where he would fight, and to get his crowd, and he (Wyatt) would be on hand. In reply Clanton said:

“FOUR FEET OF GROUND

Is enough for me to fight on, and I'll be there." A short time after this William Clanton and Frank McLowry came in town, and as Thomas McLowry was already here the feeling soon became general that a fight would ensue before the day was over, and crowds of expectant men stood on the corner of Allen and Fourth streets awaiting the coming conflict. It was now about two o'clock, and at this time Sheriff Behan appeared upon the scene and told Marshal Earp that if he disarmed his posse, composed of Morgan and Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday, he would go down to the O. K. Corral, where Ike and James Clanton and Frank and Tom McLowry were and disarm them. The Marshal did not desire to do this until assured that there was no danger of an attack from the other party, The Sheriff went to the corral and told the cowboys that they must put their arms away and not have any trouble. Ike Clanton and Tom McLowry said they were not armed, and Frank McLowry said he would not lay his aside. In the meantime the Marshal had concluded to go and, if possible, end the matter by disarming them, and as he and his posse came down Fremont street towards the corral, the Sheriff stepped out and said:

“HOLD UP BOYS.

Don't go down there or there will be trouble; I have been down there to disarm them." But they passed on, and when within a few feet of them the Marshal said to the Clantons and McLowrys: "Throw up your hands, boys, I intend to disarm you." As he spoke Frank McLowry made a motion to draw his revolver, when Wyatt Earp pulled his and shot him, the ball striking on the right side of his abdomen. About the same time Doc Holliday shot Tom McLowry in the right side, using a short shotgun, such as is carried by Wells, Fargo & Co's messengers. In the meantime Billy Clanton had shot at Morgan Earp, the ball passing through the point of the left shoulder blade across his back, just grazing the backbone and coming out at the shoulder, the ball remaining inside of his shirt. He fell to the ground, but in an instant gathered himself, and raising in a sitting position fired at Frank McLowry as he crossed Fremont street, and at the same instant Doc Holliday shot at him, both balls taking effect, either of which would have proved fatal, as one struck him in the right temple and the other in the left breast. As he started across the street, however, he pulled his gun down on Holliday saying, "I've got you now." "Blaze away! You're a daisy if you have," replied Doc. This shot of McLowry's passed through Holliday's pistol pocket, just grazing the skin. While this was going on

BILLY CLANTON HAD SHOT

Virgil Earp in the right leg, the ball passing through the calf, inflicting a severe flesh wound. In turn he had been shot by Morg Earp in the right side of the abdomen, and twice by Virgil Earp, once in the right wrist and once in the left breast. Soon after the shooting commenced Ike Clanton ran through the O. K. Corral, across Allen street into Kellogg's saloon, and thence into Toughnut street, where he was arrested and taken to the county jail. The firing altogether didn't occupy more than twenty-five seconds, during which time fully thirty shots were fired. After the fight was over Billy Clanton, who, with wonderful vitality, survived his wounds for fully an hour, was carried by the editor and foreman of the Nugget into a house near where he lay, and everything possible done to make his last moments easy. He was "game” to the last, never uttering a word of complaint, and just before breathing his last he said, "Goodbye, boys; go away and let me die." The wounded were taken to their houses, and at three o'clock this morning were resting comfortably. The dead bodies were taken in charge by the Coroner, and an inquest will be held upon them at 10 o'clock today. Upon the person of Thomas McLowry was found between $300 and $400, and checks and certificates of deposit to the amount of nearly $3,000.

DURING THE SHOOTING

Sheriff Behan was standing nearby commanding the contestants to cease firing but was powerless to prevent it. Several parties who were in the vicinity of the shooting had narrow escapes from being shot. One man who had lately arrived from the east had a ball pass through his pants. He left for home this morning. A person called "the Kid," who shot Hicks at Charleston recently, was also grazed by a ball. When the Vizina whistle gave the signal that there was a conflict between the officers and cowboys, the mines on the hill shut down and the miners were brought to the surface. From the Contention mine a number of men, fully armed, were sent to town in a four-horse carriage. At the request of the Sheriff the vigilantes, or Committee of Safety, were called from the streets by a few sharp toots from the Vizina whistle. During the early part of the evening there was a rumor that a mob would attempt to take Ike Clanton from the jail and lynch him, and to prevent any such unlawful proceedings a strong guard of deputies was placed around that building, and will be so continued until all danger is past. At 8 o'clock last evening, Finn Clanton, a brother of Billy and Ike, came in town, and placing himself under the guard of the Sheriff, visited the morgue to see the remains of one brother, and then passed the night in jail in company with the other.

OMINOUS SOUNDS.

Shortly after the shooting ceased the whistle at the Vizina mine sounded a few short toots, and almost simultaneously a large number of citizens appeared on the streets, armed with rifles and a belt of cartridges around their waists. These men formed in line and offered their services to the peace officers to preserve order, in case any attempt at disturbance was made, or any interference offered to the authorities of the law. However, no hostile move was made by anyone, and quiet and order was fully restored, and in a short time the excitement died away.

AT THE MORGUE.

The bodies of the three slain cowboys lay side by side, covered with a sheet. Very little blood appeared on their clothing, and only on the face of young Billy Clanton was there any distortion of the features or evidence of pain in dying. The features of the two McLowry boys looked as calm and placid in death, as if they had died peaceably, surrounded by loving friends and sorrowing relatives. No unkind remarks were made by anyone, but a feeling of unusual sorrow seemed to prevail at the sad occurrence of the McLowry brothers we could learn nothing of their previous history before coming to Arizona. The two brothers owned quite an extensive ranch on the lower San Pedro, some seventy or eighty miles from this city, to which they had removed their band of cattle since the recent Mexican and Indian troubles. They did not bear the reputation of being of a quarrelsome disposition, but were known as fighting men, and have generally conducted themselves in a quiet and orderly manner when in Tombstone.

 

 

John Clum’s Tombstone Epitaph, published its version of the event in its Oct. 27, 1881 edition:

 

YESTERDAY'S TRAGEDY

Three Men Hurled Into Eternity in the Duration of a Moment.

Stormy as were the early days of Tombstone nothing ever occurred equal to the event of yesterday. Since the retirement of Ben Sippy as marshal and the appointment of V.W. Earp to fill the vacancy the town has been noted for its quietness and good order. The fractious and much dreaded cowboys when they came to town were upon their good behaviour and no unseemly brawls were indulged in, and it was hoped by our citizens that no more such deeds would occur as led to the killing of Marshal White one year ago.

It seems that this quiet state of affairs was but the calm that precedes the storm that burst in all its fury yesterday, with this difference in results, that the lightning bolt struck in a different quarter from the one that fell a year ago. This time it struck with its full and awful force upon those who, heretofore, have made the good name of this county a byword and a reproach, instead of upon some officer in discharge of his duty or a peaceable and unoffending citizen.

Since the arrest of Stilwell and Spence for the robbery of the Bisbee stage, there have been oft repeated threats conveyed to the Earp brothers -- Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt -- that the friends of the accused, or in other words the cowboys, would get even with them for the part they had taken in the pursuit and arrest of Stilwell and Spence. The active part of the Earps in going after stage robbers, beginning with the one last spring where Budd Philpot lost his life, and the more recent one near Contention, has made them exceedingly obnoxious to the bad element of this county and put their lives in jeopardy every month.

Sometime Tuesday Ike Clanton came into town and during the evening had some little talk with Doc Holliday and Marshal Earp but nothing to cause either to suspect, further than their general knowledge of the man and the threats that had previously been conveyed to the Marshal, that the gang intended to clean out the Earps, that he was thirsting for blood at this time with one exception and that was that Clanton told the Marshal, in answer to a question, that the McLowrys were in Sonora. Shortly after this occurrence someone came to the Marshal and told him that the McLowrys had been seen a short time before just below town. Marshal Earp, now knowing what might happen and feeling his responsibility for the peace and order of the city, stayed on duty all night and added to the police force his brother Morgan and Holliday. The night passed without any disturbance whatever and at sunrise he went home to rest and sleep. A short time afterwards one of his brothers came to his house and told him that Clanton was hunting him with threats of shooting him on sight. He discredited the report and did not get out of bed. It was not long before another of his brothers came down, and told him the same thing, whereupon he got up, dressed and went with his brother Morgan uptown. They walked up Allen Street to Fifth, crossed over to Fremont and down to Fourth, where, upon turning up Fourth toward Allen, they came upon Clanton with a Winchester rifle in his hand and a revolver on his hip. The Marshal walked up to him, grabbed the rifle and hit him a blow on the head at the same time, stunning him so that he was able to disarm him without further trouble. He marched Clanton off to the police court where he entered a complaint against him for carrying deadly weapons, and the court fined Clanton $25 and costs, making $27.50 altogether. This occurrence must have been about 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

The After-Occurrence

Close upon the heels of this came the finale, which is best told in the words of R.F. Coleman who was an eye-witness from the beginning to the end. Mr. Coleman says: I was in the O.K. Corral at 2:30 p.m., when I saw the two Clantons and the two McLowrys in an earnest conversation across the street in Dunbar's corral. I went up the street and notified Sheriff Behan and told him it was my opinion they meant trouble, and it was his duty, as sheriff, to go and disarm them. I told him they had gone to the West End Corral. I then went and saw Marshal Virgil Earp and notified him to the same effect. I then met Billy Allen and we walked through the O.K. Corral, about fifty yards behind the sheriff. On reaching Fremont street I saw Virgil Earp, Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday, in the center of the street, all armed. I had reached Bauer's meat market. Johnny Behan had just left the cowboys, after having a conversation with them. I went along to Fly's photograph gallery, when I heard Virg Earp say, "Give up your arms or throw up your arms." There was some reply made by Frank McLowry, when firing became general, over thirty shots being fired. Tom McLowry fell first, but raised and fired again before he died. Bill Clanton fell next, and raised to fire again when Mr. Fly took his revolver from him. Frank McLowry ran a few rods and fell. Morgan Earp was shot through and fell. Doc Holliday was hit in the left hip but kept on firing. Virgil Earp was hit in the third or fourth fire, in the leg which staggered him but he kept up his effective work. Wyatt Earp stood up and fired in rapid succession, as cool as a cucumber, and was not hit. Doc Holliday was as calm as though at target practice and fired rapidly. After the firing was over, Sheriff Behan went up to Wyatt Earp and said, "I'll have to arrest you." Wyatt replied: "I won't be arrested today. I am right here and am not going away. You have deceived me. You told me these men were disarmed; I went to disarm them."

This ends Mr. Coleman's story which in the most essential particulars has been confirmed by others. Marshal Earp says that he and his party met the Clantons and the McLowrys in the alleyway by the McDonald place; he called to them to throw up their hands, that he had come to disarm them. Instantaneously Bill Clanton and one of the McLowrys fired, and then it became general. Mr. Earp says it was the first shot from Frank McLowry that hit him. In other particulars his statement does not materially differ from the statement above given. Ike Clanton was not armed and ran across to Allen street and took refuge in the dance hall there. The two McLowrys and Bill Clanton all died within a few minutes after being shot. The Marshal was shot through the calf of the right leg, the ball going clear through. His brother, Morgan, was shot through the shoulders, the ball entering the point of the right shoulder blade, following across the back, shattering off a piece of one vertebrae and passing out the left shoulder in about the same position that it entered the right. The wound is dangerous but not necessarily fatal, and Virgil's is far more painful than dangerous. Doc Holliday was hit upon the scabbard of his pistol, the leather breaking the force of the ball so that no material damage was done other than to make him limp a little in his walk.

Dr. Matthews impaneled a coroner's jury, who went and viewed the bodies as they lay in the cabin in the rear of Dunbar's stables on Fifth street, and then adjourned until 10 o'clock this morning.

The Alarm Given

The moment the word of the shooting reached the Vizina and Tough Nut mines the whistles blew a shrill signal, and the miners came to the surface, armed themselves, and poured into the town like an invading army. A few moments served to bring out all the better portions of the citizens, thoroughly armed and ready for any emergency. Precautions were immediately taken to preserve law and order, even if they had to fight for it. A guard of ten men were stationed around the county jail, and extra policemen put on for the night.

Earp Brothers Justified

The feeling among the best class of our citizens is that the Marshal was entirely justified in his efforts to disarm these men, and that being fired upon they had to defend themselves, which they did most bravely. So long as our peace officers make an effort to preserve the peace and put down highway robbery -- which the Earp brothers have done, having engaged in the pursuit and capture, where captures have been made of every gang of stage robbers in the county -- they will have the support of all good citizens. If the present lesson is not sufficient to teach the cow-boy element that they cannot come into the streets of Tombstone, in broad daylight, armed with six-shooters and Henry rifles to hunt down their victims, then the citizens will most assuredly take such steps to preserve the peace as will be forever a bar to such raids.

 

 

My personal connections to Wyatt Earp

 

(No, he was not my first cousin, once removed.)

When I was a kid, I had a Wyatt Earp Buntline Special cap pistol. On TV Wyatt carried an extra long Colt .45 pistol called the Buntline Special. There is no evidence he really carried an extra long pistol in real life. The Buntline Special was invented by Stuart Lake in his 1931 largely-fictionalized biography, “Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshall.”

 

I can sing the theme song to the TV series “The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp” without having to look up the words:

Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp,

Brave courageous and bold.

Long live his fame and long live his glory

And long may his story be told.

 

About twenty years ago I got an email from Hugh O’Brian, the way-too-handsome actor who played Wyatt Earp on TV. I can’t find it on my computer but he was responding to something I had written about the TV show. This really happened even if I can’t find proof.

About the same time I got an email from Fess Parker, who played “Davy Crockett.” I have a copy of that email. I had written a column about winning the second grade talent show at Johnson Elementary by singing “The Ballad of Davy Crockett.”

The email read:

“Vince, Want to thank you for your very nice article re the DVD of the year for old Davy. After all this time I’m still fascinated with the fact that a long time ago a conglomeration of talents found a way to create a story about a man who died in 1836. Well, he really didn’t die; he just kept coming back over and over again in the books and films. Finally, Walt Disney said let’s bring Davy back again and for this Texan nothing has been the same. Good fortune has followed. Now I was put under the spell of Davy when I was ten years old. I found a book at our library in San Angelo and Texas history came alive. However, in spite of being the first to record ‘The Ballad of Davy Crockett’ I have yet to win a prize for singing! So thanks again.”

It was signed simply “Fess.”

I do have proof of that.