My New Book - A Collection of Kingsport Times News Columns

If you were at UT when I was there in the early seventies, you may remember a little magazine-sized booklet called “I Was a Teenaged Teenager.” It was a collection of columns I had written for the Daily Beacon and also included cartoons by Kingsport native – and my roommate – Dan Pomeroy, who was the Beacon’s cartoonist. Dan and I published it ourselves in 1971. Our little “book” sold for 50 cents and we sold out all 500 copies. After paying the printer, I think we netted a hundred dollars. Which we split.

That was my last experience with a column collection. Until now.

A few months ago I started going through the 800 columns I have written for the Kingsport Times News since I moved back to my hometown five years ago. I winnowed that stack down to 100 columns and I am publishing them in a book I call “I Always Wanted To Be A Cowboy When I Grew Up…Till I Figured Out I Was Scared Of Cows.”

I chose that title because as I read through my choices I noticed how infatuated I was as a kid with cowboys and cowboy movies. The title is true. I did want to be a cowboy until I noticed that when visiting my grandmother’s farm I would shy away from the cows. They scared me. I knew then I wasn’t going to be a cowboy. I guess the next best thing is writing about them.

The official publication date for the book is Saturday December 8. Which means the book arrives just in time for Christmas.

The exclusive distributor for the book is Up Against the Wall Gallery at 316 Market Street in Kingsport. The gallery is owned by my good friends Mike and Lisa Anne Milhorn who are also the publishers of the book.

The book will be introduced Saturday at a book signing in the gallery from 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. I hope you can join me at the signing, say hello, tell me a Kingsport story or two.

The book sells for $19.95 plus tax.

If you can’t stop by Saturday, you can visit the gallery any weekday between 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Or you can place an order via phone. The number is 423-246-7210. Or you can order over the internet by sending an email to mail@upagainstthewallgallery.com. But I’d prefer you come by and see me.

1933 Kingsport Yellow Pages - Before They Were Called Yellow Pages - pp. 18-21

1933 Kingsport Yellow Pages - Before They Were Called Yellow Pages - pp. 22-24

1933 Kingsport phone directory pages 4-9

1933 Kingsport phone directory pages 10-14

1933 Kingsport phone directory pages 15-17

Gate City Phone Directory 1933

This is from the 1933 Kingsport phone directory.

Notable Trees of Kingsport - entries

Two views of the old Rotherwood Elm.
Followed by three views of the McDonald family tree:

And the Kiwanis Towers tree.

The State Theater Marquee, Then and Now

Compare the new State Theater marquee to the original 1938 version:

1938 State Theater Marquee

2007 marquee

Street Name Changes - Was Your Street Name Changed in '53

From the Times News of July 4, 1953:

Eighteen new Kingsport street names were adopted officially Tuesday night in an ordinance passed on final reading by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen.

Over bitter opposition from a group of Lincoln Avenue residents, the council stuck to an earlier decision to change the name of their street to Jefferson Avenue.

Jefferson Avenue will extend in an arc from East Center street around to Linden Road, taking in what was previously designated Jefferson Avenue, part of Valley View street and Lincoln Avenue.

A last minute amendment to the ordinance changed the name of Virginia Street in the Belvue Addition of Highland Park to Virginia Avenue. Virginia Avenue is the name by which it is known to residents but the official map had designated it Virginia Street.

Another amendment revised original plans and named the four-lane State Highway 1-A simply Stone Drive instead of H. G. Stone Drive. This action followed receipt of a petition from several residents. They contended the initials might confuse the name of the street on mail with the name of the person to whom the mail was addressed. The Board admitted they had a point. In making the change. The council reworded the ordinance to point out that the name was adopted in honor of H. G. Stone, a former chairman of the Kingsport Planning Commission.

Other street name changes provided for in the ordinance:

Edgewood Avenue in East Highland Park will become Ashwood Avenue (to avoid confusion with Edgewood Village).

Holly Drive, connecting with Nathan street and Bridwell Street will become Monterey Avenue. (There is another Holly Drive in Fort Robinson.)

Lee Street, connecting with Virginia Avenue and East Center Street is renamed Leeside Drive. Magnolia Street, connecting with Central street and Conway Drive will become Shamrock Street.

Oakwood Street, connecting with Virginia Avenue, is renamed McCoy Street. (to avoid duplication with streets in Oakwood Forest).

Another section of Oakwood Street connecting with Washington Avenue was renamed Virginia Avenue.

Ridgecrest Road connecting with Harris Avenue, is changed to DeSota, Street. Another portion of Ridgecrest Road is renamed Avalon Street.

Roller Street (sometimes called Roller Road) in the West View section is renamed Sevier Terrace Drive, taking the name of a street with which it makes a continuing thoroughfare.

Washington Street in Riverview is changed to Louis Street.

Nelm Street, connecting with East Main Street and running past the foundry is renamed Ring Street.

Ridgeway Street, running from Watauga Street to Linville Street, is changed to Pecktal Street.

A section of West Ravine beginning at Baysview Road is renamed Sherman Place. Another section of West Ravine Road running from Jackson Street to Bloomingdale Road, is renamed Jackson Place.

Bluff Street is renamed Legion Drive.

The last change did not involve name duplication. The change had been requested by Hammond Post, American Legion for the street running past the new Legion Home.

And here is a 1956 story about more street name changes:

Bill Brown, owner of Brown's Custom Shop, dies at 90

Here's the column I wrote about Mr. Brown nineteen months ago:

The sign in the window at 313 East Sullivan reads “For Sale.”

After sixty years and thousands of kitchen floors, Bill Brown at Brown’s Custom Shop is hanging up the old linoleum knife.

Mr. Brown started slowing down five years ago after suffering three heart attacks in a row. He decided to begin phasing down his business two months ago, ending six decades as Kingsport’s go-to shop for flooring of all kinds.

Mr. Brown, who is a native of Lawrenceburg in middle Tennessee, came here from Washington, D.C. in 1946. “After the war I knew what I wanted to do, floor covering. I got a job in Washington for $37 a week with the agreement that I could go to schools and learn about floor covering.”

Soon he was an expert and began looking for a spot to open his own business. “I decided wherever I went I’d be stuck for a lifetime. So I went to the Library of Congress and studied every report.” He narrowed it down to Asheville, North Carolina, Lexington, Kentucky and Kingsport. “Kingsport was young, energetic, growing. Every report said go to Kingsport.”

He moved here and began laying the groundwork for his business by lining up suppliers. That’s where he met the first naysayers. “The folks at Armstrong said, ‘You can’t make it.’ They said I couldn’t rely on getting material.”

But he had confidence in himself and began searching for a space. That’s when he heard about a vacancy in the basement of the old Homestead Hotel. “Mr. Park told me if I’d clean it up I could have it for $100 a month.”

He began hiring a crew. “As we were cleaning up some lady heard about us and came down and wanted me to do her kitchen floor. Then another lady found out and wanted us to do her floor. Then another and another and I never did get to open up.” He didn’t need to. He was already in business. “Kingsport was a good town then. Everybody would help everybody else.”

He says he remember he charged $137 for that first job. “That was the whole kitchen floor, materials, labor and all.” Brown’s Custom Shop was the first floor covering business in the region. “We had the whole thing to ourselves, five states, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee.

We could pick the jobs we wanted. It’s different now with Home Depot and Lowe’s.” Mr. Brown says he built his business on nerve and good credit. “I’d buy a carload all the time. They’d let me have it on credit cause they knew I’d sell it. I could sell anything I could buy” In the early years he says his best sellers were linoleum and Venetian blinds. “We made the Venetian blinds.”

Then in about 1953 he got a call from Irvin Fuller of Fuller & Hillman, who owned a building on East Sullivan. “It was where the old Little Store had been.” The Little Store was the first supermarket in town and it was moving to a new location on West Sullivan in what would become known as Supermarket Row. When Mr. Brown first looked at the vast expanse that had been a supermarket, he says he told Fuller, “I’ll look like a fly on an elephant.”

But he decided to go ahead and take a chance, beginning a half-century relationship with 313 East Sullivan. “The first twenty years, I didn’t have a lease, just a handshake.” Soon he had the building filled with floor coverings, so full that he had to buy two other buildings down the street to store the rest of his stock.

He says the secret to his sixty years of success is simple. “I was lucky. I started out with good employees. They were loyal, they worked. There was no such thing as overtime. Joe Davis, Hagan Mayo, Guy McGrady and Elmo Woods were my first employees.”

Another secret: He worked right alongside them putting down floors, cutting and hanging Venetian blinds.

Over the years he built up an unbeatable stock of floor coverings. If you couldn’t find something you liked at Brown’s, you couldn’t find it. In fact his stock was so vast that when “The River” was filmed here in 1983, the filmmakers bought yards of it for future film projects.

But at age 88 he’s decided it’s time to sell off his inventory and take it easy. He’s moved his records home and is selling his stock by appointment. “I look at the old records and the prices I gave and I don’t see how I stayed in business.” But he did, for sixty years.

There are kitchens all over Kingsport that are testament to that.

Haney's Place Chili Recipe

Haney’s Place Chili recipe from Nae Windle:

1 lb ground beef

Water, about 1 1/2 cup or enough to cover the beef

1/2-teaspoon salt

1/4-teaspoon pepper

MEXENE chili powder, maybe 4 tablespoons, Nae isn’t exactly sure on that measure. “I go by color.”

1/2-teaspoon paprika

Boil everything down in a saucepan on top of the stove. Don’t brown the ground beef first.

The Broad Street Game

What was Broad Street like when you were growing up? Make a list of the stores then compare your list to the actual store lineup as recorded in the old city directories.

1947 Broad Street lineup from the Kingsport City Directory.

1965 City Directory

1975 City Directory

All Elvis, All the Time

This is the photo Elvis gave to Billie Mae Smith in 1955.

This column was published March 20, 2004

Elvis was all over the news this past week, despite the fact that he has been dead for almost 27 years.

The big story was the break-in at the Elvis-A-Rama Museum in Las Vegas in which thieves made off with a quarter-million dollars worth of Elvis memorabilia, mostly jewelry, but passed on the blue suede shoes in the window, valued at a million dollars, thereby giving headline writers a field day: "Elvis' Jewelry Has Left the Building," "Not Step On His Blue Suede Shoes."

A quarter-century after his death the king is still making news ... and money.

Elvis consistently ranks at the top of Forbes magazine's annual Top Earning Dead Celebrities list. Last year he grossed $37 million, almost $10 million more than number two, dead cartoonist Charles Schulz.

The Elvis news this week brought requests from two readers for the story of Elvis' only Kingsport concert.

Yes, I do requests.

And yes, Elvis did perform in Kingsport almost fifty years ago.

I interviewed a couple of dozen local people about that show back in the mid-'70s, when their memories were still relatively fresh. And this is the story they told me.

It was Sept 22, 1955, when Elvis arrived in town for his first, last and only Kingsport date. He was traveling with a couple of country acts, Cowboy Copas and the Louvin Brothers, and Elvis was the middle act on the bill. This was a couple of months before he signed with RCA and four months before his breakout hit "Heartbreak Hotel."

The Kingsport show was promoted by WKIN-AM deejay Chuck Foster and WKIN station manager Dia Bahakel. They rented the Civic Auditorium and advertised the show on their station.

Admission was a dollar and in 1976 Bahakel recalled to me that a grand total of 270 people were in attendance.

People I talked to remembered Elvis as wearing white buck shoes, electric pink socks, denim pants, a pink shirt and a black leather jacket.

He opened his set with a joke - "Where is Kingsport, Tennessee anyway?" - before launching into his first song, "Rock Around the Clock." He played for about half an hour, closing with the ballad "I Love You Because."

That's when the real story begins. During intermission Elvis and his band, the Blue Moon Boys, set up in the hall outside the stage door and signed autographs and sold photos for fifty cents. Darla Hodge told me he pointed to her and said, "Hey Liz, hey Liz Taylor, come up here." She did and he gave her a photo autographed "I love you, Liz - Elvis."

After signing a few autographs - how many would he have to sign when the total crowd was less than 300? - he led a group of admiring girls outside to show off his pink Cadillac.

And that's when our story gets good. Billie Mae Smith and two friends came up. When one of the girls was too shy to ask Elvis for an autograph, Billie Mae spoke up.

"I went up and I said ‘When you get through showing off your car, my friend would like your autograph.' He said, ‘What's the matter? Don't you want it?'"

Billie Mae said she replied, "‘Not particularly.' I was playing hard to get."

He asked her name, she told him and he invited her to come back stage after the show was over.

"I told him I might."

After the show, the three musical acts gathered round while Bahakel counted the money. After taking her cut, she divvied up the proceeds.

She told me Elvis and his band made $37 and change for their show.

Enter Billie Mae Smith, no longer as standoffish. She joined Elvis in his Caddy. He was hungry so she steered him to a local hangout, Jimmy's Restaurant, which was on Memorial Boulevard, about where the Bethel Presbyterian Church parking lot is now.

But first she wanted to cruise Broad. Billie Mae and Elvis were stopped at the red light at Center and Wilcox when a green and white Chevy Bel Air pulled up in the lane next to them.

Wayne "Booge" Allen glanced over and who should he see but his girlfriend, Billie Mae Smith, sitting next to some greasy haired dude.

(Booge is pronounced BOOJ.)

Allen told me, "She leaned over and rolled down the window and told me to come down to her house later, there was someone she wanted me to meet." Allen remembered thinking he didn't want to meet the guy with her.

Meanwhile Billie Mae and Elvis had pepperoni pizza at Jimmy's then went to her house.

Billie Mae said, "I remember I kept looking at his hair because he had a permanent in it so that when he shook his head a curl would fall in his eyes."

Once back at her house on Catawba, she invited Elvis in for a cup of coffee. They were sitting at the kitchen table, talking and sipping coffee, when she heard a commotion outside. Booge Allen had reappeared.

One of Elvis' bodyguards met Booge and told him, "You're not wanted here."

Wayne didn't take this too well. "I said, ‘The hell with you; two can play this game.'" He raced down to the Texas Steer Drive-In - it was on Center just before you got to Kingsport Press - picked up two of his friends, and returned to Catawba.

"I told the guy outside that if he wanted trouble there was more than one of us now."

Elvis and Billie Mae heard the noise and came out. Billie Mae introduce Booge and Elvis. But they didn't shake hands.

Allen remembered, "Elvis said, ‘I'm breaking this guy's heart. Maybe I'd better leave.'"

Billie Mae took Booge aside, told him everything would be all right and sent him home.

Elvis didn't stay much longer. It was the last night of the tour and he was anxious to be back to Memphis. Just one thing before he left: a goodnight kiss for all time. "He sure could kiss," cooed Billie Mae. "It was very thrilling."

Booge came back later and circled the block but Elvis had gone.

Elvis was back in Tri-Cities two decades later. He played four shows at Freedom Hall in 1976, staying at a hotel in Bristol. As far as anyone knows, he never set foot in Kingsport again after that one night in 1955. But no one who was there has ever forgotten it.

Billie Mae Smith Barker now splits her time between a home in Ormond Beach, Fla., and her parents' old house on Catawba. Wayne Allen is in St. Petersburg, Fla., where he has lived for the last 26 years. They went separate paths after Elvis, but Wayne says, "We still talk to each other every year on our birthdays. And she's still as pretty as she was in high school."

This column was published on January 7, 2006.

Sunday is Elvis' birthday. Technically it's his 71st birthday, but for those of us who remember the cool young dude with the ducktail haircut and the out-of-control pelvis, it's the 50th anniversary of his 21st birthday.

It's that 21-year-old Elvis I want to talk about.

You can debate whether he was the biggest phenomenon this country has ever seen. But he was certainly Top 10.

The year he turned 21 - 1956 - was also the year he arrived on the national stage. And boy did he arrive!

In 1956 he had five number one records.

"Heartbreak Hotel" was number one for eight weeks that year. "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" was number one for one week. "Don't Be Cruel," which was backed by "Hound Dog," was number one for 11 weeks. And "Love Me Tender" was number one for five weeks. Fifty-two weeks, and Elvis had the number one Billboard hit during 25 of them.

And that doesn't include the 10 other Elvis records that made Billboard's Hot 100 chart that year!

"I Was The One" peaked at 19; "Blue Suede Shoes" topped at number 20; "Money, Honey" reached 76; "My Baby Left Me" made it to 31; "Blue Moon" reached 55; "I Don't Care If The Sun Don't Shine" peaked at 74; "Anyway You Want Me" cruised to 20; and "When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold" topped out at 19.

The last week of 1956, he had three more records reach the top 100: "Poor Boy" at 24, "Old Shep" at 47, and "Paralyzed" at 59.

And if that weren't enough, he also had the top-rated television appearance of all time, at that time, his Sept. 9 performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." An astounding 83 percent of people watching TV that night tuned in to watch Elvis. The Super Bowl typically attracts 65 percent of the audience.

Elvis in 1956 was huge.

So you can understand why a group of teenage boys in Tennessee at that time would want to catch a glimpse of Elvis, maybe even shake his hand.

One of those boys was Emerson Poe, who had been a basketball star at the old Sullivan High School. At the time, Emerson was playing basketball at Hiwassee College in Madisonville, about an hour southwest of Knoxville.

Emerson says he and his teammates heard on the radio one Saturday that Elvis was heading from Atlanta to Knoxville.

"We knew he would have to go through Madisonville - it was on the main road - so all the basketball players got their cars and got ready to block the street so they could see him."

They parked out on College Street with their car radios cranked up and began their watch. They sat on the car hoods, nodding along to Elvis tunes, listening for updates on his travel.

First they heard he was in Cartersville. Then Chatsworth.

The excitement was building when the deejay announced Elvis had crossed the state line and now was in Tennessee.

The basketball players kept listening to the music and listening for the updates.

Soon he was in Cleveland. That was only an hour away.

Englewood! Elvis was in Englewood! Ten minutes from Madisonville.

The basketball boys began getting ready, cranking up their cars. And waiting.

Ten minutes passed. No sign of Elvis.

Then another 10 minutes. And another 10.

Suddenly the deejay announced Elvis was in Maryville.

The basketball boys were bewildered now.

What happened? How did Elvis pass through Madisonville without them seeing him?

They kept listening to the deejay, and they finally figured it out.

Elvis was traveling by train.

ELVIS SIGHTING

The last time Elvis wasn't the headliner on a show was when he performed at the Civic Auditorium here on Sept. 22, 1955. He was the middle act. The Louvin Brothers opened the show, and Cowboy Copas was the main attraction.

The show was promoted by WKIN-AM, its owner Dia Bahakel and deejay Chuck Foster. Dia told me in 1976 that 270 people paid $1 each to attend the show. She said she paid Elvis and his band $37 and change for their performance.

Elvis had been performing all over the area in the week before the Kingsport show.

According to the book "Elvis: Day by Day" he played the American Legion Auditorium in Roanoke on Thursday, Sept. 15; the City Auditorium in Asheville Friday the 16th; the high school auditorium in Thomasville, N.C., on Saturday the 17th; the WRVA Theater in Richmond on Sunday and Monday the 18th and 19th; the Danville Fairgrounds Tuesday the 20th; and Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh the night before his Kingsport show.

He took local girl Billie Mae Smith to Jimmie's Steakhouse on Memorial Boulevard for pizza after the show before heading back to Memphis.

Then this correction came a week later.

In Sunday's column about Elvis' 71st birthday, I included a couple of paragraphs about Elvis' legendary performance at the Civic Auditorium in 1955 before he was a superstar. I noted that after the show, he and local girl Billie Mae Smith went to Jimmie's on Memorial Boulevard for pizza. I got that detail from a 1976 story I wrote about that event.

Barbara Ketron, who was in the group that went to Jimmie's with Elvis, sent word through Lou Richards that the group didn't eat pizza, they had club sandwiches.

This column was published on August 15, 2006

We were talking during breakfast at the Jan-Mar Saturday about some of the great groups that have played the Down Home in Johnson City. Art Williams recalled seeing John Lee Hooker, Willie Nelson, Doc Watson. Someone else mentioned Leon Redbone.

I asked jokingly if anyone had seen Elvis when he played there.

Of course Elvis never played the Down Home. Elvis died not long after it opened. In fact, Elvis died 29 years ago today.

And while he didn't play the Down Home, he did play the Civic Auditorium.

That was on Sept. 22, 1955, before he was a star. He was the middle act in a "country show," playing after the Louvin Brothers and before tour headliner Cowboy Copas.

You wouldn't have known he was the middle act from the ad in the Times-News that week. It had the name Elvis Presley at the top of the ad. Headliner Cowboy Copas had his name in small print down near the bottom.

I wrote about Elvis' Kingsport appearance in this column two years ago, and I've posted that column, along with the 1955 Times-News ad and the publicity photo that Elvis gave local girl Billie Mae Smith, on my blog: vincestaten.blogspot.com.

But even before that show Elvis had Kingsport connections.

Retired Kingsport attorney Jim Bowles was living in Memphis when Elvis was growing up. "I graduated from high school one year behind him. I used to see him occasionally around town before he got wild and popular."

Jim's younger brother, Ken, remembered Jim and Elvis drag racing on one of Memphis' streets, but Jim says his little brother has a vivid imagination. "Elvis had a pink Cadillac, and I had a '51 Olds. It was a pretty hot little car for that time, but I never dragged him. I did chase Elvis down the boulevard one time."

(Jim thinks it was Park Avenue, which runs at an angle from Poplar around the University of Memphis and Elvis' favorite playground, Libertyland.)

H.M. Rogers, who founded the Rogers Agency in Kingsport in 1957 (it's now combined with The Archer Agency), has a couple of Elvis stories.

H.M. was the district sales manager for Kemper Insurance in 1955. "I was based in Jackson, Mississippi, and I covered the whole state of Mississippi and Memphis. I traveled the district, and it took seven weeks to make the full tour."

It was then that H.M.'s life intersected with that of Elvis. "What had happened, Mr. McElroy of The McElroy Agency in Memphis was one of our agents. He was my first call that day. He said, ‘Harold, I've got a problem. I need you to sit down and let's talk.'"

H.M. took a chair and began to listen. "He said, ‘I've got this man. He's got five Cadillacs and a Lincoln and a couple of motorcycles. He's a lawful boy from a lawful family. Kemper wants to cancel him.'"

H.M. notes that six cars and two motorcycles was a big account at the time.

"He said he was a fine person with a good record. He kept talking about him for 30 minutes. Finally I said ‘Who is this man?' He said it was Elvis Presley and asked if I'd ever heard of him. I said I know he got caught last night going through Hattiesburg at 95 mph on the bypass. He said, ‘You knew that and you just let me keep talking?' I said ‘I just wanted to see how much rope it would take to hang you.'"

The upshot? "They canceled him. Kemper had a standard policy: They did not want entertainers."

H.M. has another Elvis story from his Mississippi days. "In '55 Elvis went down to Gulfport and offered his services for $5,000, he and his band, for a celebration. They turned him down. The next year they came to Elvis and wanted him to come down and offered him $50,000. He wouldn't go."

Looking back – up and over @ 60

Betsy and Lon Boyd were driving home Saturday night around 9:45. As they passed the Civic Auditorium, they noticed an EMS van with lights flashing and two EMS workers hurrying a stretcher up the steps. They knew immediately what had happened: I had had the Big One on my Big One.

They called around to my friends and were relieved to learn that no, I didn’t have a heart attack on my 60th birthday. A guest had choked on popcorn. What I did have at my birthday party inside the Civic Auditorium was fun, lots of it, so much fun that it has made me rethink my long held resistance to birthday parties. And has me trying to imagine another excuse to rent the Auditorium and have a shindig.

The last birthday party I had before Saturday was in 1959 for my twelfth birthday. I never wanted a party as a teenager - my parents might attend. In college I had the summer birthday problem. Then came the workaday world where few have birthday parties. If you are lucky, your co-workers will take you to lunch at the Chop House.

I really turned against birthday parties some 25 years ago when I attended a surprise 40th party for a friend. She was surprised, also angered, enraged and infuriated. In fact she is now divorced from the man who threw the party for her.

I reluctantly agreed to my 60th party. I had planned to spend the whole day in bed, moaning. But Jo Zimmerman encouraged me to celebrate. The Civic Auditorium was about to raise its rental rate, from $250 to $300 - this was back in March - and I had to make a quick decision. Oh, what the hey, go ahead, I said, flattered but also nervous.
Jo enlisted other friends - Bruce Haney, Mike and Lisa Anne Milhorn, David Good and Eddie Grills - to co-sponsor the event. So now I had a second reason to dread turning 60. A birthday party.

In the end I think it was the best $250 anyone ever spent on me. I highly recommend renting the Civic Auditorium for a party, even if the rate is now $300. (Just add another sponsor.)

The celebrating began Saturday afternoon when I returned from Johnson City with a carload of party trinkets. I saw a shadowy figure in the bushes as I crashed my car through rolls of black crepe paper. My house had been rolled and the shadowy figure had left a sign: “Happy 60th ‘Old Man.’ Just don’t dye your scalp and fringe purple or pink. Join the 60s club! Your 1st date!!!”

I smiled at it all. My first date, that would have been my neighbor Mary Owenby.

Soon I was at the Civic Auditorium, greeting guests - there must have been 300 of them over the course of the evening. I had requested no presents but that didn’t keep my barber Claude Russell from presenting me with an age-appropriate present, a Gift Certificate from Jack Kivorkian, “good for one visit,” and signed “from World Famous Barber
Claude Russell.”

Carl Swann also presenting me with an age-appropriate present, a vintage bottle of that sixties favorite, Jade East cologne, complete with sixties dust. It smelled exactly the way I remembered. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

The party really was the proverbial good time was had by all. The P.F. Flyers - the greatest band to come out of Piney Flats - kept the crowd dancing. Carl emceed a hula-hoop contest that drew 20 entrants in a test of skills to see who could keep it up the longest.

As promised I sang “Hello Mary Lou” with the band. Drummer Mike Warner encouraged the women in the crowd to gather round, just like the girls did at the end of every “Ozzie and Harriet” show. They swayed, I sang; they swooned and stormed the stage, I laughed.

At midnight, when my real birthday dawned, what was left of the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to me.

That’s the only problem I see with turning 60. Your friends are too old to stay up till midnight to sing to you.

Janice Jones warned me in advance about birthday wishes. “On my birthday in a moment of temporary insanity, moi wished that moi could be seventeen again. I went to sleep with that wish roiling around in my mind. The next morning, voila!”

As Janice stood looking in the mirror, she noticed two things. “Number one was that God has an off-center sense of humor. Number two was that you have to word very carefully the wishes that you make. For you see, I forgot to wish for the overall appearance of a seventeen-year-old. But, my wish was granted and I heard in my mind the giggle of God's funny bone. Right there in plain sight for all to view was a huge red get-your-attention-from-at-least-100-yards-away ZIT! On the very end and slightly off center of my nose. Be aware! Just be aware!”

David Cate and Don Fenley of the Times News’ New Media staff recorded my
birthday soiree for posterity. You can view video highlights of the party on
my blog, vincestaten.blogspot.com.

And I promise I will never write about my birthday again.

I Made It to 60!

Here are a few photos from my 60th birthday party Saturday night at the Civic Auditorium.

This will whet your appetite for the video that is coming soon from Times News New Media. The video will be posted on this site soon so keep checking back.

My Birthday Party - And You're Invited

It’s the Party to End All Parties—

Vince Staten’s Birthday

The Last Night of the Fifties!

(Vince’s fifties--he turns 60 at Midnight)

Dance to the Sixties Music

of the P.F. Flyers -

The Greatest Band Ever to Come out of Piney Flats.

Dance the Night Away!

Party Till You Drop - Then Get Up and Start All Over Again!

Twist Contest!

Stroll Contest! Spin the bottle!

Three Dancers from the Mouse’s Ear – Combined, Their Ages Add Up to 60

Big Midnight Countdown to Middle Age –

60, It’s the New 40!

Saturday August 4^th

8 till 12 midnight-

if you can last that long

Kingsport CIVIC AUDITORIUM

$5 cover charge at the door

(proceeds to the band)

Concessions by Hot Dog Hut—

Snacks, soft drinks, ice

Bring Your Best Gal!

Or Come Stag!

Be There or Be Square!

Doors open at 7:30

Fantasy Taste of Kingsport

To help jog my memory of old restaurants in Kingsport, I consulted this webpage, which I posted four years ago. It is composed of scans from old city directories. You can look up restaurants from 1939, 1953 and 1965.

The Castaways Memories