Treasure hunters will be out in force for the 22nd Annual Tree Streets Yard Sale on Saturday, September 10th, 2011.

The giant yard sale draws more than 30,000 shoppers browsing bargains throughout the neighborhood.  Shoppers have come from as far away as Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida for past sales.

You just never know what you’ll find.  Read more information on our Yard Sale page. ]]> http://www.treestreets.net/featured/22nd-annual-tree-streets-yard-sale/feed/ 0 http://www.treestreets.net/history/heating-our-homes-the-old-fashioned-way/ http://www.treestreets.net/history/heating-our-homes-the-old-fashioned-way/#comments Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:18:07 +0000 Ken Harrison http://www.treestreets.net.php5-8.websitetestlink.com/wp-02/?p=10 Until the mid 1950′s, coal was the predominant heating fuel for most houses and apartments in our neighborhood. After all, it was abundant and easily mined from nearby. It was an extremely dirty way to heat. Every chimney spewed thick, black, sooty smoke all winter. That made it difficult to dry clothes on lines in the backyard!

Many houses still used fireplaces to heat in the 1920′s. However, central furnace heating became popular providing hot air. Larger houses required steam or hot water boilers and radiators. Firing the furnace meant hand shoveling small lump coal into the furnace, sometimes every 2 hours or so. Hand adjustments of the draft and damper on the furnace regulated the amount of heat provided to the house, which, in turn set the coal shoveling frequency. A considerable amount of smoke, gasses and dust worked its way thru the hot air ducts directly from the furnace to the floor registers in each room. “Clinker”, or the burnt remains of coal had to be removed almost daily so the furnace would continue working.

A half winter supply of coal was delivered to a home thru a coal door at the side or rear of the house. The coal truck would get close, extend a metal chute thru the coal door and into a coal pile in the basement. From there, the coal was hand-shoveled into a furnace. Starting in the 1920′s and 1930′s some more affluent homeowners could afford a new invention called a “stoker”, a small metal coal hopper that sat over a metal feed screw, which fed small pieces of coal to the furnace. An upstairs thermostat activated the coal feed which increased the house heat.

I have a 30” cannon shell made of oak wood! The Harris Lumber Company manufactured it during the early months of World War II. An attractive and functional item, it was made under contract for the U.S. Government as a training tool for our soldiers to learn to handle and load the cannons of war. These were shipped all over the United States. The company building still stands on East Maple Street in our general neighborhood.

Parrot-Summers Hardware, which is still in business on Buffalo Street, was a wholesaler of many, many items. They apparently sold items under their own name as well as name brand items. We have a shaving straight razor with the Hardware name imprinted on the blade.

Nearby, but outside our neighborhood area, was the small company, Kleensmoke Pipe Company. They made a screw-off bowl pipe in at least two versions, which I have. The small building still stands in an alley near Boone Street in downtown Johnson City.

The Interstate Foundry was located on the north side of what is now State of Franklin Road across from the university McDonald’s. The ghostly buildings still stand. Tree Street resident Wanda Buda’s father was employed there and had a lamp in the shape of a sailing ship, one of many different items made there.

The Johnson City Foundry stood on what is now the ETSU parking lot, west of the university McDonald’s. They made large, custom-made beams, trusses, fire hydrants and even small “frying pan” advertising ashtrays of which I have two.

The locally famous white cake recipe of Mrs. Frank Thomas of West Pine Street is still around and in use. It appeared on the Red Band Flour bag made by ourlocal Model Mill (General Mills) which now stands empty on the 500 block of West Walnut Street.

The Home Run Nut Company, make of Home Run Peanut Butter, started in the kitchen and an adjoining room in back of W.A. “Big Bill” Richardson’s home at 503 West Locust Street. It grew to a larger company in my grandfather Harrison’s store building on Tacoma Avenue (East Fairview Avenue now) and then back to our neighborhood at 800 Spring Street. I am told that from there it was bought and incorporated into a snack-food company in Bristol, VA. I have an original jar with label.

So you see, our neighborhood contributed many commercial products for everyday use in the United States.

Railroad tracks went everywhere throughout the USA. These meandering folks, who were given the label of “hobo”, found free transportation on a train by climbing aboard an empty boxcar and riding free to the next town. At this point I might add that the hobo, as a character on the American scene, has been around since the Civil War….but that is another story to tell.

I first remember the hobos coming to our back door at 306 West Locust Street when I was about five or six years old. Mom would always give them some of our meal that was being prepared, or as was usually the case, they came in the afternoon, and she would fix them a sandwich. They, or usually he, would sit on the back steps or in the shade of the wild cherry tree to eat their meal. The men (I never saw a woman or younger person) were always quiet and polite. Some would offer to do some yard chores in exchange for food; but for the most part, they just wanted something to eat.

I never thought much about these back-door visits at the time. Since my world was my neighborhood, if I did ask about them or think on it, I suppose I thought this occurrence was as it should be. On the contrary, later in my life, I came to the realization that these vagabond wanderers were a unique group. Not only did they pursue adventure, freedom (and some job searching), but also they were getting a different taste of life…..a taste that was deliberately sought after.

I’d like to take your thoughts back to the years of WWII and up to the 1950′s. I suppose those were the years I best remember the local hobos. I guess I was a high school senior in 1953 when I wondered if the hobos who came to our back door also knocked on the doors of my next door neighbors. I asked around and found that many of my neighbors were visited by these travelers but some were not.

Through my readings I stumbled across a magazine article that mentioned secret symbols used by hobos to communicate with one another. Since then I have gathered many more signs. I felt that I had discovered why hobos knocked on some doors in my neighborhood but not on others! Take a look at the illustrations with this article. Earlier hobos in a town would leave these symbols in special places so those coming through later would benefit from their knowledge or warnings and any help available. This saved a lot of unproductive knocking on doors.

Traveling hobos through my West Locust Street youth must have been left such markings to indicate Mom provided a place to sit and cool off and a much-appreciated sandwich!

There were other record companies selling “country music” records, but Jim’s label was the first and only record label devoted to strictly “Hillbilly” (early country) music. As fans of early Hillbilly music know, East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia and Western North Carolina had the original performers of this style of music. The Rich-R-Tone label was more than just a regional label, however. It’s popularity from Florida to Maine and the mid-West was strong. The second important thing about this label is that Jim recorded these early musicians (who had mainly been featured on radio, in school houses, etc.) and started many singers and musicians on their recording careers! To name a few of the most well known performers, we have the Stanley Brothers (Ralph and Carter), Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper , Martha Carson and Buffalo Johnson.

Jim had his own portable disc recorder and recorded many master records “on location”. He also recorded in his subsequent locations at home; studios on Greenwood Drive and Indian Ridge Road; West Market Street; Jonesborough Highway; rented studios at radio stations WJHL (Johnson City); WBEJ (Elizabethton); and WOPI (Bristol, VA); plus others. There is more, but that’s another story.

The first of many stories to come involves the Model Mill and is told to us by Anna and Sara Thomas, 409 West Pine Street.  During the depression years, their Mother, Mrs. Frank Thomas, was trying to help bring in some extra money to support her family.  (Many women in the era were trying to help keep body and soul together.)  Mrs. Thomas began baking cakes and selling them to friends and neighbors.  During the Christmas holiday alone, she would sell over 100 cakes.  She used flour made at the model mill.  The manager of the mill heard (by way of the “grapevine”) that one of her cakes, a white cake with white frosting, was a particular favorite of the customers.  One day, he came to her house and offered her $15 for the rights to her recipe, and she sold it to him!  He went right back to the mill and proceeded to have his newly acquired recipe printed on all the smaller bags of Red Band Flour.  At that time, the Model Mill distributed it’s products to many surrounding states.  It even had two of it’s own trucks that delivered to the small country stores such as the ones you would find in the coal mining towns of Southwest Virginia.

The Model Mill is a whole story in itself – one that becomes more intriguing with each new discovery!  It was built by George L. Carter in 1909 and started into operation that very same year.  We have found that, in addition to flour, they also produced feed, seed and meal.  Every batch of flour was tested in the Mill kitchen thereby enabling Mr. Carter to use his patented slogan “Kitchen Tested”.  It was such a good slogan that Washburn-Crosby Mills, a huge and well-established business, in 1931, paid him the grand sum of $1 million for the Model Mill in order to obtain the slogan and the right to use it as their own!  In 1933, General Mills bought Washburn-Crosby Mills and continued to operate the Model Mill under that name until 1937 when they changed the name to General Mills.

In 1946, General Mills added a household appliance division to it’s sales line and produced kitchen appliances such as a toaster, a mixer, an iron skillet, a popcorn popper, a deep fat fryer and a pressure cooker.  It is very probable that these appliances were sold commercially in such stores as Carder Hardware in the 100 Block of West Market Street in Johnson City.  They closed this division in 1951 and ceased making the small appliances.  It’s an interesting fact that these appliances were also given to the Mill employees as part of their safety awards program.  At the conclusion of any safety campaign, employees qualifying for the award could choose from 3 or 4 different appliances offered.  We learned this from Cline Holtzsclaw, miller for 42 years at the Mill.  Occasionally we will display artifacts depicting the scope of operation of the Model Mill and how it related to the everyday life of many people – not only locally, but who knows – even worldwide!  We encourage you to come to our Southside Neighborhood Monthly Meetings to learn more.

In March of 1949, radio station WBT in Charlotte, NC, was granted a license to broadcast a television signal under the TV station call letters, WBTV – Channel 3. Sporadic trial and error eventually brought an hour or two of programming to far-flung areas. Walter seized the opportunity and erected a tall multi-element antenna in back of a house high up on Laurel Ave. He gave that property owner a free connection to the TV cable that left that tower and meandered down to the alleys of the Tree Streets. For a monthly fee, anyone could sign up with him to receive the first TV reception in our area. He also hoped you would purchase one of the many TV sets he had ordered. For people wanting TV reception and their own antenna, or those outside our neighborhood, he would test for a signal with his antenna system somewhere on the property of the customers.

In order to convince Johnson City residents that he could, indeed, capture the distant TV signal from Charlotte, he announced thru the newspaper that everyone could come to his home any evening and see TV on his little 10 inch screen. During hot weather, he placed 50 chairs in his backyard, placed his set in the open dining room window and entertained one and all. As the years passed, he sold the cable system and it was extended to the rest of Johnson City. Our current TV cable system, still on utility poles in our alleys, continues his innovative service that started in 1949.

Legend has it that, due to the terms of sale from ET&WNC to Free Service, a small room / location in the building must remain unused and be designated as the last remnant of the old depot and offices.

The main track ran parallel to the south side of the depot (between the depot and the current State of Franklin Road). Although we are told an extended track was made to the Model Mill (General Mills on W. Walnut Street) around 1909, the main track went east at the rear of current buildings facing Tipton Street.

During the opening years of the Bemberg Plant in Elizabethton, the railroad provided (to and from) transportation for many commuting workers from Johnson City and North Carolina. It also served as a military troop train for at least one event.

The nickname, “Tweetsie “, is said to have been derived from someone’s idea in describing the shrill, tweeting sound made by the engine whistle. There were several engines, passenger cars, boxcars, flatcars, a combination of mail / passenger cars, cabooses and motor cars in use through the years until the line ceased to operate in the fall of 1950. Several miles of the railroad are still in use between Johnson City and Elizabethton; and, it is known as the East Tennessee Railroad, with one engine and two employees.

In the early years, there were two employees of ET&WNC who made up a team who worked six days a week with their run from Johnson City to Boone, NC. C.E. “Cy” Crumley as Conductor and Sherman Pippin was the Engineer. There were many unique and colorful employees of the railroad, but these two men seem to have been most often quoted. Many books and articles have been written about their wonderful attitudes and the style with which they ran the train. Both were certainly unique as “Good Will Ambassadors” to everyone, especially during the Depression years.

Back around 1938, Cy Crumley and others appeared in a short feature movie made by Columbia Pictures featuring the Tweetsie, called “Tennessee Tweetsie”.

You can learn more at: Johnson’s Depot and Tweetsie websites.

These symbols told them the direction of the water and sewer lines that connected each home with the appropriate pipes underground in the street. A letter “W” signified your water pipe direction from house to street, and a cross or “X” would show the direction of the sewer pipe as it left your property. Not all symbols were in front of each house.

In order to get good drainage, the sewer line might leave your house and angle through your neighbor’s yard on its way to the center of the street Basically though, if your curb is of the old, original concrete texture and shape, you should be able to locate these markings. It goes without saying that if you have replaced your yard pipes, then the direction the new ones take might be different from the original cast iron pipes. Water meters are also located in some strange places.

If you have trouble locating some of these early signs, then look at the curbing at 1200 Southwest Avenue and 502 West Maple Street. Then you will know what the markings look like. By the way, we have a few examples of early streets that still exist. Boyd Street between West Walnut and West Maple is a great example. We hope they will never have an asphalt topping. Happy looking.