Daily News of Kingsport TN
310 East Sullivan Street, Kingsport, TN 37660
(423) 246-4800 (fax) 423-247-2502
The following is an account by Pug Potter and Pete Dykes of how things were in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia throughout those "War Years" of 1939 to 1945. We hope this look back into history helps bring back some memories for some readers and a better perspective of history for younger readers.
Copyright 2008 Daily News of Kingsport Inc.
Chapter 1
I think Jay Fred Johnson had that in mind when he got a professional city planner to design the place; with the Church Circle making a hub of streets pouring out in all directions.
Broad Street is wide for the four long blocks that make up the business district. There is a green way in the center, and shade trees on the sidewalks on either side, a welcome relief from the summer’s sun in late August or early September.
At the end of the wide street, the Clinchfield Railroad Depot can be seen just across Main Street. At the far end of the wide business district, the Kingsport Inn takes up one side of a full block on the right, and the large brick Post Office building perches on the first corner and the Electric Power Utility Building hugs the circle, opposite the Inn. There is a space of green way between the Post Office and the Utilities building, reserved, perhaps, for another governmental building or other institution that may someday be able to afford the asking price of the lot, but so far remaining vacant.
The Church Circle divides Broad Street, and converges with Sullivan Street, which is what the city named the old Knoxville Highway that runs through it.
On the right from downtown, the First Methodist Church rises its high steeple toward the heavens. Just across the two lane street, called Watauga, sits the Broad Street Methodist Church.
The First Church is Northern Methodist and Broad Street is Southern Methodist. Or so they had always been until the two branches of that religion merged just this year, 1939.
And so, although the “Northern Methodist” and the “Southern Methodist” had become just “Methodist” we still had two separate congregations, the First Methodist Church and right across from it Broad Street Methodist Church.
Next door to the Broad Street Methodist, and across the two lane part of Broad Street, the First Presbyterian Church is situated, and the First Baptist Church follows it, situated between Holston and the west part of Sullivan Street.
The Holston Drug is a popular soda fountain and lunch counter, and they serve a good breakfast for 19 cents. You get an egg, with bacon, jelly and toast and all the coffee you want to drink.
I usually stopped with the third cup, but I know some guys who would sit there until they drink four or five, just to make sure they got their money’s worth.
The newspaper guy I knew sometimes comes in for breakfast there as well. The newspaper plant was on Market Street, just a couple blocks down, and I guess the Holston counter was the closest place he could get breakfast at a good low price.
He came in that morning through the glass doors at front and as soon as he saw me, he made a bee line for the stool next to mine.
“Hey, Pug,” he said, as he sat down.
“We just got a news flash on the wire. The German Army and Navy invaded Poland this morning.
“They attacked by land, sea and air, and the Poles are running around in mass confusion. They don’t know what to do. Hitler’s troops are overrunning the whole country.”
I sat down my coffee cup to avoid spilling it and looked at him.
“I thought England and France both said they would defend Poland after Hitler got Austria and Czechoslovakia” I said.
“They did,” he declared. “But what can they do about it, other than declare war on Germany themselves?”
I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me that he had just predicted the course of action they would have to take.
For months now, even years, the clouds of war had been gathering over Europe, as Hitler and his Nazis ruthlessly transformed Germany into a totalitarian state.
Much of that had grown out of the bitter seeds sewn at the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the Great War, when Germany had been forced to surrender.
The conquering nations demanded that Germany disarm, and do away with all of its military power.
Then, following the war years, an economic depression swept across the world, leaving vast numbers of people unemployed and destitute.
Germany was hit particularly hard, and throngs of unemployed workers and their families faced starvation.
England and France might have saved the German Republic by granting some of its requests, but each of them had troubles of their own and so they paid little heed to Germany’s problems.
The people there soon decided that the German Weimar Republic was too weak to do anything for them, and that it could not solve the great problems of unemployment and discontent.
And so it was that Adolph Hitler came to power.
Chapter 2
Several nations concluded that the League could or would do nothing for them nor protect them if they were threatened, and so began building up armaments to defend themselves if and when they might be needed.
It was only a year after that, in 1932, when the German government was at the point of collapse, that Hitler was made Chancellor.
He immediately set to work to make himself dictator. His Nazi followers quickly changed Germany from a democratic republic to a totalitarian state. The Versailles Treaty was junked, and Germany began to build up armaments
Unemployed workers soon had jobs in the new war-materials plants; young men were conscripted into the armed services. Youth were coached and trained in special camps and with programs that filled them with patriotic love of their country and dedication to the “Fuhrer” as they called mustached Adolph.
The Germans are industrious, intelligent, hard working people, and they soon had a humming economy to all appearances.
Of course, much of that apparent success was simply make-work projects, building armaments and war materials.
But for the first time since the end of The Great War, Germany once again built up an army and a navy and had near full employment for the civilian population.
I don’t want to sound like a history teacher, but I don’t know how much of these facts you know or remember, and you need to and understand how it all came about before I can tell you what happened in our little country town called Kingsport.
The newspaper guy who told me of the Poland invasion was very excited and, I thought, even a bit pleased.
“There’s going to be a helluva war over this,” he told me.
“England and France have GOT to get in it now. They warned Hitler to not invade Poland, and said they would fight him if he did.
“I’ll bet you that they will declare war before the week is out.”
He was right about that.
England and France declared war on Germany just two days later.
After that, anybody who had their head screwed on right should have known that sooner or later, the USA would get in it as well, but a lot of folks kept hoping we could avoid it and remain neutral while Europe destroyed itself by fighting each other.
That wasn’t a bad goal, but not a practical one considering the close business ties so much of our country had with England and France.
After all, wars are fought for and about money and a profit, although the “statesmen” always try to tell us it is for some great principle.
The sleepy little country town called Kingsport was about to undergo a transformation that would change it forever.
It was only a matter of a time until Congress passed a Conscription Bill, to take boys and men between the ages of 18 and 39 into military service for training and possible duty.
The Bill passed on September 14, 1940, just two weeks after the first anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Poland and England and France’s declarations of war against Germany. Draftees were to serve for a 21 month training period, and would receive the sum of $21.00 per month in pay. Of course, they also got their clothing, room and board at no charge also, so it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. In fact, a lot of the draftees had never earned that much money in their lives before.
Since age 39 was the top limit for being called into the Army by Selective Service, and since I was just a bit past that, I knew I would not be called, and would have to volunteer if and when our country actually got into the war. I didn’t feel too badly about it, because I had spent my time overseas in the “Great War” back in 1918, and didn’t have a lot of enthusiasm for military life any way. I figured if I was needed, they would let me know, and that would be the time to volunteer or something.
But in the meantime, there was nothing much to do but let life go on as it had been doing.
Things began to change rather quickly, however.
Many young fellows, mostly 18 to 20 year old kids, were called up for military training.
One day you would see them driving their jalopys down Broad Street, looking for and at girls, the next day they would be at the Clinchfield Railroad Station, waiting for a train to take them to Knoxville for examination and maybe on to Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., where most of the inductees from the Kingsport area were sent.
Within a couple of months, there were a lot less young men around town, and fewer jalopys on the streets.
I started hearing rumors about a big war plant that was going to be built in or near Kingsport, but didn’t pay much attention to such talk.
Folks have been claiming that everybody from Henry Ford to Harvey Firestone wanted to build a plant in Kingsport, and were kept out because the powers that be didn’t want high wages to compete with the established pay scales. Most of such talk is just that, talk, with nothing to back it up, but sometimes even idle gossip can get it right.
Chapter 3
I’ve been in and around Kingsport for about as long as it has been a town. In fact, my early memory is of muddy roads and swampy fields, with a small railroad station and a couple of businesses close by it.
One of those businesses was a lumber yard, the other was what was called “The Big Store” or “Jay Fred’s Commissary” a good sized building that housed everything from the Post Office to the Funeral Parlor, and sold clothing, groceries, and farm supplies as well.
Shortly after the Big Store opened, a movie theatre called the Gem was constructed, right across the street from the mercantile establishment, and it proved to be popular and successful from the very first.
Folks would come to town on the train, from all the little whistle stops between Kingsport and Johnson City, or from the hills of Virginia, take in a movie at the Gem, and do their trading at the Big Store.
Most of them rode horses to the train stops, and left the mounts at a store or neighbors barn until their return trip.
From the train station to the Big Store there was a wide, muddy, graded-but-not-paved-nor-graveled roadway which, it was hoped, would someday become a street.
A board walk was constructed at last, which enabled movie goers and shoppers to walk all the way to their destinations above and out of the mud, providing they did not step off on either side.
But I am getting off the subject again, and need to go back.
I was telling you about myself. I worked for Jay Fred off and on for some time, doing things he couldn’t get anyone else to do for him, and I managed at last to buy a truck, and go in to the hauling business.
A lot of people were moving into the new town, and there seemed to always be somebody who needed me to haul their furniture or something to someplace or other.
Later I bought a car as well, and made pretty good money with it as well, because a lot of folks did not have automobiles and the local taxi service cost more than they could afford to pay.
By that morning in 1939, I had a pretty good business going.
And, with the hard times and tight money of the depression days, I figured that I was lucky indeed to make ends meet and sometimes lap over.
Unemployment continued to be high across the whole country, although there were some signs that things might get better before too long.
The government had put together a lot of “make work” projects under FDR (for you youngsters who don’t know, that stands for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America’s only four term president).
There was The WPA, The AAA, The NLA, NIRA, NRA, CCC, TVA, SSA, PWA, CWA, and a host of other anagrams that stood for government agencies.
Locally, the WPA was the best known. The letters stood for Works Progress Administration, but soon gained the nickname of “We Piddle Around” due to the often observed scene of one man shoveling while three others stood and watched, leaning on the handles of their spades.
A standing joke at the time was that it took eight men for a grass mowing job: Two coming, two going, two sitting, and two mowing.
They trimmed bushes along the sides of roads, built out-houses for schools and churches (and some individuals who had the right political pull) and other such menial tasks, but it made jobs for them and gave them enough income to put some food on the tables for their families.
The war in Europe didn’t changes things very much for most of America, but the military conscription of young men starting on September 16, 1940, soon began to open up jobs for civilians who had been left behind.
Employers would explain that the job was only temporary, for the young man who had been drafted would be discharged after a few months training, and would return to his former occupation. But even temporary jobs were a blessing when there is very little employment, and desperate men were happy to take such positions.
They also got leaves and furloughs, so they could come home to see their folks, and I noticed that they always had money to spend when they got there.
Chapter 4
Well, when the Army folks found out that he was a college senior, they decided they would make him into a airplane pilot in case he might be needed later in that capacity.
I’m telling you all this because I found out from his dad a bit later that he had written home about all the planes he had been ferrying down to an air base in Panama, and had mentioned that on just one day, he had counted 17 ships that were sinking, having been torpedoed by German U-boats.
Most of those ships were British, of course, For the Brits had already declared war on Hitler’s regime, and were fighting his troops in what was called “the low countries” of Europe, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
But the overpowering force of German troops broke through defensive lines and swept through to out flank the famed Maginot Line, a concrete structure that was supposed to prevent any possible invasion into France.
Belgium’s King Leopold surrendered his country to the Nazis and became a prisoner of war. The Brits, trapped and unable to stem the German onslaught, retreated to the beaches at Dunkirk, and escaped complete annihilation only through a massive and epic evacuation made possible when every floating vessel that could be used was pressed into service to bring 335,000 British and French troops back to England.
But my friend’s son, now through flight school and ferrying airplanes to the Panama base, continued to observe the many sinking ships along the Atlantic Coast, and occasionally caught a glimpse of a U-boat as it submerged into the ocean depths.
If his information was correct, and I believed it was, the Nazis were effectively stopping shipping to England, and that meant that we would have to get into it soon, because there was too much investment between the USA and England for the money men to leave it alone.
So I was pretty sure that war was coming, and that we would soon be in it.
Still, a lot of people thought that the folks in Europe should just paddle their own canoes, and leave us out of it. After all, we had gone to war back in 1917, just a bit more than two decades earlier, and saved their bacon for them, and against the same Germany they were currently fighting.
There was a strong movement which had started back in 1935 and again in 1937 when Congress passed Neutrality Acts, which were supposed to keep the USA out of the war.
The Acts forbade the United States to furnish money or supplies to any country at war, and prohibited the sale of munitions on credit.
But President Roosevelt, with the aid of his “New Dealers”, managed to overturn the parts of the Acts they didn’t like, and clear the way for more involvement.
Roosevelt was worshipped by the Democrats and hated by the Republicans, probably more than any other man who had ever held the office. A generation of American youngsters grew up thinking that only FDR could or would be President whether they liked it or not.
During 1940, as the war continued to escalate in Europe it looked bad indeed for England.
Although the Brits did pretty well in the fighting department, their greatest danger was in being shut off completely from all supplies. Constant threats to their supply lines were made by the German naval forces, who laid magnetic mines in English harbors and in the English Channel, and their constantly growing number of German submarines. Those U-boats worked as teams, traveling the seas together in what was soon dubbed “Wolf Packs”, sinking any ship they found heading toward England.
That got some of our ships, too, right along with theirs.
So at last, in September 1940, the USA started giving help to Great Britain. We sent them fifty American destroyers and in return they gave us leases on bases they had from Newfoundland to Trini-dad. It became more and more clear to me that our country would soon be involved in war.
But a lot of things happened around Kingsport that year, and some of them were important enough to keep folks minds off of the worry over the European war.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK