Big Burley

Buddies

Last week, our water heater went bad. Had I been a homeowner, I would have to come up with the money to have it replaced. Being a renter, Carolyn made one phone call and a new unit was in place the next day.

Johnson City’s last tobacco warehouse is no more. Sunday it burned into mostly ash and wreckage. JC used to be a hub for burley tobacco sales from farmers to corporations which produce cigarettes. In my day, there were at least three of the huge buildings around town but when cigarette sales in the U.S. fell and the government no longer supported tobacco prices, the city bought two of them and and had them demolished. The Johnson City Development Authority moves in a mysterious manner. The last time I was inside the one which burned on Sunday was the mid-1980′s when they had car shows in summertime. Burley tobacco was for years the main cash crop of local farmers; it mostly sold in November and December and it made clothing and Christmas presents possible for many children in the “Burley Belt”. In the 1940′s and 1950′s, JC was the home of a football bowl game; the (you guessed it) Burley Bowl which took place on Thanksgiving Day. It usually pitted the team from East Tennessee State College–now University–against one of the college teams from across region. JC had their Christmas parade the morning before the big game and people came from miles around to enjoy the revelry.

Elton John is coming to town in September! Oh, glorious day. Thoughts about this in a later post.

Have a Tuesday!