As I search for the locations of these long gone bottlers, I happen upon some ghosts from their vibrant past. These come in the form of painted wall signs and many of them can be interesting. Here are some that I have found so far and where I found them.
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| This is the wall of the Jones Vance Drug Company in Johnson City, Tennessee. |
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| Just across the street from the Jones Vance building is this sign which was partially covered by another smaller building until a few years ago. |
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| To give you a sense of age of this particular sign here is a photo showing the newly built building that helped preserve the bottom part of the sign, as you can tell from the cars this sign is quite early. |
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| This is a sign just off of State Street in downtown Bristol, VA. I would love to see this one restored. It's huge! |
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| Also in Bristol is this newer Enjoy Coke sign, even a sign this new is in danger of fading into history. |
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| This sign is on a store in an area of Tazewell County Virginia known as Baptist Valley. You don't often see Upper 10 painted wall signs. |
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| On the other side of the same building is this RC cola sign, you can even see the older sign ghosting through the present paint. |
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| This is a store just outside the town of Tazewell, VA. Like the Baptist Valley sign there is ghosting from an earlier sign showing through the present sign. |
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| It's one thing to find national brands such as Coke, Pepsi, or RC, but it is an entirely different thing to find a local brand painted on a wall. This is Rhythm Punch a grape soda produced only by the Sun Rise Bottling Company which was located in Tazewell, VA. This sign is on both sides of the building shown above. |
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| Below that sign was this metal 7-up sign long since rusted into oblivion. |
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| Now this is an interesting ghost sign indeed from Pocahontas, VA. For some reason there is a part of the building that is either missing or the sign extended out from the building. It was covered up by another building for a long time and that building is now gone revealing this. |
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| As I was prowling around a road just outside of Princeton, WV, I ran upon this sign on the side of this long shuttered store. There wasn't really enough room to get off the road properly. |
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| Very near the railroad depot in Princeton, WV is this sign. I wish I could read the rest of the sign, but very little remains aside from the obvious. |
