Saturday, May 28, 2011

Fading signs that I have found in my research.

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.
This is the wall of the Jones Vance Drug Company in Johnson City, Tennessee.

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.

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.

This is a sign just off of State Street in downtown Bristol, VA. I would love to see this one restored. It's huge!

Also in Bristol is this newer Enjoy Coke sign, even a sign this new is in danger of fading into history.

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.

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.

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.
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.

Below that sign was this metal 7-up sign long since rusted into oblivion.

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.

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.

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.

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