When Lisa Childress is the first to arrive at the offices of the Downtown Kingsport Association, she will call out, "Lucy, I'm here."
Lucy isn't the night watchman. Or the custodian.
Lucy is the Ghost of the Gem Theater.
Honest. The old movie theater at the corner of Shelby and Main, which now houses the DKA offices, has its own ghost and has had for years.
Long enough that the ghost has picked up a name, Lucy. Lisa isn't sure if she gave the ghost that name or if someone else did, but she says that's what they have called the ghost since Lisa has been at the DKA, which is six years.
Lisa remembers the first time she encountered Lucy, or at least Lucy's aftermath. "I went in one morning, and all the doors were unlocked, and all the drawers were pulled out." But nothing was missing, indicating that Lucy may be mischievous but she isn't evil. Since then Lisa has heard Lucy many times, walking around upstairs or moving chairs around or slamming doors shut. And when she comes in the front door, she sometimes hears a whoosh. But she has never seen Lucy.
Lisa isn't the only one who swears there is a ghost in the Gem. I have a friend - a skeptical fellow - who was in the Gem late one night taking down framed art in the upstairs gallery when he and his wife heard noises downstairs. They chalked that up to something falling. But a few minutes later they heard the unmistakable sound of someone walking across the room they were in. That someone was wearing high heels. But they couldn't see anyone.
DKA events coordinator Cindy Lemons has a theory about the ghost. "I think it's my mom." Her mother was the late Peggy Turner, former DKA director who died in 1998 and was instrumental in acquiring the Gem for the DKA's offices. "Mom always wore high heels." Cindy said the ghost never bothers her.
Lisa thinks Lucy dates back further than that. "I think she may go all the way back to the early days when the building housed a saloon." She thinks an unfortunate woman may have met an untimely end in the Gem and has been haunting the place ever since. But haunting it in a nice way, sort of like Casper the friendly ghost.
Joe Wallen, who frequented the Gem as a boy and still remembers a Gene Autry poster outside proclaiming, "Barbwire and bullets can't stop Gene," has another theory. "Reckon it could be the ghost of Gabby Hayes?"
FREE WITH CHIPS
After my recent column about my 45 record collection Joe Allison wrote to remind me, "You could get free 45s in Moore's Potato Chips for a while back in the '60s. I remember that most were covers like the Wright Brothers you mentioned in your article, but hey, they were free and my brothers and I played them pretty regularly. I wish I'd kept up with my 45s better, but after I got into LPs they didn't interest me anymore. I'm sure there's still some over at my parents' house, but they're in pretty bad shape and the good ones probably got sold in garage sales."
?RAW EMOTION'
Drew Van Huss is a generation younger than me. (His dad was my junior high buddy Doug.) But he wanted me to know that "records are still cool! When I got married last October, my wife couldn't understand why I still had my old stereo with a turntable on top of it. She REALLY couldn't understand why I wanted to move it into our new house. I have an iPod and a couple of nice CD players, so having a big bulky record player didn't make much sense to her. But when I drop that needle on the first side of ?Born to Run' or ?Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' it makes all the sense in the world to me. There's a heart and soul between those grooves that just can't be found in digital media."
Drew says he loves his iPod. "I think it's the greatest thing ever. That being said, there's still nothing that can compare with lowering that needle down on that spinning disc and hearing those opening piano notes of ?Thunder Road.' When Bruce Springsteen's raspy voice comes through those speakers along with the pops, cracks and the perfect imperfection of that old turntable, you hear what it was really like to make an ?album' and not just the next ?hit single.' There's a raw emotion in a record that will never be duplicated, no matter what new media is invented next."
Source: http://timesnews.net/article.dna?_StoryID=3616548
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