Special Features
Mountain Dew: The Drink Marion Helped Make Famous
Mountain Dew began as a small town idea in Marion, mixed by folks who never imagined their citrus experiment would become one of the most famous sodas in the world. […]
History
Special Features
The Belmont Hotel: A Lost Abingdon Landmark
There are some buildings that disappear from a town and leave nothing but a bare patch of ground. And then there are others that linger long after the bricks are gone, like a ghost that […]
Special Features
Cookin’ Cheap Was a Blue Ridge Classic
Cookin’ Cheap proved good company matters more than perfect cooking, turning a tiny Roanoke kitchen into one of television’s most honest, joyful places. […]
Special Features
A Drink Ahead of Its Time: The Dr. Enuf Story
It’s funny how a seventy‑plus‑year‑old drink can suddenly find itself back in the spotlight, but that’s exactly what happened when Dr. Enuf rolled out its new grape flavor. One photo of that bright purple bottle […]
Special Features
News Article Detailing the Rose’s Department Store Fire in Marion Virginia in April 1989
News clipping from Bristol Herald Courier newspaper reporting the story of the Roses department store fire in April 1989. […]
Front Porch Philosophy
Piggly Wiggly Fed Our Towns and Shaped Our People
Some names just feel like they belong to the South. They settle into our memories the way porch swings settle into old wood, steady and familiar. Piggly Wiggly is one of those names. You can […]
Front Porch Philosophy
Was Dr. Pepper Invented in Rural Retreat?
Every town has a story it likes to claim, a little spark of legend that gets passed around at barber shops, church suppers, and front porches. Some of those stories are tall tales, some are […]
Front Porch Philosophy
When Rock & Roll Was King
I was seven and a half years old when the Rock ’n’ Roll Express came crashing into my world like a double dropkick to the soul. It was 1985, and I was already knee-deep in […]
Special Features
Plasterco: A Small Place With a Big Story
If you drive far enough down the backroads of Southwest Virginia, past the rolling pastureland and the quiet hollers where the mountains fold in on themselves, you’ll find a place called Plasterco. It is small […]
Special Features
A Cold One From the Carter Years
There are plenty of odd chapters in Southern pop culture, but few are as wonderfully strange as the rise and fall of Billy Beer. It arrived in 1977 with all the subtlety of a marching […]