Mail Pouch Tobacco Barn. Tennessee Highway 33, Union County.
I had been wanting to do some ramblin' 'round in northeast Tennessee, so on Tuesday I set out in my trusty old Chrysler Town and Country van to see what I could see.
Cruising north on Tennessee Highway 33, I chanced to look up a small side road and saw something that should not have been there: a barn freshly painted with a Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco sign.
I've photographed Mail Pouch barns all over the midwest, where they are still a familiar sight. But as far as I know, there were never any south of the Tennessee-Kentucky line. Also, the Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company, owners of the Mail Pouch brand, went out of the sign painting business in 1992. So this was obviously an owner-painted barn, and a very well done one, at that.
From there, I went on north to the Cumberland Gap area. I'll write more about that later. It was altogether an enjoyable day, doing one of the things I love best.
A fine Mail Pouch barn in its natural habitat -- southern Indiana.
Photos: The Tennessee barn was photographed with my new (to me) Fuji X-T3 and the Fujinon XF 16-80mm lens. The Indiana barn was photographed in the late 1990s with a Canon EOS A2 camera and the Canon EF 28-105mm lens. The film was Fujichrome 100, scanned with the Minolta-DiMage 5400 scanner.
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Photography and text copyright 2024 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
Dave, I remember seeing a few Mail Pouch barns as a child, none in recent history.
ReplyDeleteWe have a nice round barn a few miles from me in good shape, it's on private farm so I will have to get permission.
I enjoy "ramblin" stories, so keep tellin' em!
Can't speak for northern Indiana, but there are still quite a few in southern Indiana, southern Ohio, and Kentucky. There were also some in southern Illinois, but I haven't been there for nearly 30 years, so I can't say what's there now. According to a source I looked up, there were Mail Pouch barns in 22 states, including Tennessee, but I've never seen any of them in my extensive travels around the state.
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