While we were visiting the Lodge Factory Store, we checked out South Pittsburg and discovered it was home to the National Cornbread Festival. One nice thing about the festival is they open the Lodge factory for tours. This alone has us thinking about making return trip. It would be very interesting to see how the cast iron skillet are made.
As we were wandering around, we stumbled on some startling local history – a shoot out between two police forces. That is not something you see everyday and warranted some investigation.
I didn’t get a picture of the front of the sign, but after a little research using google I found it was important to get a complete picture of what happened. Sadly, there was already tension between the Sheriff and Police departments due to a lost election. The town was also in the middle of a year-long labor dispute. The union was trying to unionize the local factory. The factory management didn’t want that so they fired all workers associated with the union. This gave the town another reason to splinter. It didn’t help matters that one police force supported the union and one didn’t. The tension was too much and disaster resulted. It really was a tragic event.
If you want to learn more, this was an interesting article to read. http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2014/jul/20/south-pittsburg-remembers-1927-christmas-shootout/252966/
* The first picture of the mark was from the following website: http://www.chattanooganow.com/news/2014/jul/17/south-pittsburg-to-dedicate-0010christmas/.
hollysfollies 