Cas walker had a store Pennington Gap, Va and I seen this man many times in my life growing up as a little girl. When did he pass away? I never seen is wife in the store. I say she was there but didn't remember or know who she was. The flood took the store I think in the early 70. I was born and raised there and alot of stories was told what real and what was wasn't. I guess you set aroung and laught and I guess along as that happen he will never die. I can remember him very well and I guess I could tell a few stories on Cas walker myself. Darlene

It is an East Tennessee tradition to talk about Cas. He comes up in conversations all the time. Everybody has a story. I even told Cas stories when I lived in Arkansas, so my guess is that Cas stories are in every state in the country and many foreign lands. He would probably love that.

However, to have him in the family must be interesting. Some wild family stories I bet. All the things the rest of us don't have any idea about.

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

Are you asking about the new traffic lights that were sold in a small Georgia town? I remember a story in the Watch Dog about several City of Knoxville employees who had a business selling surplus traffic equipment. One night a city truck left the garage after dark with a load of new traffic lights. Cas Walker had the truck followed to a town in Georgia where they were sold to the local town. After the Watch Dog broke the story, the traffic light were return and no one was charged.

I don't know about the missing red lights.

But I have never heard of Cas having The Thunderbolt in his store. It was a hardcore Klan periodical published by J.B. Stoner out of Stone Mountain Georgia.

The Watchdog was more of a free-flowing rant on whoever Cas was pissed off at at the moment -- most often political rivals and cops. Cas didn't much like cops, and loved to bust them for hanging around his competitors' establishments while on duty.

He also hated dog stealers and women who wore hot pants and then accused his friends of raping them.

AHHH Yes, All of us oldies but goodies baby boomers in Knoxville, Tennesee and East Tennesse and even into Kentucky and Virginia remember the old guy named Cas Walker who had grocery stores all over Knoxville and even Sevierville, TN and also as far as Pennington Gap, VA. He was a local celebrity of sorts. My father & mother (Arlie Dartis Cunningham & Grace Ruth Ball Cunningham) and family went to Cas Walker's Western ave store in an area in Knoxville, TN known as "McAnally Flats". We almost always lived in the Dale avenue and Fort Sanders area and went to Cas Walker's every Friday night for groceries. I don't know why it was called that but it was. There were always rumors of Cas stores having ice in the hamburger meat to stretch the weight further, I don't know or even care if that was true, but it certainly was a known rumor. Ole Cas was always catering to the "Poor Man" and claimed to be a hard worker and I think he was. I do believe he was a shrewd business man and I respected him. He actually lived on Gaston Street in North Hills close to Cherry Street in an older type home. I met a man at my office at Cunningham Window Company in Knoxville who said he was a UT Professor or a teacher, can't remember exactly his occupation but he said he now owns Cas' old house on Gaston Street and I sold him some windows for the house. Also Cas was said to have always placed his stores on the right hand side of the road going out of Knoxville so people could just cut right off easy into his parking lot and they were more prone to do that on the right side instead of the left going out of town as they would have to cross the oncoming traffic to go left. I don't know if the latter is true, but it kind of makes common sense and that is what Cas claimed to be all about. Cas store on Western Ave was at the corner of Western and Univerisity where a large chruch is now, he also had stores on North Central Avenue in the 1100 block (right hand side of course) where Fred's alignment is now, also at Walker Blvd at the corner of of Mineral springs road, rt side as well a thrift store of some kind now, On Mccalla Ave at 5 points where a new shopping center is now, on Kingston pike near Bearden Center on rt again, and the only one I remember NOT on the right hand side going out of town was probably the one in Sevierville which was on Chapman Highway, but if you consider it , I think it may have been classified as the right side also, depends on how you look at it, lol. I also met some of the people associated with Cas on his TV program called "The Farm and Home Hour" on WBIR TV Channel 10 in Knoxville, shown every morning at 7:00-8:00 am before going to school, shucks we woke up to Country music playing on the TV I think Mom used that as a draw o get us out of the bed. I now remember those "dgood old days" in my later years. I met Bud Brewster who was selling mobile homes for Taylor Mobile Homes in Alcoa TN. I was told that Bud actually kept a fifth of whiskey in his trash can beside his desk, I dunno about that, but I do know he had the dang stuff in the right place, if he would just have left it there. I also live in the Gibbs community in Corryton, Tn and was acquainted with another character from Cas TV show named "Honey Wilds". I don't remember his real name but he lived at the corner of Washington Pike and Boruff Road in Corryton, and he had a CB remember those days? The one thing I remember most about Cas was that he had "Chicken Flying Contests".

He would actually take live chickens and throw them off the roof in pairs to see how far they would "fly" at the 5 points store on McCalla Ave, of course he did this on Saturday mornings to attract a crowd and hope they would come shop his store, guess what? It worked people "Flocked" ( pun intended) from everywhere to see those silly chickens flopping and "flying for every bit of at least 50 feet, cuz thats about how far it was from the roof to the ground, but what a site to see, I am told. Anyone else have any remembrances of this episode in Cas' history, or other stories please email me. I love to talk about Cas Walker. more to come....

I would like any Cas enthusiats to come see me or call at least.

When asked once to run for City council, Cas said "I don't know if I would make a good city councilman, but I would make a good Watch Dog" and thus he started the old WATCHDOG throwaway paper he handed out at his stores when you came in with gossip and hard talk on anything he disagreed with or supported. If anyone has any of these old Watch dog newspapers of Cas I would surely like to obtain a few of them.

Jerry Cunningham, Sr (965) 522-0800 owner of Cunningham windows 800 E. Magnolia Ave Knoxville, TN 37917 email: jerrysr@cunninghamwindows.net. Come by & bring yur chicken we might just want to try it at my place. (Grin)

You can hear Dolly Parton sing this on her Heartsongs album. The full clip is on Amazon.com.

My sob g'father loved Cas. Because of that every morning of my life until Cas went off the air the first thing I heard on school mornings was Cas carrying on about something, and my g'father talking back to the TV. My g'father was freuqently cussin' either Cas or whoever Cas was carrying on about.

pgs
Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

Cas lives...see Steve Hall, Stacey Campfield, Tyler Harber, Randall Parker, etc. Good old Knoxville politics. Betty Bean loves them all, though. She's got all the column inches...Go Betty!!

I remember E.B. Bowles, he had a produce business in the 50's and 60's down off 5th ave close to the viaduct about 2 blocks east of what is now I-275 on a street called Banana Ave.

knoxville had a city manager form of government until the recall of cas walker & 2 other members of council in dec 1946..the city manager ran the day to day workings of the city & was appointed by council...the mayor was elected by council(the way the chair of the county commission is elected today)..cas was elected mayor by council in jan 1946....cas's gang fired the city manager,who was very popular with the silk stocking crowd....The Good Government Group was formed..backed by the News-Sentinal...& forced a recall vote...recalling cas & 2 other members of council...plus amended the city charter to create our present mayor/council form of government..from 1946-1971 knoxville had 8 mayors(Dance died in office & Duncan was elected to Congress)from 1971 till term limits in 2003 knoxville had 3 mayors...testerman(2 non consecutive terms),tyree(2 terms) & ashe(4 terms)...got info from the book heart of the valley

Mine, too. It's in Bruce Wheeler's book, and it's from Cas's old arch-rival George Dempster, a former mayor and inventor of the Dempster Dumpster. The way I remember it, Dempster said "If I ordered a boxcar load of sons of bitches and they only sent me Cas, I'd pay for the whole order." Dempster was a brilliant, witty man who deserves to be well-remembered, but isn't. Cas considered him the ring leader of the Silk Stocking Crowd. Interesting stuff on Dempster from my favorite local historian: (link...)

I remember relatives saying this made the front page of the LA Times.... City Council Metting Hillbilly Style.

Notice how everyone in the picture is laughing?
That's because it was a hoax.
How do I know?
Cas told me so.
I had the Cas Walker "beat" when I worked at the KJ (Knoxville's late, once-great other daily newspaper, for you newbies). It started with me interviewing him when he was in the nursing home in Blount County, and we became fast friends over the last decade of his life. He was a helluva story-teller, and, near as I can tell, mostly told me the truth -- mostly. He told me that the "fistfight," a framed picture of which hung in the Journal editor's office, was "a put-up job," and that he and Cooper had cooked it up ahead of time. He wore many hats -- salesman, coon hunter, obstructionist, political boss -- but more than anything else, he was an unparalleled master at commanding the attention of the public. And it was hard to spell Cas wrong. I treasure my Cas Walker stories almost as I do my brother's.

Somebody remind me some day, if you are interested, to tell you about the time that brother John conned Cas. It was classic. Godzilla v King Kong.