Retro Crossroads 0205

- This time on Retro Tennessee Crossroads, we go to a quaint neighborhood shopping center where the Local Liars Club meets. And that's the truth. Then the ever skeptical Jerry Thompson tries to tap into the energies with a Middle Tennessee psychic. Al Voecks takes us to a place where drivers catch a ferry boat to cross the Cumberland River. And Susan Thomas meets a man who makes the kind of hats that were popular in the thirties and forties. Well, that's the lineup for this edition of Retro Tennessee Crossroads. I'm Joe Elmore, sure glad to have you. Well, I'm here for more time traveling with Becky Magura.

- So good to see you, Joe.

- You too.

- You know, it sounds like we're in for a couple of laughs with these segments.

- Oh yeah.

- And I've never heard of a Liar's Club, so that's not usually something people admit to very readily. What's the scoop with that story?

- Well, I'm gonna tell you. You see that was the highlight of our visit to a quaint little neighborhood shopping strip on Granny White Pike in Nashville. Now it was a group of retirees who met daily to express their opinions on just about anything and everything imaginable.

- Nashville's first shopping mall was the downtown Arcade, built in 1903, a replica of one in Milan, Italy. It's a shopping concept that caught on in the ensuing 90 years. It seemed to satisfy a basic hunting instinct in shoppers to hunt in a concentration of shops. Today's modern nineties malls are giant meccas full of big name shops and monuments to our passion for shopping in the fast lane. Well, in the midst of all this mall madness, it's kind of refreshing to discover there are still some neighborhood shopping centers, like this one here across from David Lipscomb University. It doesn't have a name and there aren't the big names like Lord and Taylor, Bloomingdale's and Macy's. But it's a place where you can be on a first name basis with all the shopkeepers. For instance, the names inside many of the shops have been the same for generations. Lassie Draper and her daughter Mary Pat, run the kind of neighborhood jewelry store that used to be in everyone's neighborhood. This one even has three watchmakers. Alan Luxe worked in this increasingly rare profession since the late forties. I guess he likes it.

- I never really thought about it. I guess do, huh? It is something, something I've been doing that I keep on with it. So if you hated it, I guess you can get out of it. But it's, it's a confining sort of thing.

- [Joe] Next door, Al Rydell cuts hair in a two chair barber shop. After clipping away at the same place for 30 years, he's especially happy about two aspects of the business. One, the return of short hair among college students across the street, and the quaint neighborly atmosphere that's changed so little over the years.

- Just a real nice bunch of people live around here and very quiet type area. And it's been a pleasure to work around here.

- [Joe] Al may have the only barbershop around these parts that directly connects with a hardware store. It too is a small friendly neighborhood type shop, complete with these comfortably creaky old hardwood floors.

- May I help you?

- [Joe] But the focal point of this unsung, unnamed neighborhood shopping strip is here. Hutchinson's Pharmacy is the unofficial hub, a place where you can count on getting the kind of milkshake you liked before you started counting fat grams. But the one thing that makes Hutchinson's so special can be summed up in one word by employee Rose Fleming.

- People.

- [Joe] Trey Hartman, the present owner, told me about a unique organization of people who meet here.

- The official Hutchinson's Pharmacy Coffee Liars Club is, is meets here twice daily. They meet in the morning, usually from about nine to 10. And in the afternoon they have a big session with everybody in attendance pretty much. They can solve all your problems, any and all problems they can take care of.

- What kind of issues does this bunch discuss?

- Anything. Anything and everything from A to Z. Politics, they can tell you who's gonna win all the elections. They can tell you why. Just any problem, anything that comes up in the news, they they can, that's what they talk about.

- Well I think maybe it's time for us to get over there and take a poll.

- Well, I'm sure they'll oblige you, no problem.

- [Joe] The Liars Club is comprised of retired gentlemen who come from various professional backgrounds, and many are Lipscomb graduates. I gotta know this, how did y'all get the name Liars Club?

- From Mr. Joe Hatcher.

- Hatcher.

- A political writer for the Tennessean.

- Is that an accurate description, Liars Club?

- Quite accurate.

- Quite.

- It might have been then.

- It might have been then.

- It's changed now.

- Oh it has?

- It's changed.

- Well despite the club's name I discovered these guys will truthfully offer a candid opinion on just about any topic. Who's gonna be the top team in the SEC this year?

- Tennessee.

- Tennessee.

- [Joe] Okay.

- This is big Orange country.

- Okay.

- [Joe] The founder of the drug store, Dr. AC Hutcherson, still practices pharmacy here one day a week. Guess how long he's been practicing?

- About 62 years.

- [Joe] 62 years? Wait a minute, now that...

- 51 here and two and I mean 11 in Springfield.

- [Joe] That kind of puts you up over 80.

- Well I am. I'm proud I've made it that long.

- [Club Member] That's the mayor right there. He's had no opposition since 41.

- [Club Member 2] We're gonna throw him out this year though.

- [Club Member] We think we've got a good candidate. Take him out this time.

- [Joe] Well how about that Mayor, do you believe that?

- [Club Member] Throw out the bum.

- They'll have to beat me.

- You ain't gonna give up easy, are you?

- [Joe] Well naturally politics is a big hot topic here these days, and that's why they enforce one very strict rule.

- We got a rule.

- [Joe] Yeah?

- It's alright to discuss religion and politics, as long as you don't get mad. You going to get mad, get up and leave.

- [Joe] And that stays in effect pretty well, huh?

- Well they, they honor it.

- [Joe] I see.

- [Club Member] And no bad language.

- [Club Member 2] No language.

- [Club Member] No, that's right.

- [Joe] Well that's pretty good.

- And he held coffee down for a nickel a long time. He used to sell it for nickels when everybody else is up 25, 30 cents a cup. You know?

- [Club Member] I think you ought to be promoting that.

- Yeah.

- The Democrat, the instinct, inheritance, inspiration and policy. And if anybody can ever show me anything of lasting good that came out of a national Republican administration, I'll listen with interest.

- Two things I won't do, at the point of a gun. That's Yell for Vanderbilt, or vote for a dadgum Democrat. Two things I won't do...

- Well there you have it. Where else can you do your shopping, get an old fashioned milkshake, and an opinion on anything and everything you wanted to hear about? No shopping malls were never like this.

- You know Joe, I love the Nashville accent, and it was all over that in the Liars Club.

- Ooh, yes indeed.

- I think those guys probably, I like their rules about, you know, you could discuss politics and religion. You just couldn't argue about it.

- And they did that two times a day, by the way.

- I know.

- Do you wish that you could predict the future? Well of course fortune tellers and psychics have been around for a while to help us do that, for a fee, of course. Well when you take a good natured skeptic like Jerry Thompson, and put him in the hands of a popular Middle Tennessee psychic, the results are predictably a fun situation.

- I suppose since the beginning of time people have been curious about what the future might hold. I've been curious. I'm one of those people, I rarely ever miss a weather report on television. I wanna get the prediction for the weather tomorrow, for next week. But there are other predictions I want too. So that's why I'm here today in Madison, Tennessee at the home of Bambi Berry. She's a psychic. When did you first recognize that you had a psychic ability?

- I was about 13 years old when I really recognized, recognized it for what it is. Before that, I'd always known things. I say always, back, I don't really remember what exactly what age, but it was that at that time that I realized that I was apart from other people in that, 'cause I guess until I realized there was such a thing as being psychic, I just took it for granted that everybody else felt and knew things also.

- How do you find your clients?

- Those that need to come for what I have to give will seek me out. So I just kind of allow that to happen instead of really putting a press or I push on finding clients and, and I don't have to, my clients do find me and it's all word of mouth, which I feel good about. It works well for me.

- [Jerry] It's obvious that whatever Bambi does not only works for her, but also her clients.

- Susan...

- [Jerry] She spends a lot of time on the phone with clients who have questions after their readings.

- You know what, I don't have a thing...

- [Jerry] This made me wonder though, if she's really psychic, why does she need an answering machine?

- Give me a call.

- [Jerry] Doesn't she know through her powers who's trying to reach her? What are the most common things that people come to you with? What do they wanna know?

- Everything. I try to work in every, dealing with every facet of the individual, having to do with their mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical self. And then I deal with, you know, that, that's where I start out with. You have to try to get into the, the basic nature of that individual, into their, where they are in their consciousness. And once you can kind of go into that and get a sense of where that person is in their consciousness and, and, and, and working from the spiritual part of their self, then that will give you things, you'll feel and you'll know how they relate and respond to things that happen in their lives. And then I go through, I found that usually I will start off on those types of things, the basic nature of the individual characteristics, personality traits, and then I'll move on into usually work, career structure.

- [Jerry] Well, now that she cleared that up for me, let's sit on on part of an actual reading, in which Bambi discusses changes that's occurring in the job of Sally Bass. Sally's a promotion consultant here at Channel eight.

- And I feel like the direction that you're going in, I feel like there has been an, a career, an actual change in your pattern in the last three years. Have you made, like gone from one type of work to another type of work in the last three years?

- Not really.

- Okay. Your role must have changed then, somewhere around a year and a half ago. Was any, any role change in your pattern of work?

- Probably more responsibility, a lot more responsibility.

- Okay, and then in the last six, eight months, it has really, really changed, 'cause that's where I feel like a turn and a twist of things to where you can use more fully your potential. And I feel good about that.

- [Jerry] Bambi was obviously getting some vibrations concerning Sally's job. Sally's boss resigned a month ago, resulting in her taking on additional duties and responsibilities. You know, a lot of people are gonna say, this is all just bunk. They really don't believe it.

- Well that's okay. If that's where they are and, and that that feels good for them, then I mean, I don't try to sell anybody on what I do and, and convince anybody. It's what works for the individual. So if this isn't appealing to you and, and it doesn't work for you, then that's okay. That doesn't bother me a bit.

- I notice driving along, you just see signs out in the yards. Palm reader, Madame So and So.

- Oh, well, don't go to those. Oh, I shouldn't say that. I don't like things where I, I put myself in judgment, but I'm, I'm just saying that signs and advertising, and all those kind of things don't work for me. That, you know, somebody else wants to do that. And I think you have to be very cautious about people that hang signs out and call themselves Madam Fru Fru and whatever.

- Bambi said, she felt a little uncomfortable doing a reading on me because I live such a public life. Therefore, she walked me through the process, and asked me to relate what I felt about her and about her future. Okay Bambi, what do I do now?

- Okay, well what you need to do first is really try to feel where I am in my consciousness. And you do that by being still. I usually, when I start a reading, I'm just real still and quite for a few seconds. And what you're doing is allowing yourself to work through your female energy. See we all have male and female energies, those things that we do in, in quietness and repose and thought, thinking, psychic work. You do work through your female energies, and so you just wanna think in terms, you might just wanna close your eyes.

- And work through my female energies?

- Energies, right.

- Okay.

- It's interesting, isn't it?

- Yes.

- Okay. Yeah, just you wanna just get...

- Can I peep just a little?

- No.

- Alright, I'm gonna try this.

- Okay, just now, just you wanna just get still and just think in terms of being within and through my energies. Now just go into what you're feeling about my basic makeup. Am I very rigid in, in thought, or am I, is there a great deal of flexibility, but just feel and then you take it from there.

- Well, I feel that you, that you're not rigid in thought. That you are very flexible and that you're very outgoing. I think we've seen that today. And that you would really probably have trouble suppressing anything you felt.

- Oh, that's so true. That, see, that's the point because there are some people that are outgoing, but they have, they're very easy, easily suppress things that they'll only allow it to come to a point. But you are, you are right. It's real hard for me to contain when I'm feeling and, and doing it's, I just let it all go. You oughta see me with two glasses of champagne.

- Okay.

- Okay, I feel that you'd like to have two glasses of champagne.

- Right.

- Well now that I've explored my psychic ability, I'm still a little skeptical. In fact, I'm convinced that I know about as much about Bambi Berry's future as the weatherman knows about the weather.

- You know, Joe, I've never been to a psychic.

- You haven't?

- No, but I really thought Jerry was kind of tapping into his energy there. What'd you think?

- I think so too. I think he was buying it for a minute maybe.

- Anyway, I predict that you'll see one soon. Today there are only two existing ferry boats taking passengers across rivers in Tennessee. There were several more back in the late eighties when Al Voecks decided to discover what it's like to pilot one of those boats. He took a ride on the Judge Hickman just before it motored off into history.

- For the most part, traveling Tennessee's crossroads is not too difficult. There are few barriers that stand in the way with getting from point A to point B, but occasionally you do find some, such as this, when the road ends in the water. For motorists traveling old Hickory Boulevard in the western portion of Davidson County, they find this barrier. It's called the Cumberland River. And that's when the Judge Hickman comes into play. For those who don't wanna take the long way around, well, the only other option is the ferry. This particular point on the river is known as Clee's Ferry, named after a longtime landowner of many years ago. The Judge Hickman, named after a longtime county judge, has been playing the waters of Clee's Ferry, taking people back and forth these few hundred feet for years. Service at one time was 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is now 18 hours, six to midnight. When the move was made to shut down on weekends a few years ago, the public outcry was just too loud. And the Judge Hickman is now back to seven days a week, excluding five holidays. The veteran captain of this craft is Jim Jennings and he's been at it for years, too.

- Almost 26 years.

- Tell me a little bit about the Judge Hickman. When was it built? How old is it?

- It was built in '52, so that would make it about, about 33 years old. About 33, 30. It didn't put in service 'til December of 52.

- [Al] You've been on this river now for 26 years. What type of experiences have you had? Any, anything happen that kind of scared you a little bit?

- [Captain] Oh yeah, some of them big storms come through that'll scare you, you in the wrong place at the wrong time. You sitting on the bank, you ain't got at all much to worry about, but when you're out in the middle of the river, one hit you, you just, you at the mercy of it. I, I missed the landing to blow me by, by the landing. But I ain't never really say lost it.

- [Al] What happens if you lose power and you end up just floating down the river?

- [Captain] You just go down the river. Just keep on going 'til you get that anchor out or get a line on a tree or something. Not at all.

- [Al] What about the other boats on the river? Do they bother you?

- Nah, they don't bother me, except these, some of these little old boats running around here sometimes get in your way and you have to blow 'em outta the way and, and sometimes you have to wait on 'em. You can't even get 'em outta the way. They don't wanna move. They think they own the river, I guess.

- [Al] How about the barges?

- Oh, the barges ain't no problem. They go by and they're gone, that's it. You have to wait on 'em, but that's it.

- [Al] Jim, would you say that the Judge Hickman is a, is a viable means of conveyance in 1988?

- [Captain] Well, I don't wanna say it's really necessary, but it's, it ain't necessity, but it's a show. It's, it's a, it's nice when people live on, right up on each side of the river.

- [Al] It is the last ferry on the Cumberland River, isn't it?

- It's the last ferry in Davidson County. It ain't the last ferry on the Cumberland River.

- [Al] Alright, now they're building a bridge. Not maybe eight, 10 miles from here. What's that gonna do to the Judge Hickman?

- [Captain] I don't know. I don't look for the traffic to change much. Traffic probably about the same.

- [Al] You don't think the bridge will do you in?

- [Captain] Well, it might according what the, what the government wants to do.

- [Al] Do you get a lot of traffic on the barge, on, on the ferry here?

- Average about, you'll average about five, 600 cars a day. You get a lot of side, it's solid. It's got two side places over here now is in business and we get a lot. Summertime, they wear us out. Like I say, it, this is slow time of year really for us. And then the one, the better the weather gets more traffic we get.

- [Al] And this is a paddle wheel ferry You get your total power out of the paddle?

- [Captain] All paddle wheel, nothing else.

- [Club Member] This is the only ferry. Judge Hickman is the only ferry. When it breaks down what happens?

- [Captain] Everybody has to go around. That don't happen too often, you know, happens every now and then.

- [Al] Yeah.

- [Captain] We ain't had a breakdown now, in I guess it's been four or five months. The mop got in the universal joint.

- [Al] The mop got in a universal joint?

- Yeah, boy took the mop down there to mop it. He got it up too high and the universal joint caught it and it just, it it, it ended the mop.

- [Al] Ended the Judge Hickman too for a while, didn't it?

- Yeah, for a few hours. We got it fixed the next morning.

- As was steam locomotives and train travel, all good things must come to an end in the name of progress. The bridge mentioned earlier is the bridge under construction, just up river and northeast of here. It's the extension of Briley Parkway, and the road will eventually end at I 65 North. But with the bridge, which obviously is needed, could come the end of an era. The Judge Hickman could go the way of all the other ferries across the Cumberland River. It could be gone, and that's too bad. But for thousands of Nashvillians, they'll have the memory of that ferry ride across the river.

- So Joe, have you ridden on a ferry?

- Yes, many times. When I was a kid, we rode on one across the lake in Arkansas and it was more fun as a kid than an adult. I think they got tired of it.

- Yeah, I did, once I, I was driving, this was pre-Google, and pre, you know, I had a map, but I missed the part that said, "When you get to the end of this road, you have to get on a ferry." So imagine my surprise when I got to the end of the road and it was a river. And thankfully the ferry was across the river.

- It did come back.

- It came to get me.

- Well moving on, on our final stop, we revisit the time Susan Thomas paid a visit to a Nashville Hatmaker shop. It was a rare find now and then. Well, this merchant was determined not to let the hatless majority put a cap on his thriving business.

- [Susan] Hats. Except for the occasional baseball cap, there doesn't seem to be that many around anymore. Unless you happen into this Nashville shop, Jew's Hatters. Here, it's hat's galore because of a man named William Thorn, better known around these parts by his nickname, Jew.

- Well, I like to make the hats. It's just something about it that you like. You know this, you just fall in love with it when you start doing it.

- [Susan] Thorn has been making hats since he was a teenager and except for a few years spent playing pool, he's been at it ever since. But when he opened this shop eight years ago, he mixed in more than just hat making. First he hired Gibson Foster to handle the shoe shines.

- It's nice, working here at the hattery. Just, I just enjoy it, and he just turned things over to me, opened up for him and closed for him. He trusted me and I just enjoyed coming up here doing it for him.

- [Susan] Is it any fun?

- It's fun, keep me active.

- [Susan] And then there's Jew's young cousin, Celia Miller, a seamstress who handles alterations, and Jew's wife who handles the books and helps keep the customers happy.

- We are really lucky to say this, you know, being able to say that we have good customers. Courteous, we are courteous to them, they're courteous to us. So really, I think it's really magnificent the way things are going.

- [Susan] But do y'all ever have fun?

- Yeah, most of the time we do. We joke around with each other.

- And so this is how the hats start off?

- That's it. And this is called a blank.

- And why do you put 'em into that shape?

- Well, it, it'd make more room, you know, you can have several hats in a place where, or either stack 'em on top of each other, then you take this like this.

- Well the people when they see this, do they think you can make a hat out of that?

- No, they don't believe it. That's why we have to get it in this shape.

- And how do you do that?

- Well, we just take a block like this...

- So that molds it the way...

- Molds it to the shape you want it. Now you want to take this off when you complete it like this. Like you want a certain shape, you know?

- Yes sir.

- You take this, put it just like this. Just like this. Now you got that crown, see?

- I see. Thorn's talents are obvious, and proven. He's made hats for the famous and from others, from far away.

- France, England, I have customers there. Not very many, but I have some customers. In Italy when they come through here sometimes, if they buy a hat, they always send for another.

- What's the most unusual hat you've ever made?

- Let me see... There it is on the wall. Two tone. Red and black, gray and black.

- [Susan] Despite some lulls in the popularity of hats, Thorn says business has been on the upswing in the past few years.

- The biggest push on hats was the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know. When he started wearing one, it came back, you know.

- [Susan] Humor is almost as much a part of the shop as hats.

- You can't get rich doing this, but you can make a living, you can eat, you can look at me and tell that.

- At Jew's Hatters, it really doesn't matter exactly which hat's in fashion at any particular time. Here, the happiness of seeing a man who obviously loves his work, is always in style. And if William Thorn is right, when he says that a man's character is reflected in his hats, then Thorn has all the character he'll ever need.

- I don't know, you know, after seeing that, I'm thinking about getting a hat. What do you think?

- Well, I don't know, Joe. You got a pretty cute face. It might be a good addition.

- Stop it. Now it's time for us to get back to the present. We hope you enjoyed the journey.

- You know what, if you'd like to keep time traveling with us, remember you can watch episodes on any device anytime with the free PBS app.

- That's right. Well bye for now.

- See ya.