Retro Crossroads 0203

- This time on "Retro Tennessee Crossroads," we have some retro gift ideas, toys for kids and kids at heart. Janet Tyson pays tribute to the late marble champion Dumas Walker. Jerry Thompson makes us nostalgic for "The Little Rascals" with an interview with Spanky McFarland. And finally, Al Voecks has a story giving a whole new meaning to the idea of moving houses. That's the lineup for this episode of "Retro Tennessee Crossroads." I'm Joe Elmore. Welcome. Well, Becky Magura and I are here at it again in the NPT studio. And by the way, we'll be watching these segments from the "Crossroads" archives along with you and sharing our reactions.

- That's absolutely right, and you know, Joe, I still have some shopping to do this year, so I think I'm gonna enjoy and appreciate this first segment in particular.

- Well, I gotta tell you, some of these items might be hard to find at this point, and you'll see what I mean. You see, we made the shopping trip in the early years of our show, and you might be amused to see what was on the holiday gift list more than 30 years ago. Of course, the usual stuffed animals will be on the store shelves from the moderately priced to the more expensive models. In fact, some of these huggable, handmade teddies will sell for several hundred dollars each. There are dolls that perpetually cry and dolls that look like, well, Lady Di. These personality dolls from England are amazingly detailed with equally amazing price tags. Toys on tracks this year range from this simple set that youngsters can create themselves to high-tech digital models that interface with home computers. Even this basic all-time playground favorite has so many colors and sizes that you could lose your marbles trying to pick a favorite. Meanwhile, if you've got some bigger kids on your Christmas shopping list, say about my age, you'll be glad to know this year there are plenty of toys for bigger girls and boys. Let's take a look in here and see. Here's one of the hottest yuppie gifts of the season. It's called a plasma sculpture, and it reacts to the touch. For about $850, it'll certainly brighten anyone's Christmas. Neon is another bright idea by itself or surrounding everything from clocks to radios. What about a telephone this year? This year you can get everything from the hamburger telephone to the ultimate preppy telephone, the duck. This mounted fish makes a great conversation piece, not because it's a trophy, but because it comes to life when it hears a noise. Here's a little key chain that also reacts to sound, and it's a perfect gift for someone who's always losing their keys. For the beer lover on your list, here's a gift that will always keep 'em in suspense. High tech has hit the musical gift-buying market with new instruments that could make for a sound purchase. Now here's the perfect gift for that frustrated rock star on your Christmas list, a digital guitar that's also a one-man band. Look out, Bruce. Well, before you get out there and face the traffic, here's some bad poetry and good wishes to wind up this little shopping story. It's the week before Christmas, and all through the malls, shoppers are out trying to play Santa Claus. So whether you buy someone a shiny new sled or a gift of jewelry, don't forget what's been said. You'll need lots of this to buy those expensive new toys, and it's only the spirit of giving that brings true Christmas joy.

- Well, that was a blast seeing what was hot back in the '80s for Christmas.

- Absolutely. The thing that I thought was most unique was that hamburger telephone.

- Oh yeah, I missed that one back then.

- Right.

- Who has a telephone now?

- Well, exactly.

- Well, next we revisit a tribute to a Tennessee store owner who was also a champion marble shooter. Janet Tyson shows us how marbles and a hit song made Dumas Walker a legend.

- Nobody seems to know the exact population of Moss, Tennessee, but everybody says they know it's getting smaller all the time. Well, there's not much to do here on a Saturday except maybe get together and talk with your neighbors. And for the past 27 years, one of the most popular places for the locals to hang out is a little place couple miles up the road on the Kentucky border. And lately it seems like people from all over are showing up there. Come on, let's go down to Dumas Walker's. ♪ Well ♪ ♪ Let's all go down to Dumas ♪

- [Janet] Dumas Walker is the latest song by a maverick country rock group called The Kentucky Headhunters. The band is getting a lot of attention, almost as much attention as they've created for the man who inspired their song, 74-year-old marble champion Dumas Walker. Despite the scene in The Headhunters' video, Dumas never did any marble playing in pool rooms. But at age 16, he was the undisputed king of church and school marble yards in Tennessee and Kentucky. For years, he waited on the same regular customers at his package store under the watchful eyes of his constant companion, Pepper. Then one day, two members of The Kentucky Headhunters dropped in to see him.

- Asked me did I still played marbles 'cause they know that I played up in Kentucky for a long time. I come in ready to play. Somebody come in, wanna see me shoot one every once in while. They asked me did I care to shoot a few shots for him, and I shot a few shots on the counter there. They left, and next week they all come. And these other two here, they want me to show 'em other ones how to shoot a marble, and I did. And they said they's gonna make a song about me.

- [Janet] The song takes a few liberties with Dumas's store. You can't get a slaw burger and fries here. But along with beer, there's plenty of soda pop, including the brand referred to in the song. Dumas prides himself on running a place where the neighbors and the state police feel free to stop in for a snack. Even the governor might feel at home here. It keeps him real busy. He thinks about retiring but not too seriously. What do you like most about it? What do you like most about this business?

- Well, meeting the people and pretty well have something to do all the time.

- [Janet] Yeah, keeps you busy, doesn't it?

- Yeah, tend the garden out here and give it away.

- [Janet] Does anybody ever come in and ask you to shoot marbles for 'em?

- Oh yeah, all the time. Somebody come in here all the time sitting here has their marbles. They wanna see me shoot a marble. Especially since this song come out, they come here. There's whole families. There's a bunch come here from Indianapolis. It'll be two weeks tomorrow. Said they just come down here to see me and want me to show 'em how to shoot marbles. Okay, this one come back to me.

- [Janet] Yeah, tell us how you do this.

- See, it can come back a little faster. And this left-handed. Go left.

- [Janet] After a few fancy tricks on the countertop, Dumas just can't resist getting down and dirty, even though his knees have seen better days. But marbles has always been his passion. For 35 years straight, he was the US marble champion. He helped design the championship marble yard at Standing Stone State Park about 20 miles away. He doesn't go there much now, says he doesn't care nothing about watching other people play. His advice on how to shoot a good game of marbles sounds like it could be applied to the game of life.

- There's a lot of strategies shooting marbles, the experience. They like playing with old man, old men. You learn how to manage better than if you just play with boys all the time. They learn you how to manage. A boy shoots too many foolish shots. I know I've shot.

- [Janet] Dumas started playing marbles when he was eight years old, and he started making them back when everybody made 'em the same way.

- Pick 'em out with a file.

- [Janet] How'd you get 'em round?

- You use a gauge or just guess at it when it's round. Pick 'em out with a file, then sand 'em down. Used to everybody walking along the road was picking on a marble, sitting around the store, sitting around the marble and just picking on a marble.

- [Janet] Then he got automated and invented a grinding wheel that can polish off about 10 marbles a day. But he doesn't make many now, mainly because gathering the fine grade of flint rock needed is such hard work. Well, now how many marbles you think you've made in your lifetime?

- [Dumas] 400, 450, something like that. Of course you didn't make a lot of 'em when you picked 'em out. You didn't make 'em in the beginning.

- [Janet] Well, can a man get rich making and selling marbles?

- [Dumas] Well, somebody take it up now and the price there, he can make good money at it.

- [Janet] How much would this marble right here be worth?

- [Dumas] It'd be worth $20.

- [Janet] $20?

- Every one of 'em there would be worth $20 their own self. Used to three or $4.

- [Janet] Have you given a lot of marbles away?

- Well, yeah, I give more away than I ever sold.

- [Janet] If you're lucky, Dumas might even take a little time to teach you how to shoot a marble the proper way. It is, after all, becoming a lost art. But he doesn't have too much time for novices 'cause he's got a business to run. It's bad enough that reporters and TV crews are beating a path to his door.

- Yeah, there's a bunch here yesterday from TV, and here they are today. I don't know what I'm gonna do with 'em coming every day.

- [Janet] Well, now how do you feel about being famous?

- That's what people tell me. I told 'em I always was famous. People just didn't know it. ♪ You ought to see him reelin' ♪ ♪ When he walks through the door ♪ ♪ The marble king is ready for more ♪ ♪ Let's all go ♪ ♪ Down to Dumas Walker ♪ ♪ Let's all go ♪ ♪ Down to Dumas Walker ♪ ♪ We'll get a slaw burger, fries, and a bottle of Ski ♪ ♪ Bring it on out to my baby and me ♪

- Well, I get the slaw burger part, but the bottle of Ski? Have you ever had one of those?

- No, I have to say I have not, but I loved that story.

- Oh, I love that song too. That brings back a lot of memories. This next story brings back warm memories for me, and it will for you too if you were a childhood fan of "The Little Rascals." Jerry Thompson enjoyed a personal visit with the one and only Spanky McFarland.

- [Jerry] When I was a kid in school, I looked forward to the afternoons I spent with Spanky and our gang. Often they were referred to as "The Little Rascals." It suddenly dawned on me this past week when snow closed most of the schools in the mid-state that some things never seem to change. I still have little rascals to entertain me, my kids, but at the same time, there are obviously others like me who still fondly remember the original "Our Gang." A whole new generation is being turned on to Spanky and his gang through T-shirts, through mugs, and other memorabilia. While the interest of this new generation of Spanky fans is growing, mine never waned. That's why I jumped at the chance to interview Spanky McFarland recently at Metro Airport. He was here on one of his frequent trips to Nashville. I wondered what happened to my old buddies. Unfortunately, several of 'em are dead.

- Well, let's see. Darla died in '79. Alfalfa died in '59. Stymie died in '81, and Buckwheat died in '80.

- I ran into a fellow recently that tried to convince me that Alfalfa died in a bar fight. That's not exactly right, is it?

- No, not really. It's pretty close. But I'll try to give you a quick story. In order to supplement his income, he was out there trying to, you know, be an actor. And of course, his career wasn't really going anywhere. And this was after he was 31 years old, 32 years old. He was in partnerships with a fellow, and they took bear hunting parties up into the Sierras, and they would alternate, you know. And they had these very highly trained dogs, and his partner took a group up one time. And one of the dogs got lost and didn't come back into camp. So when his partner got down at the foot of the mountains, there's a little village there, and he put a $50 reward ad in the little village paper. Couple of weeks later, Alfalfa was up there, took another group up. And while they were up there, the dog came into camp. And outside of being hungry and foot-sore and kind of beat up a little bit, the dog was okay. So when they finished the hunt, Alfalfa took the dog over to his partner. So they talked a little bit. And of course when Alfalfa started to leave, he asked his partner, he says, "Well, I'd like my $50 now." And the guy said, "What $50?" And Alfalfa says, "Well," he says, "You put a $50 reward in the paper, you know." He says, "I found the dog," and he says, "I like my $50." And you know, now this is, you know, it's totally off... You know, you would think he'd be kidding, and unfortunately he wasn't. Just goes to show you that his career was really not going as well as he, and neither was the bear hunting business either. But anyway, they got into argument, and Alfalfa pulled a knife on the guy, and the guy shot him.

- [Jerry] Mm, tragic.

- Yeah.

- When y'all were making this series back in the '30s, early '30s, mid-'30s, it was kind of in the height of the Great Depression, wasn't it?

- Well, yeah, I started in '31. See, the gang started in 1924, but I started in '31, and yeah, the depression was still going on. The crash was what, '29. And I think that the country was kind of struggling out of it about that time, but things were still tough, you know? And we went out there, and I got lucky, of course, and they signed me to a contract. I think my first contract was $50 a week whether I worked or not because it was a contract system with the studios then. And 50 bucks a week, even if you were working, you know, was, my gosh, that was a lot of money.

- That's still pretty good money for a three-year-old.

- Not too bad, not too bad.

- Hey, Stymie, Santa Claus is in there.

- Says what?

- Come on, and I'll show you.

- Come on, fellas.

- There's Santa Claus.

- Santa Claus nothing. That's a burglar. Let's sic Pete on him.

- [Spanky] Yeah, get him, Pete. That-a-boy, Pete.

- [Jerry] Pete, the ring-eyed dog, was a regular part of the comedy series. I didn't know until I talked with Spanky that there were two Peteys, and all the while it should have been obvious.

- There were two of them. The original had the ring around his right eye. His stand-in, so to speak, had the ring around his left eye. The reason for the two dogs was that the original Pete, when there was a lot of action and running and frantic action around, he would get excited, and he'd run around too. You know, he'd just emulate everybody else. And of course, then he wasn't under control, and maybe he wasn't supposed to do that. But he just would get excited and would run around with everybody else. And so they got this other dog that looked somewhat like him, except the coloring of the two sides of the head was a little different. So they just painted the ring around the other side. And funny thing is that if you watch him, you'll see both dogs in the same company sometimes.

- You had that many kids together. There's bound to be some funny things that's happened off camera as well as on camera.

- I'll tell you one story about Alfalfa. He was pretty mischievous. He would get in trouble. He'd get himself into trouble, and he'd get other kids in trouble, you know. But his favorite trick was like, if we were supposed to be shooting exteriors, and maybe it was raining, or maybe it was cloudy, or maybe it was too cold or something like that, we would go inside. And we would use these big photographic screens that had the background of the mountains or a background of a country road or a lake or a downtown scene or something like that. But they would put these huge banks of lights behind them and backlight 'em. These banks of lights had six and seven bulbs in 'em. They were huge incandescent 1,000-watt bulbs. And I mean, they generated a lot of heat. And his favorite trick was when we were in this particular situation using 'em, he would disappear, and nobody could find him. They'd call him to come to a scene, and he would remain deathly silent until he knew that they were going frantic looking for him. And then you would hear this sound, pow, pow, pow, pow, you know. And of course, this didn't happen once. It happened a couple of times, but then everybody knew where Alfalfa was. And he would slip behind the screen and go back there and stand up to one of those big rows of lights and was... Well, let me put it this way. I'm sure everybody knows how Boy Scouts put out their campfire at night, right, without the benefit of a bucket of water. Okay, I think you get the idea.

- I'm glad Alfalfa didn't disappoint me. After seeing him on TV all those years, I just knew he would do something like that. Glad to have you in Nashville, and we hope you come back soon.

- I love Nashville. It seems like I'm here all the time. Although I'm sure I don't come in more than maybe two or three or four times a year. But I love Nashville. I've got a lot of good friends here. And now that I've met you, I can count you among those, hopefully.

- You certainly can.

- And maybe one of these evenings we can go out and get some ribs or something and do some more talking.

- [Jerry] Nothing I'd enjoy more.

- All right.

- Thank you, sir.

- You're welcome, Jerry.

- So long, fellas.

- Oh, Spanky McFarland, Alfalfa, missing all of these.

- I love that show. I love "The Little Rascals." And you know, you and I were just sharing that was at a time when you could actually go to the movies. You could hit a double feature. They'd let you stay all day, and they would run those shows in between, right?

- Yeah, you got that and maybe a color cartoon as well.

- Oh yeah.

- Absolutely. Well, finally, a moving story, literally. You see, when people move from one house to another, it's no big deal. They pack their belongings, and they just go, but what if they're moving the whole house? Al Voecks answered that question in this final "Retro Crossroads" story.

- For people who for one reason or another are forced to move, be it across town or across the country, it can be a very traumatic and disruptive experience. Packing and unpacking are not necessarily the most favorite things for most people. It is one thing to move what is in the house. It is something else again to move the entire house. Bill Allen is in the business of moving, houses, that is. One of his most recent experiences came with a two-story house on Vanderbilt Place. Vanderbilt University purchased the property from Nashville attorney Joe Johnston. They wanted the property. They didn't want the house, but Joe did. You see, Joe's grandparents built this house in 1936, and there were just too many memories and too much emotion to tear it down. So the structure is to be moved to a lot on Belmont Boulevard. For Bill Allen, it's just another day in the job.

- Well, you start out by getting your house set up with holes knocked under it and the beams set and your ramp set if you're on a basement. And you're getting your beams set in the right position.

- [Al] In other words, the steel beams-

- [Bill] The steel beams go in the right position to handle the house in good shape. And you've got to get that to where the house will balance, to where it will balance a certain percentage to where the jacks and stuff will take over and go from there.

- [Bill] Now, is it important to place those steel beams in the exact spot underneath the house?

- Very important. It's very important to spot the dollies the right position, in the right place where you won't have 'em overloaded or have 'em where your beams won't handle a load like it should. Like we are here now, you have to get your ramps built and your big jacks bolted to your beams and your jack caps and stuff under that. And then you're ready to lift. After you once do that, then the rest of it is just bringing it up, putting the wheels under it, getting ready to go. So you keep your jacks in uniform position, where they're equalizing and taking care of the house.

- [Al] All right, we've got the house jacked up. Then what?

- [Bill] Then you put your wheels under it. You set your dollies and your jacks right back in top of your dollies. And that's where they ride till you get where you're going.

- So after all the careful preparation and all the planning and all the work, the time has now come to move this house to Belmont Boulevard. One of the most interested persons to watch this activity tonight is Joe Johnston. Joe, I guess the obvious question is why?

- Well, in terms of cost, it's a little cheaper to do it this way, not much. But with building costs what they are today, you can't replace the material that we're saving here. Plus there's the sentimental value, of course, which doesn't have a dollar value you can put on it. But in terms of dollars and cents, we are coming out a little bit ahead doing it this way.

- [Al] We've got it on the truck, and we're gonna pull it out in the streets.

- [Bill] That's the easiest part.

- That's the easiest part?

- That's the easiest part. But meeting the public is the hardest part because they think sometimes you don't have any business being out there.

- [Al] But you're doing this at night, right?

- [Bill] Well, you're meeting, you don't know what you're meeting out there at night. You'd love to pick up a guy that's been out, and he may be on something high, and he may not, and you don't know whether you can stop him or not. So that's what makes it hard. I'd say hard. It's not really hard, but it's a nerve-wracking thing. You don't know what you're gonna be getting into.

- [Al] Is this an easy house to move?

- [Bill] It'll be an easy house to move, but it's awful wide. It's gonna take up most of the road. The way we got it set up in the contract for Mr. Joe Johnson is he is responsible for the wires if any gets tore down because they've got to be high enough for me to get under. But we handle the wires, and I don't think we gonna have any of that problem.

- [Al] And you have somebody on the house itself-

- [Bill] It'd be around four men on the house.

- [Al] Is there any danger of the house being damaged in the move?

- No, sir, no, sir. We've even moved them with the brick on 'em. We've moved 'em without damaging anything. We've moved brick houses and never put a crack in 'em.

- [Al] How fast do you go when you're driving down the road?

- [Bill] We generally, with a brick house, you'll move at about four, maybe five miles an hour. This house will run in the neighborhood of maybe six, seven miles an hour. We'll have it off the road that night. We'll have it off the road that night, but we will park it as soon as we get it off the road and leave the rest of it for daylight hours so we can see what we're doing.

- We've gone through a change of season since we started moving this house. It's been a rather lengthy ordeal. It's not over yet. By the time this house is ready for occupancy, the buttercups will be blooming. When they dismantled the second floor of this house, they numbered each piece of floorboard, each piece of crown molding, all the window casings. It will be put back exactly the way it was. You know, they say you can't buy memories, and of course, that's certainly true, but you can preserve them. And when Joe Johnston moved this structure from point A to point B, he preserved a house full of them. And as far as he's concerned, it was well worth the effort, the time, and the expense.

- Wow, Joe, I'm glad I never had to move a whole house, right?

- Absolutely. That looks like it might be an expensive proposition, but there was history involved, and there's a lot of memories, I guess.

- Well, what a special story.

- Well, it's been special being with you, and that's it for this edition of "Retro Tennessee Crossroads." We appreciate that you've joined us through this journey through time in Tennessee.

- And you know what? Remember, you can watch "Retro Tennessee Crossroads" or any of our local shows on demand any time with the PBS app.

- Absolutely. Until next time.