Episode 3902

- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is brought to you in part by-

- [Announcer] Some of our biggest checks have also made the biggest difference. The Tennessee Lottery, proud to have raised more than $7.5 billion for education. Now, that's some game changing, life changing fun.

- [Announcer] Discover Tennessee Trails & Byways, where adventure, cuisine, and history come together. With 16 scenic driving trails, you can discover why Tennessee sounds perfect. Trips can be planned at TNTrailsAndByways.com.

- [Announcer] The co-op system in Tennessee consists of independently owned co-ops, driven to serve farmer-owners, rural lifestyle customers, and their communities throughout Tennessee and in five neighboring states. More at ourcoop.com.

- [Announcer] Middle Tennessee State University College of Liberal Arts helps students explore the world, engage minds, enrich lives, and earn a living. More at mtsu.edu/cla.

- This week, we'll dine in style in Clarksville, drop by a donut shop that's been around for 50 years, go to a tea party that's for the birds, and meet a talented bunch of musicians who haven't made it out of middle school. Sounds like music to my ears. I'm Laura Faber. Welcome to "Tennessee Crossroads." When you hear the name Peabody, you probably think of a hotel in Memphis and some ducks walking across a red carpet. Well, there's a Pbody's in Clarksville that's serving up some amazing dishes, but duck isn't one of them. Tammi Arender has the story.

- Here we are at the Clarksville Country Club, and you may think we're gonna do a story on golf, but you would be wrong. We are here to eat. But to get to Pbody's, you gotta know where you're going. The kitchen at Pbody's is on fire as this team gets ready for the lunch hour. Well, not literally on fire, but it's smoking as Perry Brock's team preps for an almost always full dining room.

- So I fry every day still. So I fry for lunch and dinner. It's what I love to do. My shoes are always covered in flour. But each day from 11:00 to 2:00 and from 5:00 to 7:00 or 8:00, I'm 19 again. I'm working on the cook's line with my guys. We're having fun. I just love it.

- [Tammi] Perry and his wife Angie have always had a passion for cooking. Neither have a culinary degree, but don't let that fool you. Each dish is spot on.

- Well, I started actually at an NCO Club in Germany when I was 14, a summer hire, when my father was stationed in Germany. We moved to North Carolina and I worked at a Chinese restaurant during high school. And then when I moved to Clarksville, I started with O'Charley's.

- [Tammi] So Perry came through the trenches, so to speak, growing up all over the world because his father was in the Army. Then when 9/11 happened, he wanted to do something. He didn't enlist, but he still had a desire to serve his country, so he served our soldiers food by taking a civilian food service job in Iraq.

- It was an amazing thing to be there and to be a part of it, and one of the most incredible things in my life. You know, there's nothing like cooking and, you know, incoming rockets. So that's a whole different ballgame, but I was blessed to be there and do it.

- [Tammi] So each day, Perry and Angie prepare everything from scratch. And one of those signature dishes, barbecue ribs. And they're cooked in something quite unique, and I'm not just talking about the rub. I'm talking about the tub.

- [Perry] One of our really popular items is really our barbecue ribs. We take a lot of pride in those. We cook 'em in pans that came off the U.S. Nash. It was a World War II tugboat that was over in England. I found those at a used restaurant supply place at some point. And so we use those to cook 'em in, and they're just, I get the largest baby back ribs I can find.

- [Tammi] Then that brisket is also served in tacos, or should I say tarcos.

- But we don't call 'em tacos, we call 'em tarcos. So Mammy, my grandmother, she was from Eastern North Carolina, and that's how she'd say tacos. She'd say, "Go get me some tarcos." So we'd always go to Tarco Bell. So in our restaurant here, we call 'em tarcos, and people are a little bit confused by that. The brisket tarcos are my favorite, probably my favorite item. And so we have shirts, you know, we wear shirts, "Got chips," or you know, "I'm just here for the tarcos."

- [Tammi] While Perry focuses on the savory, Angie focuses on the sweets, and she was a reluctant baker.

- And I always said I would not make the banana pudding.

- [Tammi] But she does, and people drive from all over just for her banana pudding. Heck, they even fry up the banana pudding. But she's also famous for her key lime pie. But it was actually her chess pie that got her into baking.

- So one day I had a friend that liked chess pie. And so I made it. The first time I ever made it, I was like, "Oh, you can eat this, happy birthday." He said it was the best he ever had. So we had a bake sale.

- [Tammi] When she's not in the kitchen baking, she's out front checking on customers. She says it's her priority for people to leave with a lasting memory.

- [Angie] I want them to have great food and great service. That is what I preach every single day. But I want them to remember my key lime pie, that they say they went to Florida and mine is better. So that's one thing I want them to remember. And just, I want them to remember that my job here is to visit every table, and if something is not right, that I fix it.

- Angie's just fantastic with our guests and talks with them, gets to know them, and so that they feel like for an hour while they're here eating, they were eating at home or a friend's.

- [Tammi] While you certainly come to Pbody's for what's on the menu, you'll also get a little bit of nostalgia, Perry style. He has on display some of his favorite childhood toys, many of them rare collectibles.

- [Perry] One of the things I always say is that I carry my life with me everywhere, right? It's always virtually in front of us. So you'll see all of my old video game systems. That's my Atari that I've carried, all my Star Wars figures from being a kid. You'll see a lot of things like that through there. But there's also influences. So like there's a dancing James Brown. And so there's just, a lot of these things I've carried. I took very good care of my toys as a kid. It's just part of who we are. It's part of who I am.

- [Tammi] Who Perry is is a man whose love language is food. Creating culinary creations that not only leave you satisfied, but leave you dreaming about your next visit to Pbody's.

- [Perry] The food was overwhelmingly good, and it is a surprise how good that it is, that they got more than they bargained for. So we have a thing where we say we don't really have, we don't have an advertising budget. It goes into the go box. So our portions are kind of large. And the best advertising you get is when they get home and the to-go box is in the refrigerator.

- Thanks, Tammi. For 50 years, Fox's Donut Den in Green Hills has been serving up happiness with its classic donuts and other baked goods under their vintage neon sign. And as we learned, generations of Nashvillians have satisfied their sweet tooth at Fox's. When you are one of the oldest, most popular, and well-loved donut shops in Nashville, something is always cooking in the kitchen.

- Another thing we look for is, I call them healthy wrinkles. So like, it's like smooth right now. That's not what you really want. But when you bring it in like this, you get what I call healthy wrinkles.

- [Laura] Dough being prepped, rolled, and cut. Racks and racks of fresh donuts.

- Well, this is Fox's Donut Den. We like to say that we are selling happiness. We have generations of people who have been coming in here. They came in as little kids, they're bringing their kids in now. Everybody's always happy to have donuts.

- We're just kind of an old-fashioned donut shop. There are two main kind of donuts. You have yeast type donuts that rise and they're full of air. You have cake donuts that are crumbly. And we make several types of both kinds.

- [Laura] Norman and his son Ted are just two of the Foxes of Fox's Donut Den. Norman is a biology teacher turned baker and businessman. He bought a donut franchise way back when he was in grad school and opened in 1973.

- I'm taught at Lipscomb. My kids and family went to Lipscomb. We've had a lot of Lipscomb people since, but we went across the street and opened a donut shop and were there about four years, then moved to Green Hills. Higher traffic location. Been here since '77. There's 4,000 cars a day there, pushing 40,000 cars a day here. So it's just a higher traffic location.

- [Laura] You just celebrated an anniversary.

- Yeah, 50 years. We're too dumb to quit.

- Good morning, this is the Donut Den.

- [Laura] There is a line for donuts more often than not. Nashvillians of all ages have satisfied their sweet tooth here, from the very young to the more experienced. Some of these men, dubbed the Donut Den Social Club, have been meeting here daily for 40 years.

- Well, Norman is an enormously accommodating host. He makes us feel very comfortable here and he joins in. He sits with us a lot and talks to us. And he's a Vandy fan, and we're all Vandy fans.

- [Laura] Not everyone's a Vandy fan.

- No, ma'am. When they said that a minute ago, in fact, they don't even like me coming in here with my orange shirt. Sometimes they run me out.

- Tradition and location. I mean, it's a perfect location for a morning spot. Been here long enough to have its own momentum.

- [Laura] Not much has changed in half a century, and that's just the way customers like it.

- What you see Tyler doing is one of the most important parts about it. It's real subtle. If this dough is not relaxed to the exact right amount, these are gonna come out too small. Or if they're over relaxed, then they're gonna deflate and fall apart. It takes us anywhere from six months to a year to train somebody to do that.

- [Laura] The result, a classic perfect donut.

- [Ted] We also have resisted going automated. We still train each cook how to do it by hand so that you get a perfect donut with all the variables perfectly done, which a machine can't provide. So it's a lot more work to train people and to keep staff.

- [Laura] Hillsboro Road also would not be the same without the Den's classic neon sign. Years ago when the property owner was making some upgrades, the sign was removed. The public protested. It was put to a vote, and the sign was put back.

- [Ted] Where would you go that a community cares about your neon sign, you know? I mean, that kind of stuff just doesn't happen.

- You can get fancy at Fox's Donut Den with custard-filled, maple-covered, sprinkles. But sometimes you can't go wrong with a classic apple fritter or a plain glaze donut, probably the top two sellers here.

- [Tyler] And we like to form up the edges into like a little bowl almost.

- [Laura] The fritters are often called the best in the world.

- [Tyler] I like to spin them a little because sometimes they attach to each other.

- [Laura] The kolaches, sausage and chicken biscuits, also sell out. And there are some trends that aren't going away, like the cronut and the maple bacon donut. But trendy isn't what packs 'em in every morning at the Donut Den.

- [Ted] They're gonna experience the best handmade donuts that you can find anywhere around. I say that with full confidence. We work very, very, very hard to keep the old-school donut process alive, made by hand, top ingredients. And they're gonna experience a lot of smiles, employees that care, employees that have been here, you know, a long time.

- [Laura] Norman's goal with the shop was to save enough money for a down payment on a house. He's done that and more.

- [Norman] Didn't intend to stay in business this long. It just has done well and come along. All our kids have worked here. It's been a real family business, actually.

- Fox's Donut Den has impacted an entire city with some dough, a bit of glaze, and sprinkles on top. If you've ever taken a walk in the woods, you've probably noticed some of Tennessee's most beautiful residents. Birdwatching is more popular than ever. And with more than 400 different species native to the Volunteer State, it's a great place to enjoy them. A unique photographer in East Tennessee regularly hosts parties for our fine feathered friends, as Miranda Cohen explains.

- [Rebecca] Those birds way up on the wire are purple martins.

- [Miranda] As the sun rises on this beautiful day in East Tennessee, Rebecca Boyd is already hard at work. All 416 acres of the Seven Islands State Birding Park, which is nestled along the French Broad River, are busy and bustling. It's the ideal place to capture the perfect photograph.

- I was born and raised here. I've never lived anywhere else. This is home. I'm proud of my home. I think this is one of the most beautiful places to live in the entire country.

- [Miranda] A love for the great outdoors and a budding photographer, and one day, her two great passions seemed to merge.

- When I got my first really good smartphone with a really good camera on it, around the same time that a friend of ours said, "Hey, you want a bluebird house? I've got one. I'll put it up in your yard." So those two things kind of came together at the same time of, oh, and I can take pictures of the bluebirds.

- [Miranda] And that's how Rebecca Boyd became a wildlife photographer and created her studio, RidgeRock Arts. The park and her own backyard provide a bounty of beautiful native species.

- [Rebecca] My yard has kind of become just a bird sanctuary, 'cause over the years, I feed every day. I keep out sunflower, safflower, suet, mealworms, you name it, for every kind of bird. And they've just accumulated. So at any given time, there's probably 30 or 40 species of birds flying around in my yard.

- [Miranda] And when Boyd began to market her work, a fellow artist suggested that she needed to do more than just take a picture. She needed her photographs to tell a story. And that's when she landed on a unique and lavish idea.

- Bluebirds are probably my number one passion. Got a picture of a female bluebird. Didn't think too much of it. I thought, well, that's cute. I posted it on Facebook. A fairly accomplished artist out of Kansas saw it, and she sent me a private message, and she goes, "Oh my, you are onto something here."

- [Miranda] The photograph was one of her two resident Tennessee bluebirds she named Bogie and Bacall. And instead of photographing them mid-flight or in their natural habitat, she set a beautiful table and invited them to an elaborate tea party.

- [Rebecca] All righty, I'll do tea parties. I'll just start doing some more tea parties. So I thought, if I can do it once, I can do it twice. So I posted a couple, and I was getting a lot of good responses.

- Boyd's tea parties became an instant hit, and it seemed everyone was trying to get on the invitation list. And who could blame them? Thanks to her family heirlooms and a local china dealer, she has an enviable collection of rare and vintage porcelain cups and saucers. And those exquisite dainty cups are filled with delicious treats. That is, if you're a bird. Now, like any perfect hostess, Rebecca Boyd will set a beautiful table and prepare the kind of food she knows her friends love to eat. But like any dinner party or tea party, the hardest part is waiting for the guests to arrive. And for these very special guests, Rebecca will wait and wait and wait.

- [Rebecca] I've probably waited as long as two hours. And then it's the waiting and the cussing and the, "No, turn around this direction." A lot of it has to do with timing and waiting until they turn the right direction and pose in the right direction. They're all real. I guarantee you. I do no Photoshopping at all. The birds are there. The birds are real.

- [Miranda] Boyd produces prints and note cards available through her social media and her website, RidgeRock Arts. And she always creates a wildlife calendar. But this year, her upcoming calendar is entirely made up of tea party images.

- This is, yeah, the first all tea party. My other calendars have all been all bluebirds, but this is the first one that's been just tea parties. I try to kind of match the pictures to the season the best I can.

- [Miranda] I think that's the first one I saw, and it just absolutely is gorgeous. The look and the expression on that bird's face.

- [Rebecca] That one was really fun. That was actually taken, it looks December, but that was actually taken in March when we had a snowstorm.

- [Miranda] With every click of her camera, Boyd is capturing more than the vivid images in front of her lens. She is capturing a moment in time when some very special guests, dressed in their very finest, are attending a real Tennessee tea party.

- [Rebecca] To me, it's the innocence, it's the beauty, it's just watching their behaviors and seeing how different birds behave different ways. And to think that it had that kind of impact, even if it was only one person, it's worth all the waiting and all the sweating and all the bird feed and everything just to know that, you know, it really made somebody's day. If anything, I'd like to say that I brought a little joy into some people's lives by sharing my photography.

- Thanks, Miranda. Our final story is an inspiring one. It's about a very special musical program for children that began in the 1960s and continues to this day. Cindy Carter has the story of the Cremona Strings Ensemble.

- [Cindy] It's Saturday morning, and musicians young, and some a few years older, arrive at the Hadley Park Regional Community Center in Nashville. The hard work these very special artists do here is what makes their many performances across Middle Tennessee noteworthy.

- We can either bring more people into the field of music or create more music appreciation individuals. And that's important to me.

- [Cindy] Lisa Spells is the founder and music director of the Cremona Strings Ensemble Too and Development Group.

- [Student] One and a two and a three and a four and a-

- [Cindy] The "Too" in the title is meant to separate these music makers from the original Cremona Strings Ensemble, which was founded in the 1960s by Nashville African American musician and teacher, Robert "Bob" Holmes.

- He went to the school board and asked if he could teach African American children in segregated school system at that time to learn strings. And he was told adamantly, "No. Black children do not have the aptitude to play strings."

- [Cindy] Holmes then went outside of the school system to bring together music and children who otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to try.

- I am one of the original children who started in the third grade actually.

- [Cindy] Today, Lisa carries on that musical mission with not only the children you see here, but their parents as well. That's right, this nonprofit is designed for children four years and older who don't have access or the opportunity to take string lessons. But the children accepted must also be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian who is also willing to learn.

- But why would you ask that the adult had to also learn to play the instrument? So that they won't say to their child learning, "Oh, that sounds awful. Hurry up and learn how to do that. Get better. Maybe that's not for you."

- [Cindy] The setup may be a bit unorthodox, but Lisa says this type of side-by-side learning and sharing and playing is why the students who eventually move on do so successfully.

- [Lisa] Well, thank you, Joe.

- [Cindy] Cellist Michael Brady also joined the original Cremona Strings as a child and is more than happy to serve as a mentor to this new generation.

- To come again and to work with students with string instruments just gives me pleasure. And I don't mind sharing what I've learned to keep the legacy going.

- [Cindy] The strings in Cremona Strings are the viola, the violin, the cello, and bass. The instruments, music, and music stands are provided to the musicians at no cost.

- [Lisa] We are a classical organization first, but we also do a little fiddling. Get that Tennessee flair.

- Okay, Andrew, show me E-flat. All right. How about F-sharp? That's so great. I can learn so much from Andrew, and that's the point. This program builds skills that stretch far beyond any rehearsal space or performance space and benefits the entire community.

- I love playing because it gives me joy. It gives me a lot of feelings that I haven't felt before.

- [Cindy] Audiences lucky enough to catch a Cremona Strings Ensemble Too performance also feel that joy. And that's why those early Saturday morning rehearsals are worth every note.

- What a great bunch of kids. Thanks, Cindy. Well, that wraps up this week's show. Check us out online at tennesseecrossroads.org or on the PBS app. And tune in again right here next week. We'll see you then.

- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is brought to you in part by-

- [Announcer] Students across Tennessee have benefited from over 7 1/2 billion dollars we've raised for education, providing more than 2 million scholarships and grants. The Tennessee Lottery, game changing, life changing fun.

- [Announcer] Discover Tennessee Trails & Byways, where adventure, cuisine, and history come together. With 16 scenic driving trails, you can discover why Tennessee sounds perfect. Trips can be planned at TNTrailsAndByways.com.

- [Announcer] The co-op system in Tennessee consists of independently owned co-ops, driven to serve farmer-owners, rural lifestyle customers, and their communities throughout Tennessee and in five neighboring states. More at ourcoop.com.

- [Announcer] Middle Tennessee State University College of Liberal Arts helps students explore the world, engage minds, enrich lives, and earn a living. More at mtsu.edu/cla.