Episode 3916

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- [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 our 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 go spelunking in style, see what's cooking at a log cabin in Hurricane Mills, grab a cup of coffee in Watertown, and take a ghost tour guaranteed to raise your spirits. We've got a show, so good, it's scary. Welcome to "Tennessee Crossroads," y'all. We'll start with a visit to what could be the coolest music venue in the state. I mean that both literally and figuratively because it's always nice and cool in The Caverns. ♪ We're all Tennessee bound ♪

- Music is magic to me. I experience music viscerally, and that started for me in my mother's station wagon back when I was a kid in the '70s. You know, it's a a weird way that I came to love live music. Little Todd was too young to go see live music in Memphis, Tennessee in 1983, but I would watch on the television "Austin City Limits." And so television, and literally PBS, so here I am later, doing a PBS television show from a cave, and the 11-year-old is looking at me and saying, "Well done, dude."

- [Ketch] Todd Mayo left behind jobs in radio and sales to follow a dream based upon his love of music. The cave was the icing on the cake.

- When I walked into this cave in Cumberland Caverns, having never been in a cave in my life, in 2008, and I just walked in, I was like, "This is a music venue." And I said to the tour guide, I said, "Did y'all have live music down here?" And she said, "No, but that'd be a good idea." And I said, "I think so, too." And here we are, yada, yada yada. We've been doing this show on PBS nationwide. It airs in 90-something percent of the country, just like "Austin City Limits." And I think we're in season 14 right now.

- [Ketch] Originally in a smaller cave near McMinnville, Bluegrass Underground relocated to The Caverns near Pelham, Tennessee in 2018 and became The Caverns Sessions four years later. The move to the new cave was a challenge, to say the least.

- And we came in, and when we walked in there, where the stage is now, I could touch the ceiling. And so that's a lot of dirt we had to dig out of there. And so, but the gist of it is, it took a lot of gist: geologist, hydrologist, archeologist, and biologist.

- [Ketch] You get the gist. It took a lot of experts and a lot of effort. One thing it didn't take was air conditioning, as The Caverns general manager Joe Lurgio explains.

- I mean, the cave is always humid, which has its benefits. You know, I think it's always, it feels cool in the summertime, it feels really warm in the wintertime, and it really creates, without any HVAC system, it creates the most perfect heating and cooling system.

- [Ketch] Perfect is right, a constant 59 degrees year round. And for those of you worried about millions of tons of rock over your head, Joe puts your mind at ease.

- To everybody who comes here, asks, "Is the cave safe?" Every 10 feet in this cave, you can't see them with your eye, but there's pins that secure the rock walls of this cave from the layer of rock you see into the next layer of rock behind them. So I like to say that it's probably the safest cave in the world to be in at any given time.

- [Ketch] The only time safety was a factor was during COVID. As you can see, social distancing is not something caves are known for. So Todd had to do a pandemic pivot.

- During the heart of the pandemic, in about six weeks, we moved 500 truckloads of dirt, felled trees, moved giant rocks. We built an amphitheater. And it allowed us to do social distancing, sort of re-imagining the concert, where it was like a restaurant, and you show up, and there's your pod, and there's your beer, and there's your merch. And, you know, it was all great. Everybody's got elbow room. And so, then when we sort of got through the heart of the COVIDs, we realized, wow, we've got a 6,000 capacity amphitheater as well as a magic cave. Now, I never dreamed of that. I was happy to have a magic cave.

- [Ketch] But Todd, being Todd, couldn't stop there.

- [Todd] And then we said, "Well, if we're gonna do that, let's make a campground, and then let's do some music festivals. Let's do Cave Fest. Let's build yurts." So now you've got a music cave here, and we do Adventure Tours back past that.

- But then you can go even deeper, and we provide hard hats and headlamps and see some parts of the cave that not many people have ever seen before.

- [Ketch] Of course, most folks don't come to The Caverns for subterranean tours, but a different type of exploration, one of music and all of its wonders.

- There's a very long list of artists that just sort of take my breath away, that we've had the opportunity to hear. And, you know, besides the music and the artistry itself is 73% of our patrons for The Caverns, year over year, come from outside the state of Tennessee. The joy of seeing people come from the world over, the country over, and all across Tennessee, and experience what they have here, it just does my heart proud. We partnered with the Cherokee Nation because this is Cherokee country, to have a phrase that stands for what I believe burned into them doors. And it says, "Welcome to The Caverns, where the Great Spirit brings all people together for music."

- Just off I-40, near Waverly, you may have seen signs for the Log Cabin Restaurant. Well, the Davis family has been cooking up good old-fashioned country food since 1966. A while back, Laura Faber went to see what all the fuss is about, and she's still raving about it.

- We're in Hurricane Mills, a little town called Buffalo, at the Log Cabin Restaurant.

- The kind of food you serve?

- Country food.

- And it is.

- [Wade] Yep, soul food. Good country soul food that would eat at your grandmother's table.

- [Laura] Wade Davis should know. He's been eating this food his whole life.

- I grew up with it. But I grew up eating good food, and all over the country, it's hard to find a place that has, you know, just, you sit down, and you have a, "Oh my gosh, this is good." This is like I would cook, my mother would cook for me at home, or my grandmother would cook, you know, when we had a family get together.

- [Laura] His family has run the Log Cabin Restaurant since 1966. They also used to own the motel next door.

- My grandfather had this bright idea that he was gonna, he told my dad, said, "Boy, I got a good idea. We're gonna buy this piece of property here and build us a motel, and we'll sell it, and then we'll have some place to go stay when we go fishing." When you had a motel back then, you had to have a restaurant. Because this was the only, there was nothing here besides the old Skinner's store. So they bought the old, it was an old log cabin.

- [Laura] Wade is now the owner and general manager, though he started working here at 12.

- I used to cry to go to work, and my dad let me start working when I was 12. I started at the motel when I was 12, doing maintenance, cleaning parking lots, whatever, you know, washing windows, cleaning air conditioners, you know, you name it, mowing grass. And then 13, I was working there, and then get off there and come here and wash dishes. And then, 14, I was waiting tables, 15, I was breader, you know, all the way up to being a manager.

- [Laura] The menu is loaded with country cuisine.

- [Wade] The most popular thing here is probably catfish. We sell more catfish than we do anything.

- [Laura] The fried chicken is also a favorite. So is the meatloaf, chicken livers, pasta dishes, and the ribs sell, too. Lee Story has worked in the kitchen since 1993.

- [Lee] We put apple juice on them. About two cups. Yeah, they're really good. And we tip 'em to where they're like 180, give or take, and we put the round side down on them.

- [Laura] While the Log Cabin attracts tons of tourists traveling up and down I-40, locals have made this place their own, too, like Helen, Delilah, and Peggy.

- Today, I have the vegetable plate. I've got green beans, I've got corn, and I've got okra and cornbread. We live in Waverly, and we come probably once a month.

- It's just a very comfortable place to be in, great food and great service, and it's just part of our home.

- [Peggy] I have the fried chicken, and green beans, and okra.

- [Laura] Okay, and is that usually what you get?

- That's what I usually get.

- I grew up here. I grew up half a mile up the road, and I'd ride my bike to work. I know most everybody in the community, and, you know, they'd tell me all the time, "Stopped in there, ate. It was great." And I tell 'em, "Look, you know, if something's wrong, let me know." I got a whole country of restaurant critics.

- [Laura] Everything is homemade, and you can tell.

- [Donna] We put sugar in our cornbread. Makes it so good.

- Is that the key?

- No, sour cream. The sour cream keeps it moist.

- [Laura] The sky-high meringue on the pies is the work of head baker Donna Green. She's been here since '97.

- For every six pies, it's three cups of coconut. The coconut's my favorite. Meringue is the big part. It takes a case of eggs to do 12 pies, literally. And if you get any yellow in it, forget it, it's not gonna work. Leroy!

- [Laura] Miss Donna makes 15 to 20 pies a day, and they all sell out.

- [Donna] Smells so good. No wonder we sell so many. They really are good.

- Everything you eat at the Log Cabin Restaurant, from the desserts to the food, is homemade and comes from recipes that the Davis family has enjoyed for generations, and they don't keep it secret. You can actually go home with a cookbook full of those family recipes.

- See, don't they look yummy?

- [Wade] Cook with a smile, serve with a smile. Cook with love. It always makes the food taste better.

- [Laura] Whether it's the okra, roast beef, potatoes and gravy, the catfish, sweet potato casserole, collard greens, or the homemade cole slaw, it is the food and the people that keep customers coming back.

- [Wade] Seeing customers happy, smile when they leave, full, taking to-go plates, taking a dessert to go, and hearing about it all over the country. You know, when I travel, everybody says, "Yeah, I've ate there. I know where you're from. I've ate at a restaurant called Log Cabin Restaurant. Thank you for your business. Do you own it?" And "Yeah," and they're like, "Oh, I eat there all the time, every time I come through." They will plan their vacations, plan their trips to stop here on the way and stop on the way home.

- Well, thanks, Laura. You know, when you live in a small town, you don't have a coffee shop or bakery on every corner. But in Watertown, Tennessee, Tammi Arender found a coffee house that's not only serving great java and food, but gives back to the community at the same time. Here's the vanilla. We fell in love with Watertown. My business partner and I both lived out this direction, and we both just kept saying like, "Watertown just needs, it needs a neat little coffee place, someplace that the community can go and just be." All right, dear, there you are.

- [Tammi] Ali OReel and her business partner, Austin Floyd, were wooed by Watertown in Wilson County. The two grew up just down the road in Gladeville.

- Alright, thank you.

- All right. You have great day.

- There is your muffin.

- Thank you.

- [Austin] All right, here's that iced Americana, dear. Here you go, love.

- Thank you.

- [Austin] You're welcome. See you later.

- Bye.

- [Tammi] Watertown is a small map dot, but with a big heart.

- [Austin] We feel like we're the heart of the community here. We're on the center of the square, right on the corner. People walk in any day or time and realize, "Oh this is good. This feels like home."

- [Tammi] Ali and Austin own the Adopted Farmhouse Coffee Company.

- It was kind of born. It really wasn't something that we planned out. In fact, the building that we found available for rent, we rented it with half my husband's tip money, half her husband's tip money. It's really very interesting. It was kind of an accident.

- [Tammi] The ladies call it the Adopted Farmhouse 3.0 because it's the third location. Although the address may have changed a few times, the vision is still the same.

- We actually started right over on the square, on the other side of the square I should say, and then a few doors down, next to Nona Lisa Pizza, that was Farmhouse 2.0, and then this is Farmhouse 3.0. And this was our dream space. We love this space. There's so much history. We call it the Farmhouse on Melton Block. And we love all the windows. It's just so homey in here and just such a great place for the community, and it's just peaceful.

- [Tammi] Their goal is to offer an oasis for people to come in, sit a spell, have a great cup of coffee and conversation, share a meal or a sweet treat. But there's much more to this menu than meets the eye, and it's found in the name.

- Adoption also for us, we take it very literally that we are adopted in. So in God's Word, it talks us about us being adopted in in Romans 8:15. So we are adopted in, and so that was another part of it for us, but also farmhouse is our theme. And when you think of a farmhouse, coming home, the comfort, the peace there, that's a really big part of it for us.

- The coffee shop ended up playing a really big part of helping her bring her son home, Alex. And we helped walk through the fundraising. The community just really stepped in and just really helped to provide the funds to bring him home. We decided, after that, we wanted to help other families do that as well. So we called it the Adopted Farmhouse, so that way we could walk through that adoption journey with other families.

- [Tammi] Austin and her husband were adopting Alex, their oldest son, who can often be found helping out at the coffee house when they first opened the store. Adoption is very expensive and exhausting, what with all the paperwork, legal hoops to jump through, and travel, so the two thought it would be great to help others navigate that complicated and costly process.

- [Austin] We've even had people come in, and I've sat down with them and coached them through grant writing for the adoptions because I experienced that myself. So that's a huge part of our heart and our vision and something we'd like to continue to do on both a national and an international level.

- [Tammi] So several times a year, there will be designated donation days where a portion of the proceeds go to help other families hoping to give a forever home to a child in need.

- [Austin] That's probably our favorite thing that we get to do here. We have customers that have eventually become family, and we've been able to help with a few adoptions already.

- [Tammi] The other part of the name Farmhouse comes from, not just the decor, but the decision to use area farmers when possible.

- [Austin] We partner with a local honey company called High Flight Honey. It's named that because her husband is actually an international pilot. So, super cute. They have 200 acres here in Watertown, and they have some of the most incredible honey I've ever tasted. Then we have local produce, local eggs. We really try to pull in local as often as possible. We incorporate it into everything, all the way through. So our local berries that we get for our baked goods, like the blueberry muffins, blackberry muffins, our Kickin' Fig sandwich, which is ridiculously good. We have a Watertown Club sandwich, chicken bacon Ranch wrap. I mean, really, the possibilities are endless.

- Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- Alright, I had to order Antique Jim's Honey Bourbon Latte. And I'm not even a bourbon drinker, but I gotta try this us. Wow, that is tasty. I love that local honey, and you really don't taste the bourbon. Ali and Austin have brought two other ladies in to help run the kitchen. Kim does the savory, and Heather does the desserts, all working together to bring this little slice of heaven to the Watertown Square.

- [Ali] It's so peaceful. We get the word dreamy a lot. We have a lot of people say, "It's so dreamy when you walk in." But we just want them to feel at home, even if they're not from here. And, you know, we want it to be a spot that they're like, "Oh, I have to go back."

- [Austin] When you are coming to someplace new, I think people feel lost. Again, as a believer, we want people to feel like they're coming home and to know that peace. And that peace is definitely here.

- Thanks, Tammi. Well, everybody knows Nashville's population is booming, and when folks do get here, many never want to leave. Some say that includes members of the dearly departed. Miranda Cohen takes us in search of otherworldly answers on the Nashville Haunted Ghost Tour, where they stop at all the local haunts.

- [Miranda] The beautiful streets of Downtown Nashville draw visitors from all over the world. Plenty of great things to see. Celebrity sightings are common. But visitors and locals are excited for the things they can't see.

- I'm here to see if I can find some sort of paranormal activity tonight. With all the war history and that sort of thing. I think the whole town is haunted, actually. But this is home to me, and I want to see more about what I can find when it comes to ghosts.

- [Miranda] Rick Owens has taken plenty of ghost tours in other cities, and was intrigued to find one in his own backyard.

- [Tanya] So all of Ghosts of Nashville, are you guys ready to get our tour started for tonight?

- [Miranda] Tanya Curtis is hosting the popular Ghosts of Nashville Tour. The mile-and-a-half jaunt through the streets of Music City is as much about the history as it is about the hauntings.

- How many believers do we have tonight? How many believers in the paranormal do we have tonight? It's not just about the ghosts at all. We do tell the ghost story, but we're also teaching about the rich history of Nashville, about the things that have happened here in Nashville. Tonight, we're actually gonna start out at our capitol because we actually have one of the most beautiful and unique state capitols.

- [Miranda] The stately bricktop landmark took 14 years to build, and two bickering architects didn't make the process any easier.

- The first ghost story that has to do with our capitol is of Strickland and Morgan. While they were working on this project, they literally argued about everything.

- [Miranda] As fate would have it, William Strickland and Samuel Morgan are both entombed in the walls of the capitol, and it seems they still just don't get along.

- Employees have told us, around 9:00 PM here at our capitol, they start hearing yelling inside the capitol, and it's two men still going at it about the building.

- [Miranda] And the Volunteer State's capitol serves both as mausoleum and cemetery. James K. Polk was the governor of Tennessee who went on to be the 11th president of the United States. Both he and his wife Sarah are buried in this beautiful stone gazebo. But even here, Curtis says they aren't exactly resting in peace.

- And every time they get close to this man at Mr. Polks' grave, he disappears right in front of them. They also say they see a lady in Antebellum-era clothing, and every time someone approaches her as well, she does the same thing. She just disappears. Whatever's going on, we do know that the Polks are not at rest at all, and they do haunt our capitol.

- [Miranda] The Ghost of Nashville Tour will wind through the streets and alleys of downtown. Every tour is different, and you never know who or what you will see.

- I think there's this mystery to it, that it's just fascinating to try and unravel. You hear the history, and it's one thing, but you hear things that go on now, and you try and piece it together for yourself and figure it out that way.

- And don't think the ghost tours only go during the spooky season. In fact, they go 365 days a year. That's right, every day, because ghosts don't take holidays.

- This tour is seven days a week. It isn't just spooky season that people wanna learn about ghosts, they wanna learn about it all the time. And we have a lot of out-of-town people that come to Nashville and wanna see a different side of Nashville, and this is a great way to do it.

- [Miranda] The tour will stop at several churches that also served as hospitals during the Civil War.

- [Tanya] Which is St. Mary's of Seven Sorrows. This is Nashville's second Catholic church.

- [Miranda] But not all of the stories are scary, and not all of the ghosts are up to mischief.

- Now, some ghosts are drawn because it was their favorite place. It was the place that they loved. Several ghost stories along our way talks about the fact that they're still there because they loved it. And the building we're actually gonna talk about is the building right there. It is The Hermitage Hotel.

- [Miranda] Built in 1908, the opulent five-star hotel seems to be a favorite haunt. And why wouldn't it be? Presidents, celebrities, even notorious bank robber John Dillinger all stayed there. It's no wonder folks never really want to check out. Which brings us to the last stop on the tour, the world-famous Ryman Auditorium, a place where, in life, some people spent their happiest times.

- That's mostly what the activity is at the Ryman. It is hearing, you know, really people from a rich musical past. They talk a lot about hearing Hank Williams Sr. there and Patsy Cline. And I believe that the reason why they are drawn back to the Ryman is because that is where their dreams come true, where their story began. We are at the Ryman Auditorium. Now, this was named after Thomas Ryman. This is Mr. Ryman right here. And he was a riverboat captain on the Cumberland River right down there.

- [Miranda] So whether you have a passion for the paranormal, a curiosity about the unknown, or just want to learn more about Music City, the Ghosts of Nashville Tour is the way to go. Tickets and tour times are available on their website.

- [Tanya] Enjoy the rest of your time, everybody. Thank you so much.

- Thanks, Miranda. Well, our half hour has come and gone, but you can catch us anytime at tennesseecrossroads.org or on the PBS app. And please meet us back here next week. Thanks for watching.

- Hey, Crossroads fans, it's Morgan from the Ramblin' Bee out in Gallatin. I'm still blown away at the support of the Crossroads community. Y'all really show up. I still have customers comment on the segment, and I'm truly, truly grateful for the impact that Crossroads brought to my store and my local community.

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

- [Announcer] Students across Tennessee have benefited from over $7.5 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.