Episode 3913

- [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/cal.

- This week we'll have big fun on the Bayou in Goodspring, visit a Grit Shop without grits, tour a McMinnville mansion, and learn about Tennessee's ties to the Medal of Honor. It's an honor to spend the next half an hour with you. I'm Ketch Secor welcoming you to Tennessee Crossroads. The next time you are near Goodspring, Tennessee and have a hankering for a little Cajun cuisine, our Louisiana native, Cindy Carter has a place for you, called Lirette's, a guarantee.

- [Cindy] Inside this bustling kitchen, Rene Lirette cooks up food that is full of both flavor and tradition. Just don't ask her to tell you exactly how she manages to pull that off.

- It's recipes that are in your head, they're not written down, and it is very difficult to write down a Cajun recipe because it's just passed on. You just learn it over the years.

- [Cindy] Years, even generations of Louisiana's rich Cajun culture are celebrated here at Lirette's Cajun Kitchen and Seafood in Goodspring, Tennessee.

- We serve red beans and rice with sausage daily. Our fried shrimp baskets are wonderful. Everyone comes out for the Po'boys. We have our Po'boy bread flown in from Gambino's Bakery out of New Orleans. There is no serving Po'boys on a hoagie bun at Lirette's. It has to be on the traditional Po'boy bread.

- [Cindy] Lirette's traditional menu reflects both Rene and her husband Elgin's upbringing outside home of Louisiana. The couple moved to Giles County in 2018. They say, to flee Louisiana's notorious three H's: heat, humidity, and hurricanes.

- We're just glad we're able to be here and bring a little Louisiana to Tennessee.

- They claim I have an accent. I don't hear it. All right, we ready buddy. You already season the water.

- [Cindy] Elgin a constant support for his wife's business is often found swapping stories with customers or sharing wisdom with the helping hands, preparing his family's recipes.

- We're gonna do one bag of sausage, two bags of corn. Let's kick your fire up.

- One of the hottest items on the menu, boiled crawfish. Now this little guy, he's headed for the boiling pond and the Lirette's have a wonderful piece of advice. Always season the water, not the crawfish.

- Ah, the whole sprinkling your seasoning on the outside your food, I've never seen that till we moved up here to Tennessee.

- [Cindy] And the seasoning is crucial. It's unique to every Cajun family. This isn't a one size fits all situation.

- We always say, you season your food until your ancestors tell you to stop. It's étouffée, it means to smother. So you take everything and you just smother it down in a big old pot. And we take our house boiled shrimp, our house boiled crawfish, and we smother it into a tomato cream sauce and served over a bed of white rice. We do a chicken and andouille sausage gumbo as well as a shrimp and andouille sausage gumbo.

- [Cindy] There's also boudin balls and links, oysters on the half shell and Elgin's own cornbread creation, Swamp Bread. And for dessert, bread pudding. You want pecans or no pecans?

- I want pecans. You betcha!

- [Cindy] Rene's unique brand of hospitality and Elgin's unmistakable accent are rooted in South Louisiana's Cajun community. Descendants of the French speaking Acadians exiled from Nova Scotia. Today, their culture faces many challenges including a decline in Cajun French speakers.

- You know, you got your 'Bonjour', 'Como sa va'. You know, look, nobody runs around South Louisiana We don't do that.

- Our parents didn't really pass on the language. We picked up phrases here and there. Unfortunately some that we can't repeat, but it wasn't spoken daily as we grew.

- [Cindy] That's why Rene says she focuses on what she is fluent in, great food filled with the folklore of her ancestors and a place that thoroughly feels like home. Sorry, Tennessee fans.

- Oh lord, I get picked on so bad. Yeah, when you go put a Tennessee hat on your head, I'm not even going to lie, I can't do it. You know? Gotta stay true to my roots.

- And there we go. Y'all need anything else, ladies? Y'all enjoy.

- [Cindy] Lirette's Cajun Kitchen and Seafood offers all the flavor of one of South Louisiana's signature cuisines minus the heat, humidity in those pesky hurricanes.

- Something to eat for her?

- She's drinking the dip.

- I know, I see that.

- She's just drinking the dip. Go get her another dip, mama.

- Thanks Cindy. Well, if you've watched our show for a while, then you know that we love to spotlight unique artists like the one you'll see in our next story. Miranda Cohen travels to Burns, Tennessee where she found a fabrication artist creating magical creatures in his own backyard.

- [Miranda] The forest is picturesque, tranquil, and calm. It is the perfect place to find a giant whimsical chicken, a fully costumed barnstorming monkey, or even a colorful turtle taking in a good book. This is The Grit Shop, the creative home of renowned fabrication artist, Brian Somerville.

- My business is kind of built on people needing big, crazy, weird things and a lot of times at the last minute I've wanted to be an artist since I was a kid. I was always one of the kids that drew a lot or created stuff out of cardboard.

- [Miranda] After grad school, Brian Somerville began working on large scale sculptures and fabrications, bringing his vivid drawings to life in three dimensions.

- Fabrications is more where I'm taking their idea and their design and creating it. So, a lot of times there's artists or businesses or organizations that have an idea or a seed of an idea and they want to make it into something and they just need help making that idea into a 3D physical reality.

- [Miranda] Brian honed his skills on large projects for the Great Wolf Lodge, Zoos, theme parks and even Oz, right here in Nashville. And he found great success in the world of larger than life creations. He will draw sculpt, paint, create, and recreate until every detail is perfect. And like many great triumph stories, he learned a lot about himself and his art along the journey. And when he opened his owned studio, he named it, The Grit Shop.

- I've kind of always struggled through projects and kind of hit or miss. I've failed at a lot of things over and over and over again and learned a lot from those failures. And I think a lot of times the only thing that's gotten me through is the grit, the kind of the grit of working through and figuring things out and doing things over and over again.

- [Miranda] Now his work is sought out. No doubt, you have seen some of his fantastical creations all over the volunteer state.

- I worked with an artist from Franklin named Cory Basil, and we did a big 12 foot tall fish boy sculpture for the Sounds stadiums. One of my newest ones is a public art sculpture. That was all my idea, all my fabrication, called, To Tame a Beast, and it's a pirate ship on the back of a rhinoceros with a lighthouse on the top, and that's at a public sculpture garden in Germantown.

- So Brian, this beautiful turtle is gonna go in front of a library, right?

- Right.

- And if you look at it, it's gorgeous, but then when you get up close to it, you see all these little hidden details. What are these drawings within the shell?

- I had the community had kids do little drawings, and so I, they sent me all the kids drawings and I translated them into carvings on the turtle. Those drawings were so exciting and innocent and just great drawings. And so the idea is that when kids come to visit the turtle, it's kind of a little scavenger hunt. If they had submitted a drawing, they can look for it somewhere on the sculpture and try and find their own artwork integrated into the piece.

- [Miranda] He is excited to collaborate with new clients and collectors through the Grit Shop's website and social media. He is a master at bringing unique ideas into towering reality.

- I work with a lot of different materials like ceramics, fiberglass, foam, metal, wood. Recently, I've started using a lot of sculpting concrete, which is a really fun material, and I'll usually sketch out an idea 50 or 60 times before I actually make it. And I do that for a few reasons. One, it's super easy to make changes on paper. It's a lot harder to make changes when it's 10 feet tall and made out of fiberglass. My work has always been a little more graphic, a little more cartoonish, a little more fantasy. I really kind of figured out over the years that the best way for me to be authentic as an artist is to make what I enjoy and what I think is interesting. I hope people just think it's fun and interesting and maybe spend enough time with it to see some of those, those deeper meanings that I put in that are more social, political, cultural. I like building work in layers both conceptually and physically, where there's kind of a meaning and then there's a deeper meaning and a bigger meaning. And then physically, I like making work that there's the piece and then there's kind of another story within the story and then in a little story within the story and just kind of little things that people can continue to find.

- Thanks, Miranda. You've probably heard of the Biltmore Mansion in North Carolina, famous for its modern conveniences, well, modern at the time. McMinnville is home to a mansion that's been referred to as the Biltmore of Tennessee for the same reason. A few years back, Ed Jones toured historic Falcon Rest Mansion & Gardens.

- This is the story of a mansion built ahead of its time and the couple that saved it from destruction. Falcon Rest has been called the Biltmore of Tennessee due to its modern conveniences that were nearly unheard of when it was built in 1896. That's when a wealthy businessman named Clay Faulkner decided to build a home across the creek from his textile mill. Now, he made a promise to his wife, 'I'm gonna build the best home in the region.' A promise he made good on. And when the promise was delivered, it was state-of-the-art.

- It had central heat and air, electric lights, pressurized running water, indoor bathroom, had a refrigeration. And so that's what makes this place so unique to Tennessee History.

- [Ed] That's the owner of the Falcon Rest, George McGlothin, who in another day and time would've made a great carnival barker.

- You wanna go down there and take a picture of this middle window and if you see a little lady with a high neck dress and a hair and a bun, that is Saunders, the mother-in-law. She lived here, she died here. You can't get rid of that woman.

- George's wife, Charlien nearly got rid of him for buying the once dilapidated mansion.

- [George] I tell people I bought this home Easter week, 1989, without my wife ever having seen it.

- You came home and told me we had bought a mansion. And I said, what does it look like? And he said, bad.

- [George] And I brought her here on Easter Sunday.

- [Charlien] And had me standing right here. So it literally looked like a bomb had hit it, and I said.

- "You put a mortgage on my house for this."

- I thought it would take us 30 years just to restore the mansion.

- Because it looked as she said, like a bomb hit it.

- Of course, we're still here 30 years later, but we've done a whole lot more than that.

- [Ed] That is an understatement. When the Crossroads team first visited Falcon Rest, the mansion was a bed and breakfast, and George and Charlien had just reached an important milestone.

- And by the way, we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary and we might make it what, the 26th?

- I think so. And we still married here so.

- [Ed] Now, having reached their golden anniversary, the McGlothin's are not only celebrating a successful marriage, but many improvements around the property as well.

- Well, we started with a mansion and then we went to the carriage house and we spent a couple of years restoring there. And then I think the next thing was we did the courtyard here and then we started with the gardens, and now a lot of these things that we were putting in originally are growing up and just really stunning.

- [Ed] In case you haven't noticed, George is a gifted showman.

- And if I look any older, please don't tell me. I'd rather not know. Follow me. Let's go.

- [Ed] Often entertaining visitors with theatrical productions in the carriage house.

- And we also have a tea room where people can come and have lunch here every day. You don't have to have reservations, and so they can tour and they can eat and they can shop. We also have Falcon Manor. A Falcon Rest is the tour mansion and Falcon Manor is the accommodation side. The mansion is only used for a tours.

- [Ed] Of course, most visitors do come to tour the mansion and step back in time to America's Gilded Age like these fine folks from the Senior Activity Center in Smyrna.

- We thought we'd come because we love to visit old homes, and it's one of the most interesting houses that we visited because of all of the history and how much work they have actually put in to refurbishing the house.

- [Charlien] You enter into the downstairs foyer with the original staircase there. Gorgeous staircase and solid as a rock because of the way the mansion is built. The parlor is graced with a beautiful spindle freeze all the way across the width of the room. The lavender room was Daisy's room. She was their middle daughter and she was a gifted artist. She was 16 when they moved in. Across the hallway, the blue room. It's got a fabulous half piece to bed in it. That is probably the finest we have ever seen.

- [Ed] All the rooms and furnishings at Falcon rest are exquisite, but many visitors are most impressed by a secret room with a strange name.

- [George] It's called the sloppy room.

- There's a secret door that people think is a closet. What they find there is the sloppy room. The grandchildren said they would play in this attic when they came to visit. It was an unfinished attic then. It's a big surprise when people get here. Some people say it's their favorite place in the house. We hope that doesn't hurt Mr. Faulkner's feelings.

- [Ed] I'm sure the Faulkner's are just thankful that the McGlothin's return their beloved Falcon Rest to its former glory, and now share its beauty and history.

- I hope that they'll take away that history is fun and that it's about people what made them unique and strange and odd. That's the stories that people remember. And so we hope that they'll take the the fun part of Falcon Rest with them.

- But it has been an adventure. There's always a new challenge and something more to make beautiful, and we get to see it through the eyes of the people who visit and to appreciate it and enjoy it all over again.

- Did you know that Chattanooga is the birthplace of the Medal of Honor? The tradition started there in 1863. So it stands to reason that the Tennessee City would become home to a one of a kind museum, one that shares the history of our nation's top military award for valor.

- America has heroes. They don't wear capes and tights. They wear a medal with a blue ribbon.

- [Joe] That's Keith Hardison, Executive Director of the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, named in honor of Charles Coolidge, who earned his medal for service in World War II. The Heritage Center is an immersive experience where you practically walk in the boots of heroes as their stories come to life. The story of the medal itself goes back to 1862 as a way to honor exceptional union soldiers.

- And quite frankly, when it was created, the union side of things wasn't going particularly well, so this became also a morale booster.

- [Joe] The main exhibit hall tells stories of heroes like Andrews Raiders, a group of 24 volunteers who hijacked a confederate locomotive, then headed toward Chattanooga destroying rails along the way. For their bravery, 19 Raiders received the country's first medals of honor. The only woman to receive the medal was Dr. Mary Walker. She was dispatched to Chattanooga to establish a field hospital where she would oversee the care of sick and wounded soldiers.

- [Keith] Mary Walkers was rescinded, not technically because she was a woman, but because she was a civilian contractor to the army as opposed to being in the military. They notified her that this was being stricken from the record and she should send the medal back. She made some comment about her cold dead hands. And indeed, when her body was placed in its coffin, the medal was on it.

- [Joe] The exhibit figures here are remarkable pieces of work. This one represents George Jordan, a former slave from Williamson County, who received the Medal of Honor for action during the Indian Wars.

- Literally, we had things made throughout the United States by people who had various specialties to make sure that these could be the most authentic possible. In other words, Alvin York looks like Alvin York. Charles Coolidge looks like Charles Coolidge, not a department store type mannequin.

- Now, this exhibit honors World War I veteran, Joseph Atkinson, a Tennessee native who charged a German machine-gun nest capturing weapons, and three German soldiers. No veteran of the Great War was more acclaimed than Sergeant Alvin York. He received the Medal of Honor for an attack on another German machine-gun nest gathering 35 machine guns, killing at least 25 enemy soldiers and capturing 132. The World War II section features a parachuting Paul Huff. Huff was the first paratrooper in history to win the Medal of Honor. Then there's Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who never fired a weapon. What he did do was rescue 75 soldiers, one by one down the treacherous cliffs of Hacksaw Ridge in Okinawa. And of course, there's Chattanooga's own Charles Coolidge, who won his top honor by single handedly taking on a German Panzer tank.

- We get to teach, but we also get to listen and learn. So I had a gentleman come in. He was a veteran of World War II, 101 years old. We introduced ourselves and I said, "Thank you for saving the world." And he looked at me and he said, "I didn't do anything except my job." But I said, "You are one of the 16 million Americans who wore the uniform, the greatest generation who defeated totalitarianism across the globe."

- [Joe] The Korea and Vietnam exhibits show how war was increasingly brought into American living rooms by way of television news coverage. And here are more recent Medal of Honor Heroes are recognized, those who bravely served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

- Wooden shoes, here's the type of camera.

- There's also a room dedicated to changing exhibits. This one's called Experiencing Europe Tourism and the American Soldier in World War II. It's designed to show you what it was like to be an American soldier then, on and off the battlefield. It's full of souvenirs and artifacts and even a set of K rations. The Heritage Center staff hopes visitors of all ages will find their visit educational and inspiring, that people leave with a renewed sense of heritage and a profound respect for the six character traits shared by all those who earned the Medal of Honor.

- If they did this, how can I be a more patriotic citizen? Courage is courage, whether it's on a battlefield, a playground, or in a boardroom.

- Thanks, Joe. Well, that brings us to the close of another show. We want to thank you for tuning in. Remember to check out our website at tennesseecrossroads.org or the PBS app anytime you're in the mood for more Crossroads. And be sure to join us right here next week. Take care.

- Hey, I'm John Phillips from Phillips Forged Knives in Knoxville, Tennessee. It's such an honor to be part of the cannon of Tennessee Crossroads that work so hard to help promote the culture in our state that creates the amazing fabric that makes where we live so unique. So thank you, Tennessee Crossroads.

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

- [Announcer] Students across Tennessee have benefited from over seven and a half 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.