Episode 3341

- [Woman] The Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network, offers no cost training, referrals and resources to help people in need. If you or someone you know have thoughts of suicide, there is help, resources at TSPN.org.

- [Joe] This time on Tennessee Crossroads we discover what's baking at the shop in Springville. Then take in a Nashville tour of African American History. We'll visit Crockett's Breakfast Camp in Gatlinburg, and explore some silver and copper creations in Kingston Springs. I'm Joe Elmore, welcome as always to Tennessee Crossroads. When it comes to basic food staples, it doesn't get any more basic than bread. And over the years, the baking of bread has become an art form of sorts. Well, Miranda Cohen discovered a shop in Springfield that's brought the art of baking to a brand new level.

- [Miranda] When you think of warm homemade bread and decadent baked goods, words come to mind like grain and honey. And that is exactly what Hannah Sadler decided to name her bakery in Springfield, Tennessee.

- When we were thinking about starting the business, we didn't have a name, we just knew that I was making bread. And so my husband and I sat down with the journal one night and wrote out words that are associated with bread. So things like warmth and family and nourishment, kind of the dichotomy of the two words. The textures are much different. Grain is foundational and honey is kind of a luxury, and honey is silky, and smooth, and grain is coarse. And then when we realized that grain and honey, the initials G and H are actually mine and my son's initials that was like it, we were like, well, that's the name of the store.

- [Miranda] Before Hannah even had a brick and mortar building to name, she started baking bread in her own kitchen. And with the help of social media, she quickly took her show and her breads on the road.

- The business was, like I said, was born on Instagram. I was just taking pictures of making bread in my home kitchen. Suddenly people were putting in orders for sourdough. So I would drive around the counties delivering bread, I would meet in the library parking lot for people to buy cinnamon rolls. It was very grassroots, kind of. So yeah, I got to see Robertson county, just driving around delivering bread.

- [Miranda] Her business grew so quickly she moved out of her home kitchen, and into this 1400 square foot building on Eighth Avenue and her loyal followers are thrilled.

- How is your day?

- Doing good, doing good. Let me get a loaf of the sourdough please.

- [Man] You can walk here, post office is across the street, courthouses two blocks away.

- Cheddar jalapeno or chocolate chip?

- Cheddar jalapeno.

- All right.

- [Miranda] Longtime customer Terry Price, makes the short jot almost weekly.

- A good fresh loaf of bread, just still, just reminds me of home it's comfort food. So to get a fresh loaf of bread every week, that you know was made that morning, carry it at home you can have it for dinner, you can make sandwiches, you can eat it by itself, which is what I do a lot too. Thank you, see you later.

- Bye.

- [Miranda] Hannah's first taste of the world of baking, wasn't just any bread. It was the difficult to master, but oh so delicious sourdough.

- I thought, well I'm gonna make sourdough bread, because if I can figure out that, I could probably figure out how to be just a good baker in general.

- Hannah started her business making sourdough bread. But it is actually a very labor intensive process. It starts with a starter, that has to be fed and properly cared for. Then they will be placed in loaf pans and have to rise about three hours. So the entire process takes about 48 hours a loaf, but the results are delicious and beautiful.

- Sourdough requires a lot of patience, a lot of time, a lot of trial and error. I knew that I wanted to figure it out, because I do not like failing at something. And so it was challenging, and that is what drew me to sourdough baking.

- [Miranda] Sadler didn't stop at sourdough bread, she now offers sourdough cinnamon rolls, and even sourdough bagels. And it is important to her that Grain + Honey, always has something hand baked and delicious for people with special dietary needs.

- This macarons up here.

- Macarons, sure, how many would you like?

- Half a dozen.

- Half a dozen sounds good.

- We always try to offer at least one or two gluten free vegan options. In the pastry case, we make a really great gluten free vegan brownie, that my husband says, "Are you sure that this is made "with gluten free flour?" And I said yes, I have a secret about how it's so good. The coconut chocolate truffles, they're vegan and gluten free. It tastes like a candy bar. And people love them and we love being able to offer that to folks. I don't want people to feel like they're missing out. You know, because some people choose to eat that way. And some people have to eat that way. And so no matter what we try to give them a couple options, that they can come and enjoy and not feel like they're missing out.

- Anything else I can interest you in, a cup of coffee, water?

- [Miranda] Hannah is also trying her hand at savory items and getting rave reviews.

- We do a savory scone every week. So we do jalapeno cheddar, we've done asiago, we've done rosemary and parmesan. And we actually just started offering a breakfast sandwich. So it's a locally sourced pork sausage on our cheddar scone.

- [Miranda] And mixed in, with all the sugar and spice, her favorite ingredients are those that are produced right in her own backyard.

- Our coffee is locally sourced. We have locally sourced honey. And when herbs are in season, those are also locally sourced as well. When you shop local, your dollars stay local. You support families like mine, so that I'm able to support local as well. And so it's just, it's so good for everybody.

- [Miranda] Even the handcrafted pieces of art in Grain + Honey are created by local women.

- The art that's on my walls is actually from local female artists who don't have storefronts. So their art is available for purchase, to be able to bring women in, and highlight just how insanely talented women are, has been a big deal for me. And I mean, look at the pieces, they're gorgeous. I don't think I would be in the position that I'm in, If I didn't have business owners being my champion, especially women business owners have lifted me up.

- [Miranda] But perhaps the real secret recipe to her success, is not in the flour, butter and yeast. It is her work ethic and humble devotion to her community.

- You know, we're always just looking for flavors that the community will love. I'm always a student of the craft, and so I'm never gonna master it, and that is totally fine with me.

- Thanks, Miranda. If you're looking for a tour of Nashville, there are plenty of options, some of which we've featured on this show. Well, Danielle Allen took a tour of Nashville not too long ago, not in search of country music artists, but rather activists who changed our country for the better.

- [Danielle] The fight for civil rights, echoed through the South in the 1960s, and it was heard loud and clear in Nashville. Those stories of trials and triumphs are retold in books and documentaries.

- Alright, let's rock and roll guys.

- [Danielle] But there's something about physically walking down the path of history, and that's where United Street Tours come in.

- Alright, I'm gonna talk about this statue, I'll stand in the mud you won't have to.

- [Danielle] Chakita Patterson is the founder of United Street Tours. Her mission is simple, educate through storytelling.

- They looked around, and they saw that no one was guarding the gate. So they went inside, .

- The thing that makes a good story, is having one character and telling the life of that character, the ups and the downs, right. And because all of our stories don't necessarily have happy endings, it's very, very important for us, to take you on a journey to how it got that way. Feel free to have a seat, guys.

- Come on guys.

- I'm gonna talk right from here.

- [Danielle] We took a journey with Chakita on her African American culture tour. She talked about people and events from the 1700s, all the way to the 1960s. She also does a tour for civil rights, and a Nashville Black Wall Street tour. Each one of these is different, but they all serve the same purpose.

- The purpose of the tours is to unite people, right? So oftentimes when people hear black history, it's oh, that history. But really black history is American history, right? So United just came from this whole idea of telling black history, to provide a unified America, and not just singling Black History out of things. This is your history, this is my history, but when we embrace all history, then we have a holistic and a well rounded view.

- [Danielle] The idea for United Street Tours, came about when Chakita was a dean at a local school. She was helping students do a black history project, but there was one small problem.

- I was very, very excited to get the students involved in planning black history, taking charge of what the theme was gonna be for Black History Month. So just went around, talk to students interviewed them, and everyone was excited to plan to get on board. But what I started to realize is that they didn't know much about Nashville's black history or about Black History stories, to plan anything outside of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Right? So Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a lot of us learn about him in school. But outside of that, they haven't been exposed to a wide variety of black history stories.

- [Danielle] That experience gave Chakita an idea, why not start a business that'll make those little known stories well known. One that lets you take a close-up look at the past. And from there, United Street Tours was born.

- [Chakita] Before I started this, I spent a ton of time researching, searching the internet, reading tons of books, and just trying to pull out information that I thought would connect with people. So after I don't know how many hours of research right, something was missing for me. So a lot of stuff that wasn't adding up. So what I started doing was reaching out to local history professors at colleges here. And I just started talking to people, just engaging in conversation. Tell me your perspective on the story. Okay, this is what I read, what do you think? So just talking to different professors gave me additional perspective to go by.

- [Danielle] In addition to giving different perspectives, there's another perk to this tour, one that only comes with a little bit of walking.

- So it just gives people time that you don't necessarily have when you're on the bus. And it also it's more personable, because I have an opportunity to stop and say, oh yeah, and look at this, right? So we're not passing things really fast. And people notice stuff all the time on the tour, they say, what does this mean? Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Those are things that can only happen on a walking tour, because you're going at a slower pace in a more personal tour. Want to point this one out to you.

- [Danielle] The Tour's cover stories you don't often hear, like Robert Black Bob Renfro. He was a quasi independent slave who owned a popular bar. But it also revisits the stories you'll never forget. Diane Nash confronting the mayor on the steps of the courthouse, and the sit-ins at Woolworth on 5th.

- Our last stop on the tour is that Woolworths on 5th, and at Woolworths on 5th, they get an opportunity to sit at the stools, and sit there and reflect and think about what they learn and things like that.

- [Danielle] You'll also hear firsthand accounts of those sit-ins and the bravery it took to pull it off.

- John Lewis said he sat upstairs with a few of his colleagues. And as he was sitting here, he could hear the sounds of his colleagues downstairs being beat up. Can you imagine? So he got up and just like we walked up those steps, he immediately began to walk down those stairs. And when he got down there, all the non-violence resistance training that he had kicked in.

- [Danielle] Every day, Chakita takes a new group on tour going up and down the streets of Downtown Nashville, and sharing stories from black history. She hopes walking down memory lane will pave a better road to the future.

- [Chikita] There is a lot of people that have difficulty having cross-cultural conversation, making cross-cultural connections, right. But when you can learn about your history or about the history of others, that kind of grounds you in this space of this is what happened, what can I do about that to ensure that the future is this way or that way? So ultimately, I hope that the tour started as an educational tool to expand the minds of others.

- Thanks a lot, Danielle. If you're planning to spend a few days in the Smoky Mountains, it's a good idea to start each day with a good breakfast. Well, how about a place with historical ambience and a bounty of breakfast dishes? And while it's not a requirement, pants with elastic waistbands is a good idea. If you're going to compete for the tourist dollars at a town like Gatlinburg, you better have something special, even for breakfast. That's why we decided to camp out for a while at Crockett's Breakfast Camp and see why folks say it's worth the wait. Before plunging too far into this sumptuous food fair, here's a little backstory. Crockett's Breakfast Camp, is dedicated to the legacy of a 19th century Smoky Mountain frontiersman, David Crockett Maples, an excellent cook and ancestor of the restaurants founder of Kirby Smith,

- This gentlemen wanted to provide food for the loggers. And he built a little nice, little place over here and fed the loggers for a good price. and happens Kirby's idea was to build a nice looking place, give a generous amount of food at a good price, and good quality.

- [Joe] That's John Sport, better known as Sporty, who oversees the ever humming hustling kitchen. Like a well tuned machine his staff produces, made from scratch breakfast dishes, from colossal-sized pancakes to massive egg dishes. Out in the dining room the rustic atmosphere is a show in itself. With reclaimed barn wood walls covered with artifacts that portray earlier mountain times. It's much like a museum of Gatlinburg history. Oh check this, all the doors use low tech counterweights and sandbags. Now just beyond the cozy fireplace, visitors can witness the making of the Camp's ever popular cinnamon rolls.

- The dough we make the day before. So when we bring it out in the morning, we let it proof let it finish proofing and soften up, and then we'll get it out on the table, and we'll roll it out, and get it to about a seven foot length, to about three foot width and put some cinnamon, butter and brown sugar on it. And we roll it up, and we'll cut it in about four inch sections, and get about 24 cinnamon rolls out of it, put them in her pans, proof them in a box and bake them and hope we don't run out of them.

- [Joe] Well over 100 are consumed each morning at Crockett's. And more often than not, they're shared. But for the serious cinnamon roll aficionado, you can always take it a step further.

- We take the same cinnamon roll, and we dip it in our made from scratch, French toast batter. And we put on a flat top and press it down, so it's not quite as thick as a normal one. And then we'll top it off with our caramel sauce that we make here, and whipped cream and powdered sugar. And it's a pretty good treat for most people.

- Pancakes are to Gatlinburg, what lobsters are to Maine. but here it's like the pancakes are on steroids.

- They're probably four times the size of a normal pancake. They're about an inch thick and about five inches in diameter. So in there, again, that's a pretty good sized meal, that we serve too.

- I have a cinnamon swirl pancake,

- Are you gonna make it all the way?

- I am not going to make it all the way. It is very good though.

- Our signature items are skillets, we serve a 10 pound cast iron skillet. That is with our signature items depending on what you like. We have a variety of stuff from Mexican to healthy buckwheat pancakes, to omelets to French toast to waffles.

- [Joe] I gotta say I've never heard anyone complain about not getting enough food. But I also never heard much talk about lunch plans either.

- I think most people say, that what you hear a lot, is if you eat breakfast at Crockett's, you won't have lunch, you know, you'll be fed all day long.

- [Joe] So while there's lots of competition for dining dollars at a tourist town, like Gatlinburg, word gets around when a place has got the absolute breakfast experience.

- They all communicate what's going on, where they been. If their experiences in Gatlinburg, they tell people what they like, what they don't like, what to do, kinda what to avoid. And I think Crockett's is one of the things on their list, that they do come to see, besides the aquarium.

- It's awesome, yeah, it's great, very good.

- [Joe] And it's creating that special experience that makes Sporty happy to come to work.

- It's beautiful who wouldn't want to work at a place like this? That people come to and seeing they're smiling, they're happy and every time you put something in front of them, they're just, their eyes open up. Cinnamon rolls, the pancakes, a skillet, you know, they're like, wow.

- If you met someone who says silver and copper, talk to him, you might think that person's a little crazy. Well, if Ben Caldwell is crazy, It's a good kind of crazy, because he talks to and wrestles with metal to create beautiful works of art. As Rob Wilds discovers in our final story.

- [Rob] Ben Caldwell works in his Kingston Springs shop taking copper and silver and creating beautiful works of art using,

- Gentle persuasion with a hammer and anvil.

- [Rob] It looks like a battle when Ben is at work, with him trying to impose his vision on unyielding metal. But try to see it through Ben's eyes.

- Copper and silver are like a suspended liquid. When I'm working with them, they move kind of like a liquid almost like a clay.

- [Rob] Gently persuading the metal to yield up the artwork, Ben sees in it, that can turn into a real clash of wills.

- The copper talks to me, and it's a back and forth thing, where the copper is has a very free spirited metal and it doesn't like to be told what to do.

- [Rob] Ben will go to just about any length to turn his artistic visions into reality.

- Very often people will buy a tool and if the tool can't do it, they just don't do it. So I've learned to alter tools in order to do exactly what I want. I think of myself as kind of a folk engineer. I have absolutely no training, so I find something and I make it into something that will do what I want. This big stump here is something that I hammer on, I call it a soft anvil.

- Yeah

- but here's, this is something, this is an old pick, that I made into an anvil.

- It's an anvil?

- Yeah, so it's sort of a stick, to hammer things around. This is an old cedar porch post, that I made into my big donkey kong size hammer. And then, this is sort of your classic,

- Now I recognize that, that's an anvil

- And found that at the flea market, so you buy that, but then this right here was made out of a bolt, that I just ground down. This is a piece of railroad track that I've also altered into an anvil and flat angle.

- Why don't you just go somewhere and buy yourself an anvil?

- Well, I'm kind of cheap.

- Are you?

- And also I have fun making them. And usually, I want a tool right now, and I don't wanna wait for them to deliver it.

- You know, Ben trained as a guitar maker long ago, so the desire to build things is not really a surprise. But a guitar is not an industrial machine. So not all of Ben's creations, turned out as good as this hammer he built.

- I once made a buffing machine out of a potter's wheel and a friend of mine came over and I just turned it on, and threw this thing that spun around and made lots of noise on a rickety, rickety, rickety, and then he turns around, he looks behind me goes, " Ben, there's a bunch of smoke coming out of this thing." And my machine had just blown up. It was on fire and it was like, oh, no, yeah!

- [Rob] Okay, you might think the possibility of having to call the fire department out to his shop, would put Ben off using extreme heat to create his work, but you would be wrong about that. When Ben gets an idea, well, it very likely to become a reality.

- [Ben] I started to see in my mind, large crumpled pieces of metal with color on them, and I didn't know what it was. So it took me about five years from the first sort of vision that I had of these things till I actually made my first one.

- [Rob] Ben also saw color, and paint will fade on copper. So the answer was glass!

- [Ben] And that's what enamel is, is it's glass, and has to be fired at about 1500 degrees,

- [Rob] which could mean buying a huge and costly kiln. But that's not what it meant to Ben.

- [Ben] I figured out with very basic tools, how to fire very large pieces of copper, and make very large enamels without this expensive multimillion dollar kiln.

- [Rob] And before you know it, Ben was in another battle of wills, to bring color to his metal.

- [Ben] I was just a painter, who was a copper smith, who wanted to paint on copper, is all I was thinking. So I think of my pieces as sculpted paintings. Because I like when you take a simple geometric form in two dimensions, and you fold it into three dimensions, it has a completely different dynamic, kind of like a flag. I'm kinda known for my flags. That a flag when it's flat is one thing, but yet it usually is blowing in the wind in it's three dimensions. and it has a different dynamic to it. I like working with that, which is why I fold up my pieces.

- [Rob] All the hard work, the battles between Ben and the metals that talked to him, and his determination not to let technology limit him, come together in beautiful and often useful creations.

- [Ben] People use the phrase "jewelry for the kitchen," and so people hang it up as decorative pieces, and then take it down for special occasions and use them. And some people use them every day, they're certainly sturdy enough to use every day. And so but then I have my sculptural pieces, which are all you know my enameled work, and my sculptural pieces, they're of course, just purely artwork for decoration.

- [Rob] I wonder what future conversations Ben will have? What dreams will send him down new paths, who knows. But if Ben can imagine it, there's a pretty good chance he will work at it until it becomes a reality.

- Well, that's about it, for this edition of Tennessee Crossroads. Sure good to have you with us. Don't forget about our website from time to time, TennesseeCrossroads.org. Of course, follow us on Facebook. And by all means, join me here next week, see you then.

- [Woman] The Tennessee suicide prevention network offers no cost training, referrals and resources to help people in need. If you or someone you know have the thoughts of suicide there is help, resources at TSPN.org.