Episode 3530

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- This time on "Tennessee Crossroads," we explore a Murfreesboro photographer's world of animal art. Then, discover a Nashville restaurant that serves vegan soul food, we'll explore the new life of a former Memphis train station, and finally, a trip to Harrogate, honoring a Tennessee hero who never came to the state. And that's our show for this edition of "Tennessee Crossroads." I'm Joe Elmore, sure glad to have you. Nature photographers capture pictures of beautiful animals from around the globe. With the click of a camera, the image is stored in a fraction of a second. Well, Miranda Cohen recently met a Murfreesboro woman whose method of capturing images takes a little longer than a click, but it's just as breathtaking.

- [Miranda] When Brenda Bohn sits down at her favorite spot, some of nature's most beautiful creatures just seem to come to life.

- I always like to start with the eyes, and I kind of have to get them in the right place. And you have to get the eyes right, 'cause if you don't do that, it's not gonna look like the person's animal, 'cause that is part of the soul.

- [Miranda] It's as if the totally self-taught artist is seeing much more than fur and feathers. She is seeing the animal's spirit and putting it down on paper. Today, she is working on a commissioned piece of a cherished member of the family.

- [Brenda] The animals love so much, unconditionally, and they look at you and they adore you, and everybody else can get mad at you , and your talking, but your cat'll never do.

- [Miranda] Bohn will simply look at a photograph and will start to draw exactly what she sees. With every stroke and movement of her pencil, an almost more real version of the animal will begin to appear.

- [Brenda] I don't know how I do it. I kinda don't know how you can't do it. Does that makes sense? I don't know, I can just see it here and put it here. I love animals.

- [Miranda] Brenda will sketch almost anything, but there is one creature where she draws, or should we say, doesn't draw the line.

- [Brenda] People are so critical of themselves, and I just didn't enjoy drawing a person. I like the fur, I like the texture of the animals, they're furry.

- [Miranda] With meticulous and precise attention to detail, her true gift pours out on the page, and as a true master, she finds the entire creative process relaxing. Some might even find it a little too relaxing.

- [Brenda] Sometimes I'll sit for eight hours a day, just drawing. Sometimes I'll sit down for an hour, 45 minutes. I draw every single morning on something while I drink my coffee with my cat in my lap. It's very relaxing, I really enjoy doing it. And I just get into it, and I don't want to stop.

- [Miranda] And with any great masterpiece, knowing when to stop is often the most difficult part.

- [Brenda] But sometimes I have trouble deciding I'm done, and I'll stare at it for a while and move back and look at it from different angles, and I sign it, and once I've signed it, take it out of the pad, I'm ready to spray it.

- When you look at a piece of Brenda's art, it looks like it took hundreds of different pencils in hundreds of different shades, when actually, all the magic comes from Brenda, herself. In fact, she uses very few tools: a number-six pencil and a Q-tip.

- I use a number-six pencil. My overhead's pretty cheap.

- [Miranda] She is starting to experiment with color, and the results are stunning. But she prefers the looks of blacks and whites, and by expertly blending thousands of shades in between.

- [Brenda] I really like the black and white. I'm real comfortable with black and white.

- [Miranda] Bohn started out drawing cats and dogs, but when her work was noticed by the Smoky Mountain Art Gallery, she knew her work had to get a little more on the wild side.

- [Brenda] I drew a whole bunch of things I thought would Yekaterinburg-ish, you know, the bear, and the otter, and the wolf, and the wild animals. And I really enjoy doing 'em.

- [Miranda] Bears, rabbits, mountain lions, chipmunks, birds, and beloved family pets stare back at her from the pages, all captured in graphite. Animal Art by Brenda is the name of her website and her store on Etsy.

- [Brenda] Most of what I sell is the commission. I want it to look perfect. I fret over it, I'm crazy.

- [Miranda] And her fretting shows. Each piece will take about 20 hours to create. Every thoughtful and calculated stroke and turn of the pencil, contouring and shading, finally revealing an exquisite image, mesmerizing to look at and impossible to forget.

- Thanks, Miranda. Well, next, we'll meet a Nashville couple who opened a unique restaurant a few years ago, one that specializes in a version of wholesome Southern cooking that might surprise you. The menu's full of delicious choices, just don't ask 'em, "Where's the beef?" If the word vegan conjures up images of raw vegetables with lots of kale, well, you haven't been to The Southern V. The menu in this North Nashville restaurant has been described as Southern soul food.

- It is so good. I've been craving something that's crunchy, and as a vegetarian, you don't really get that unless it's a vegetable. So this is perfect.

- And I've definitely seen an improvement in my blood pressure, and I've seen an improvement in my energy levels, so I really enjoy it.

- [Joe] Owners Clifton and Tiffany Hancock went vegan themselves years ago, after discovering one of their daughter's food allergies.

- From that point, I started cooking a lot at home, and I said, "Well, where are we gonna find this stuff?" And we couldn't find anything. So we said, "We should make something where everybody can find something to eat."

- [Joe] In less than three years, they went from a farmers' market popup selling donuts, to this modern freestanding site. And to them, it's as much about teamwork as it is food finesse.

- With her personality and my personality, and our own individual skillsets that we bring to the table, I think that's what's helped The Southern V do as well as it's been doing.

- [Joe] Make no mistake, the culinary magic happens on Tiffany's side of the house. She's the mastermind behind all the recipes designed to make dishes taste as close to grandma's as possible.

- I have these memory taste buds. It's like I can go back to childhood dishes and just remember how it tasted to me. And I remember exactly how it's supposed to taste, so I know I can mirror exactly how I need it to taste in a vegan form. So I just throw my spices in, and I just kinda know when enough is enough. And I get that same flavor, and I get that same feeling, and I know it's right.

- [Joe] Cliff is in charge of the business side of the operation and everything that happens in the front of the house.

- We don't cross the line. Well, we try not to.

- We try not to.

- Sometimes we both step over each other's line, but I am known as the back of house, and he is known as front of house.

- Correct.

- [Joe] While many vegan chefs use soy as a meat substitute,

- And that's what it looks like.

- [Joe] at The Southern V, it's a high-protein foodstuff called seitan.

- Seitan is a vital wheat-based gluten, and we basically use it for a lot of our meat substitutes, if you will. So that is used for our chicken. Of course, we said we make that in house. And a lot of places do make it with soy, and so because of my background with my children and them having that allergy towards soy, I decided to make it without that, so that other people, other moms, it doesn't matter who you are, but other people who have that soy allergy, they can still enjoy the chicken.

- With the right seasoning and TLC, seitan can be transformed into any faux fried chicken dish imaginable. In fact, Clifton says there's is the first vegan version of Nashville hot chicken. Seitan is also the foundation for The V's version of America's favorite sandwich. You know, I always thought it was impossible to make a vegan burger taste like the real deal. I guess that's why they call it the impossible burger. Get a side of mac and cheese, and you got an impossibly good lunch, I'll say. They also use a lesser-known meat alternative called jackfruit, which looks like this on the tree before it undergoes a creative conversion in the kitchen.

- [Tiffany] What we do is we cook it down really slowly, simmer it, add our spices and seasonings, and just makes it, I guess gives it a smoky flavor.

- [Clifton] Smoky flavor, so you can imagine it almost like a pulled pork once we're finished with it.

- Like a pulled pork. [Tiffany] We pull that apart, and chop that up so that it gives that coarse look for the pulled pork, which is our jackfruit sliders. And we also do a barbecued jackfruit nacho.

- The sweeter treats are a big draw here, too. Tiffany's home-baked cookies sell like hotcakes, as well as her version of an old-time childhood treat, Rice Krisipie candy. And there are milk-less milkshakes? Well, Clifton carefully guards the exact recipe, but he's proud of the results, and for good reason. Tastes like a good milkshake, to me.

- There you go, a non-milk milkshake.

- [Joe] The Hancocks are duly proud of how their commitment to plant-based nutrition evolved into a unique dining attraction: a place where vegans and non-vegans alike can enjoy a friendly vibe and flavorsome food, together.

- And a lot of times, it just opens up conversation for at least starting to look at your lifestyle and how you eat, and maybe how you can make some better choices here and there, just living a little bit healthier lifestyle, and helping the environment and the animals as well.

- [Joe] Of course, you don't have to go all in to enjoy a frequent visit to the world of guiltless Southern cooking. Clifton and Tiffany just hope that you'll come here when you're up for a healthy fix.

- We want people to have the experience of coming in, just actually relaxing and talking to one other. We have a little light music, but we don't have TVs and distractions. We just want people to come in, take a break, sit down, eat, be comfortable, and then leave out with a smile. That's it.

- All too often, historic buildings fall victim to the constant push for new construction. Everyone benefits, though, when beloved old structures are restored and re-suited for use today. Such is the case of our next segment. Linn Sitler shares the story of the Central Station Hotel in Memphis.

- It's a train station. It's a hotel. And it's also sort of a radio station where disc jockeys spin records piping Memphis music into every room of the Central Station Hotel. The Central Station Hotel has opened in Downtown Memphis as a jewel in the crown of Memphis, Tennessee. And who better to oversee the train station's transformation into a luxury hotel, than McLean Wilson?

- My grandfather founded Holiday Inns in 1952, and what we're doing here at Central Station is an attempt to do the exact same thing he did, relative to being innovative. What we're attempting to do is really create an authentic, genuine expression of what Memphis, Tennessee is. So the building itself has a storied past. So there's a lot of architectural details and design details that pay homage to the past, but we also wanted to make it relevant for not only today, but for the foreseeable future, and so we had to create some modernity to it as well. And really, the big notion for what this hotel offers, that a lot of hotels around the world don't, is a music lounge with world-renowned speakers acoustically dialed in perfectly in an album wall full of records that all harken back to some tie to Memphis music, to really showcase that which Memphis has done for many, many decades, and that's put out really wonderful music.

- And thanks to the technical genius of Jim Thompson, guests can listen to Memphis music through custom-made EgglestonWorks speakers.

- Memphis has played such an important role in the development of popular music, that we wanted to highlight that. So the music is not necessarily just Memphis musicians or Memphis bands, it is writers, producers, bands that recorded in Memphis for the reason that it is Memphis.

- [Linn] You can listen to the Memphis music in the hotel bar, called Eight and Sand. In this sleek redo of the train station's waiting room, you might even see a Memphis music legend or two, like David Porter and Boo Mitchell. There's even a listening room, appealing to the most serious music-lovers.

- It's a small room that has a pair of speakers in it and a few chairs. It seats only about six people. So that one was a lot of fun. And I don't think you're gonna find that, I know you're not gonna find that in any hotel, but you probably aren't really gonna find it in any public space at all, ever. So it's really unique.

- When you're at the Central Station Hotel, there's no doubt that you're at the South Main Historic District. And really, where that's represented is in our art. We recruited a friend of ours, who's a phenomenal photographer named Jamie Harmon, and so every guest room is littered with photographs that he took along the train lines. That was one idea of how we stayed connected to the past and to the present, which is the fact that we are a train station. It is an active line that Amtrak has, going to Chicago and New Orleans. And the other piece is curating original pieces of art from Memphis artists, as well as artists in Chicago and New Orleans. And so all of the public area art is hand-selected, hand-picked, and all that you experience is rooted in a Memphis feeling.

- [Linn] Each of the rooms has a view of the Downtown South Main Historic District, or a view west toward the Mississippi River. Each is a little different in shape, designed from the nooks and crannies of the 106-year-old building. Looking back at the train station's transformation, it's hard to imagine that the project grew out of the city's desire to simply turn the train station into a transit center. But when legendary Memphis developer, Henry Turley, took the bait...

- I thought about it for a minute, and I said, "When the train arrives, you want someone that'll welcome 'em and show 'em a good time. Well, that's pretty easy: a hotel. So I picked up the phone and called Kemmons Wilson. I said, "Will you do a hotel?" And he said, "Well, will you go in it with us?" And I said, "Sure, just so I don't have to work. You've got to run it, 'cause I don't know anything about a hotel." I said, "I've got one specification: When someone gets on the train in Chicago, and buys a ticket to New Orleans, I want 'em to get off at your hotel and be so happy that they tear up the ticket to New Orleans, stay in Memphis." And that's the only thing I did. And from what I've seen, they've pretty well done that.

- Even though Abraham Lincoln was born just up the road, in Kentucky, the story goes, he never made it to Tennessee. So it may come as a surprise that one of the largest collections of the popular president's history resides in East Tennessee, in Harrogate. That's where Gretchen Bates is gonna takes us for our final story.

- [Gretchen] It might surprise you to learn that one of our country's largest and most diverse Lincoln collections is located on the campus of Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee.

- We have one of the best kept secrets in Tennessee. And it's a shame...

- [Gretchen] Thomas Mackey is the museum director for the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum.

- [Thomas] The museum has been part of Lincoln Memorial University, really from the beginning years in 1897. General Oliver Otis Howard, who was one of the founding trustees of the university, had insisted that a Lincoln collection be established as part of the university's overall education and research programs.

- Welcome to the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, and these are the things you'd carry around if you were a solider in the Civil War.

- [Thomas] There are three major Lincoln galleries dealing with his life: his young life, prior to the Civil War, the Civil War itself, and then what we call the Legacy Gallery, which looks at the assassination issues, but also how Lincoln's memory is used, particularly in art. So the early years, we look at his family, his background, and then what made him into a politician, the last gallery, which deals very heavily with his memory and what that memory means to Americans afterwards.

- What you're looking at is a bit of technology from the 19th century. This is a rifled cannon, three-inch. Now, something like this was almost like threading a needle, it was that accurate.

- [Gretchen] All of the pieces on display at the museum relay memories from America's past. Much of the collection consists of personal items that belonged to Lincoln and his family.

- [Thomas] The first one, really, I liked, was the corner cupboard made by Lincoln's father, Thomas. By the dating of the cupboard, the provenance behind the object, it looks to be the one, at least, when he was living in Knob Creek, Kentucky. So this cupboard would've had his hands on it. The Lincoln china, or porcelain set from England, it's made by the royal producers for china in England, for Queen Victoria. It tells me that in 1858, before most people knew Lincoln was running for president.

- [Gretchen] Perhaps the most dramatic piece of the Lincoln collection is the walking cane that Lincoln carried with him on that fateful night. The cane is now known as the assassination cane.

- [Thomas] It is a ebony silver cane with Lincoln's engraving on it. It was carried the night he went to Ford's Theatre. On the night he was shot, the cane would have fallen behind the chair, was picked up by an actor that night, saved as a family keepsake and heirloom. After a while, being out of work, an actor sold it for $40 to a grocer, and then that grocer's family donated it to LMU back in 1928. To have objects that not only they touched and used, but that have a point in history, for an interpreter, it makes a very strong image that this item saw one of those historic moments that changed the way we are as Americans.

- [Gretchen] Also unique to the collection are dioramas built between 1938 and '39.

- [Thomas] There are five dioramas in the collection. They're originally from the Chicago Historical Society. Colonel Sanders, our trustee at the time, here at the LMU, and some of our administrators, had connections in Chicago and were able to secure five of these original, really impressive dioramas.

- Now let me ask you a question. How many of you think women fought in the Civil War, in uniform? Raise your hands. Well, actually 400 that we know of.

- [Gretchen] There is a lot more to the museum than meets the eye. It also houses a vast collection of historical documents and rare books.

- [Thomas] Most museums have a front room and a backroom. The galleries, the gift shop, the public area is called the front room. Most people just see those. The backroom, since we're actually a university museum and archives research library, we have a very large backroom. In fact, most of our space is where we house books.

- The museum and library attracts a variety of visitors, from historians, to students and teachers, tourists, and the occasional dignitary.

- Really?

- Honest, Abe.

- In and around a small little Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg, was fought one of the bloodiest battles ever to take place on the American continent.

- [Gretchen] Meet Abraham Lincoln impersonator, Dennis Boggs.

- I am a storyteller, period. I don't think I'm a historian. I'm certainly not a scholar, although I've been reading "Lincoln in his Times" for about 22 years. But yeah, I'm just a storyteller. But I try to make sure that I use Lincoln's words. If I do that, there's not any room for argument. But it can never forget what they did here. I've fell into this museum just like a lot of people, by accident. I was on my way back from Johnson City, and I told my wife, I said, "We need to go check this Abraham Lincoln Museum out." And so I've been coming here for quite a few years now.

- [Gretchen] These days, when Dennis visits the museum, he comes in character. The museum hosts a variety of events throughout the year, from lectures in the spring, to short shows and music in the summer.

- In the fall, we do Lincoln at Gettysburg, and we do a Christmas with the Lincolns, which is often a music show. And so those are the big ones we have here.

- [Gretchen] And the big star at many of the shows is none other than, you guessed it, Abe Lincoln.

- Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Tennessee has about the fourth or fifth largest collection of Lincoln artifacts anywhere in the country, and it's right here in our own home state of Tennessee. So I encourage people, come to LMU, and then spend time here at this museum, not only looking at the artifacts, but by asking to go into the Archives Department and see the tremendous treasure of written materials that this university has on hand. It's a great place to spend a day and get to know a pretty special man. And that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

- Well, with that, we have to say goodbye for another edition of "Tennessee Crossroads." Thanks for joining us, though. Oh, don't forget about our website, tennesseecrossroads.org. Follow us on Facebook, of course, and I'll see you next time. How about that?

- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is made possible in part by...

- [Spokesperson] This season, there's something small that makes a big difference. Flu vaccines protect ourselves and others. Flu vaccines are available. Learn more at tn.gov/health/fightflu.