Episode 3707

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

- I'm Tennessee Tech President Phil Oldham. Here in Cookville, Tennessee's college town, we are bold, fearless, confident, and kind. Tech prepares students for careers by making everyone's experience personal. We call that Living Wings Up. Learn more at tntech.edu.

- [Announcer] Averitt's Tennessee roots run deep. They've been delivering logistics solutions here for over 50 years. And though Averitt's reach now circles the globe, the Volunteer State will always be home. More at Averitt.com. Discover Tennessee Trails & Byways. Discover Tennessee's adventure, cuisine, history and more Made in Tennessee experiences showcased among these 16 driving trails. More at TNTrailsAndByways.com.

- This time on "Tennessee Crossroads," we discover a Hendersonville man's return to his childhood artistic passion. Then we'll go exploring at Tennessee's premier birding destination. We'll visit a one of a kind personal museum in Shelbyville and explore a Nashville store where vinyl records rule. Hey everybody, I'm Joe Elmore. Welcome again to "Tennessee Crossroads." Sure glad to have you. Our first story is a treat for the eyes. Chuck Creasy discovered his love for painting as a child. The need to provide for his family, though, made him take a little detour. However, as a retiree, he's back at the easel full-time, putting his dreams on canvas. Cindy Carter shares his story.

- [Cindy] Working from a photograph, watercolor artist Chuck Creasy sketches the California Lighthouse in Aruba, a place he's visited several times.

- You know, and these sketches I do really are just a workout of values and stuff before I get to laying paint down.

- [Cindy] And when Chuck does lay paint down, something magical starts to happen.

- My work really encompasses all the things I tend to be interested in, which is quite a number of subject matter And I don't really specialize in any subject matter.

- [Cindy] His subjects may be varied, but Chuck approaches every watercolor with laser focus. He paints inside his home studio, standing over a desk so the colors don't run. Most paintings, Chuck says, he finishes in a day, a testament to his professionalism, years of experience, and an unwavering passion for his work.

- [Chuck] Watercolor to me is one of those mediums, That's just almost magic. You know, when I lay down that first big wet wash on a piece of white paper, it just gives me chills, you know, and you go from there.

- [Cindy] In college, he studied architecture and fine art. He also met and married the love of his life, Marnie. But this idyllic blend of art and young love changed dramatically when, while still in school, Chuck was drafted and sent to Vietnam

- Wound up in Vietnam as an artillery forward observer with an infantry company. We'd been there, I'd been in field four weeks, and we got overrun by an NVA battalion. We lost about half of our company.

- [Cindy] Chuck survived the attack, but many of his comrades did not. Understandably, his experience in Vietnam forever changed him. He returned home and finished art school, determined to leave the pain and ugliness of war behind.

- I found out about this watercolor artist named John Pike who was arguably, you know, one of the best watercolor artists in America at that time. He had a school in Woodstock, so I went up two summers and studied with John and just fell in love with watercolor.

- [Cindy] At one point, Pike insisted Chuck also spend some time with a colleague who lived an hour and a half away in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. That artist was none other than Norman Rockwell.

- I walked in Rockwell's studio and I just, blew me away. I told him, he was 79 at that time, painting 18 hours a day. I spent three days with him watching him paint, asking him questions, cleaning his brushes, you know. It was amazing.

- [Cindy] Amazing could also describe how Chuck's life unfolded since those carefree days in Woodstock. Returning to Tennessee, Chuck spent 50 years as a successful advertising creative director, working with corporations, the city of Nashville, musicians, even a presidential campaign. But the whole time, Chuck painted.

- And I'm kinda all over the board. It's all within watercolor, but I experiment and I do all kinds of crazy things.

- Chuck is a traveler. His passion for scuba diving, his advertising work, family vacations, they've all taken him all around the world. And much of his art reflects the people and places he's encountered along the way.

- That painting over there is a Honduran grandmother that I met in Copan, the ruins of Copan. This painting is a Coptic priest in front of Lalibela, the church in Ethiopia that dates back 2000 years. And Willie Nelson's always been a inspiration to me.

- [Cindy] There are seascapes and boats and Caribbean locales, warriors, and even paintings inspired by Chuck's 2018 return to Vietnam. Though he's sold his watercolor art since he was young, this is his full-time work now, finally.

- Sitting down over there and doing a painting is better than a fifth of Jack Daniels for me. I mean, it's just, it's tonic. You know, it gives me the ability to just escape and feel the freedom I didn't have in the commercial field.

- [Cindy] It's appropriate this artist prefers bright, bold colors. Just think of a bold, colorful life he's led turning his experiences and memories into vivid paintings we all can enjoy.

- Thanks, Cindy. We all know that Tennessee's very popular with tourists as a hot vacation spot. Well, in our next story, Miranda Cohen explains that people aren't the only visitors flocking to the Volunteer State year after year. That's what she discovered at the Seven Island State Birding Park

- [Miranda] For Clare Dattilo and Stephanie Mueller, their days start early. Their morning commute is quite spectacular, and their office is all 416 glorious acres of the Seven Islands State Birding Park. In her third year as a park ranger, Stephanie Mueller is still in awe of her workplace.

- I love that every day is different out here. I come to work, and I don't know 100% how my day's going to go. I love that expect the unexpected kind of thing.

- [Miranda] But what Mueller and the park's interpretive specialist, Clare Dattilo, have come to expect is people flocking from all over the country to see the magnificent wildlife that call this glorious forest at the foot of the Smokies home, in particular, the birds.

- [Clare] So we're the only state birding park with that in our title.

- [Miranda] Sure, you can watch our feathered friends other places, but the Seven Islands State Birding Park is the only park with birding actually in their name. And you would be hard pressed to find more beautiful species all in one location.

- There have been over 220 species found in the park. It's because we have different habitats for different types of birds

- [Miranda] Land and structures once owned by private families and used for farming, now they have all been donated and they are all being put to very good use.

- We have three barns that are original to the the farmland that was here. We have the Bluebird Barn at the entrance to the park and the maintenance barn, which is also known as the Swallows of the River or Swallows of the Window Barn, and then the Maple Leaf Barn at the end of the road. They're all named after the barn quilts that are on them. The birds do use 'em though. We are one of the few places in Knox County that you can somewhat regularly see barn owls in the barn.

- [Miranda] Don't be surprised if you see five types of owls, bobwhite quails, even endangered gray bats, plus many others.

- [Clare] We have woodland areas. We have the grassland areas. We have wetlands. We have the river. And so you can just see a good variety. Most of our park focuses on grassland habitat and ground nesting birds. And that's because the ground nesting birds are some of the most quickly declining species in North America.

- [Miranda] Today is a special day for the rangers, staff, and volunteers. They call it bird banding.

- [Volunteer] 3652.

- [Stephanie] And we do bird banding out here spring through fall for the most part. We basically catch the birds in mist net. So they're a really fine mesh soft net that the birds fly into.

- [Miranda] A tiny metal band will be placed around the bird's leg, and they will be carefully examined to determine health and migratory habits.

- [Clare] This is a male indigo bunting, very pretty iridescent feathers.

- [Stephanie] We take measurements on their wing, their tails, length, their weight. We determine whether it's a male or a female, and we determine how old the birds are based on their their molt and their their plumage.

- The rangers here at the Seven Island State Birding Park will band these birds to find out a lot of information such as age, weight, health, and longevity. And once they're done, these beauties are ready to go. And once the birds are off, they don't go very far. They seem to love it here too. Through the information collected from the bands, the rangers can tell some of these birds have been vacationing in Tennessee for years. And who could blame them? The park offers an array of fun things to do.

- [Stephanie] Probably the biggest attraction is walking down our paved ADA trail to the bridge, on the French Broad River. We have a pedestrian bridge that crosses the French Broad River over to Newman Island, which is one of the islands that is part of the park. It's just a beautiful walk. And along the way, you see all sorts of different habitats.

- [Stephanie] It's a nice quiet spot where they can come, peaceful and serene, and they can kind of recharge their batteries and just take a break. And there's so much to see and do here. You can walk, you can do birding. You can go on a guided hike. We have biking allowed on our paved trails. There's just so much to see and do here.

- [Miranda] As you may have guessed, education and conservation is a huge part of what the staff and the feathered ambassadors do here at the park. A guided tour with a ranger can show you how you can greatly help the environment and maybe even create your own little wildlife oasis.

- [Clare] We have in the front of our park, we have the Wild Yards Garden. And the whole purpose of that area is to teach people about the importance of native plants and how to attract wildlife to your yard and basically do what we are doing out here, but on a smaller scale in a landscaping way to benefit wildlife in your own yard.

- [Stephanie] I think it is a great place for people to come and get away from the hustle and bustle of society. Sometimes you just need some outdoor therapy, some nature therapy. When you get people, you can tell people and teach people about it all the time in a classroom or read a book. But when they actually see it and experience firsthand, they develop a more compassion for it. And then by developing that compassion, by doing it, they are then more likely to be conservationists themselves and have a reason to want to save the environment or help save the birds.

- Thanks, Miranda. Garland King was Shelbyville's well-respected fire chief for most of his life. But he was also fairly famous for his one-of-a-kind museum, one that he literally crammed with artifacts he personally acquired. The collection reflected the history of the town he dearly loved. This is the story of how Chief King's dream lives on. It was 1992 when I paid a visit to Garland King, the Shelby County fire chief whose career would span nearly a half century.

- I've been with the fire department since 1959. I've been chief since 1969. Oh, I guess I liked the people better than anything, dealing with people. You deal with a lot of people, and I enjoy that very much.

- [Joe] And while fighting fires was his profession, his obsession was collecting just about anything and everything imaginable. A self-proclaimed pack rat, Chief King's Museum was a tribute to the people and the town he truly cared for. Unfortunately, Chief King passed away in 2013. However, his memory lives on, and King's Museum is now bigger and better, all thanks to Gary, his son.

- He was wonderful at figuring out, "You know, I ought to keep this stuff."

- [Joe] Stuff like all kinds of antique toys, photographs, and historical documents, and tools for everything from car repair to old time dentistry.

- [Gary] A lot of stuff was given to him, but I think he was always just on the hunt. And every building I'd ever buy, my dad said, "You gonna to use that building?" And then I'd go, "No, Dad." He had lots more stuff. He just didn't have anywhere to put it.

- [Joe] Chief King was also a consummate car guy.

- This one's really interesting. They still got the plastic on the seats.

- Oh yeah.

- Yeah, all original. And my dad carried this one to the Super Bowl for General Motors. And this is a AACA car. This has been kind of our pride of what we got.

- For good reason, too, that's a beauty.

- Yes.

- [Joe] His car collection spans about six decades.

- He could take something apart and put it back together, restore it, make it like it was, really amazing that he had that ability to do that.

- King's Museum contains such oddities as the world's longest pencil, 1091 and nine inches to be exact, a player piano once owned by Wayne Newton's mother, and a used casket owned by, well, we're not sure. Where'd that come from?

- I have no idea. It was funny to hear him talk about it. But yeah, it's everything he's there's nothing gone.

- [Joe] Garland King had an ability to sniff out locations of uncanny collectibles. Well, like this old trailer once owned by an itinerant home builder.

- I mean, it was just covered and in a building that was falling down. There's an article about it up there. But I really think that's really a neat thing that that man, everything that he did, where he'd go down south during the winter and build homes and then he'd come back up this way, I guess, as it got real hot down there.

- [Joe] So he lived in that thing a lot.

- [Gary] Yes, he did.

- [Joe] This room is like a museum within a museum, full of artifacts related to firefighting, including several retired trucks. Now, this heavily autographed truck served as a traveling petition to establish a state firefighting academy.

- They took this old truck, this ol' Mack in here, and they restored this truck and carried it to every county in the state of Tennessee. It went to every fire department, and every firefighter signed it.

- [Joe] Needless to say, the state got its training center, and the petition truck got a permanent home.

- And it just was something I'm really proud that we've got that will always be here. And it's really interesting to go walk around it and look.

- [Joe] Actually this building holds only a portion of the Chief's lifetime collection. So Gary decided to purchase the old Central High School building as a future home for the museum.

- It's such a grand old building, and we're so proud that we were able to acquire that and just be able to kind of restore it back to where it was.

- [Joe] It'll be a fitting tribute to a proud, caring citizen, dedicated fire chief, and guardian of countless local artifacts.

- Everything is here like it was and, in my lifetime, it'll stay that same way. And I hope my son will carry it on and my daughter. And he really believed in Shelbyville.

- Whether you call them albums, LPs, or records, vinyl is back in style again. This resurgence is hitting all the right notes for a Nashville indie record store that's been around for two decades. Laura Faber takes us to Grimey's Records, one of the first of its kind to open in Music City.

- There is something about the ritual of putting a record on a turntable, placing the needle on the vinyl, and hearing the analog quality of an LP, the hisses and scratches, the unclean sound, the warmth, the imperfection itself is making this format perfect again for a whole new audience.

- We sell records, yes, chiefly, any physical recorded media format, just about. We've got books, we've got DVDs and Blu-rays. We've got the little records, the 45s. We've got cassettes, probably an 8-track or two kicking around.

- [Laura] Mike Grimes and Doyle Davis are the co-owners of Grimey's New & Preloved music store which launched in 1999 in a tiny house in Berry Hill.

- I came up with the, or was bestowed with the inspiration to open the record store. I did notice that there was a void. And there was not what I considered to be a Floyd's Barbershop of record stores, i.e., a place where like-minded music geeks could come and like ply their wares, talk to people, and basically, that pre-social media physical hang was something that I really felt people needed in Nashville. And it happened to be physical format, music based.

- [Laura] It didn't take long for Grimey's to outgrow their 600 square-foot house. It reopened on 8th Avenue where the store operated for nearly 15 years, offering all formats of all kinds of music.

- [Doyle] We don't specialize in any one specific thing other than maybe local community. I mean, we do go out of our way to stock a lot of local music.

- [Mike] And a big part of the fabric of the store has been in-store live appearances to support records by national acts and local acts. That is something that was part of the early mission statement also was to basically have a lot of live music in the store. Free beer on Saturdays. ♪ Walking to the south out of Roanoke ♪ ♪ I caught a trucker out of Philly ♪ ♪ Had a nice long toke ♪

- Now in it's third ♪ But he's a heading west ♪ and hopefully last location ♪ From the Cumberland gap ♪ at an old church ♪ To Johnson City ♪ in East Nashville ♪ Tennessee ♪ where Grimey's still hosts ♪ And I got to get a move on ♪ live performances. ♪ Before the sun ♪

- I mean, we were so glad when we found this spot, you know. After we walked in and decided this is our new spot, we realized, okay, the Ryman is the mother church and Grimey's is the other church.

- [Laura] And it's not just mature music lovers buying classic rock albums. The hottest selling LPs these days are Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish. By the way, that younger audience calls them vinyls.

- If you say the word vinyls, it almost immediately gives you away as a newbie.

- It also, if you have a problem with the word vinyls, it immediately gives you away as an old curmudgeon. I just, I'm team vinyls. That's what our young customers call them.

- When you come to Grimey's Records, you're not only here to buy vinyl, but you're also here for the knowledge of the staff. If you like a certain artist, the staff can likely tell you about other artists that you might not know about. The ultimate staff pick, Doyle, let's talk about this. This is your album.

- Yes, it is called the "Jazz Dispensary" series. They do one of these every year for Record Store Day. And a few years ago, they asked me to compile one. And I did the "Dank D-Funk Blend." And Volume 2 has just come out this past Saturday for Record Store Day

- [Laura] Inventory for their preloved albums comes from individuals.

- [Employee] Here's some weird ones.

- [Laura] Prices are fair and affordable, though there is that rare vinyl that can empty your wallet. But to browse through records, talk with like-minded music fans is exactly what Mike and Doyle wanted all along. They couldn't have written better lyrics.

- When I was 11 years old, I decided after I saw Kiss that this would be what I do for life. If it's not playing music, it's working music in some way, shape, or form. That's all I've ever done. And you know, it took a long time before I actually made a really decent living at it, even into my mid-thirties. But the journey was so much fun. I consider everything that I've gone through to just have been a life well lived, and a lot of fun has been had along the way.

- All right, Grimey's, if we can sing this early, then surely you can help us sing.

- I mean, sharing this passion ♪ So rock me mama ♪ with all the people ♪ Like a wagon wheel ♪ that are attracted to it here, ♪ Rock me mama ♪ you know, it's one ♪ Any way you feel ♪ of the most fulfilling things ♪ Hey ♪ I can imagine in life. ♪ Mama rock me ♪

- [Singer] Sound good now. ♪ Rock me mama ♪ ♪ Like the wind and rain ♪ ♪ Rock me mama like a southbound train ♪ ♪ Hey mama rock me ♪

- Well, for the record, that's gonna do it for this "Tennessee Crossroads." Hey, but please check in on our website occasionally, tennesseecrossroads.org. And while you're there, go ahead and download that PBS video app so you can watch your favorite TV shows anywhere, anytime. Well, we'll see you next time. I'm Joe Elmore. Thanks for joining us.

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

- I'm Tennessee Tech President Phil Oldham. Here in Cookville, Tennessee's college town, we are bold, fearless, confident, and kind. Tech prepares students for careers by making everyone's experience personal. We call that Living Wings Up. Learn more at tntech.edu.

- [Announcer] Averitt's Tennessee roots run deep. They've been delivering logistics solutions here for over 50 years. And though Averitt's reach now circles the globe, the Volunteer State will always be home. More at Averitt.com. Discover Tennessee Trails & Byways. Discover Tennessee's adventure, cuisine, history and more Made in Tennessee experiences showcased among these 16 driving trails. More at TNTrailsAndByways.com.