Episode 3802

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- This week on "Tennessee Crossroads," we check out an exciting new attraction in Franklin. Miranda Cohen finds a grit shop that doesn't sell grits. Cindy Carter visits a cafe serving oatmeal instead of grits. And Susan Watson has the nitty gritty on a Nashville reservoir. If you are looking for a show with true grit, you found it. I'm Laura Faber. Welcome to a new season and a new chapter of "Tennessee Crossroads." Our first story is a perfect mix of old and new. Downtown Franklin has a new history and culture center that's focused on telling the stories of the surrounding area. And while you might be tempted to call it a museum, it's so much more. It's an historic building that dates back to 1905 and it sits just off the square in downtown Franklin. This is the old, old, old jail of Williamson County. Of course it doesn't house prisoners anymore, but it does hold their stories and the stories of many others too.

- This is the original 1905 Williamson County Jail. All the original brick you see around you, it's original to the building. The room we're sitting in right now was part of the sheriff's residence that at the early 20th century, the sheriff actually lived with his family in the county jail so we know that their living quarters were the front part of this building, the downstairs and upstairs parts, and then the jail cells were all in the back.

- [Laura] Talk about keeping your eye on the prisoners. Historian Nat Taylor is the Managing Director of the Moore-Morris History and Culture Center of Williamson County.

- Built in 1905, activated, as the county jail right around then, and then this front part added on just a couple years later for the sheriff's residence, and it was used as the county jail until the late 1930s when the building right next door, where the Heritage Foundation Williamson County's headquarters are currently located, that was the old, old jail and this is the old, old, old jail.

- So it's got three olds.

- Exactly.

- [Laura] Thanks to the Heritage Foundation of Williamson County and lots of donors, this is 6,000 square feet of state of the art interactive exhibit space, dedicated to telling the story of Williamson County in Franklin. Franklin native David Garrett is board Chair for the Heritage Foundation.

- It's a place where history really does come to life because one thing we wanted was it to be cutting-edge technology because people today respond to museums differently. And so when you come in here, it's sort of like a "Harry Potter" movie. The portraits talk to you, holograms come up, but we wanted to take in all the history of the Middle Tennessee area, not just Civil War 'cause a lot of places address Civil War. We touch on it here, but we go from indigenous people to the present day.

- Layered maps explain how white settlers transformed the landscape before the Civil War. A diorama describes Tennessee's first railroad in Williamson County. And stories of the Franklin Theatre, Gray Drugstore, and the Old Walter Pyle Hospital come to life, literally. Tyrus Sturgis, Chief Officer of Engagement for the Heritage Foundation is about to show me how. So Tyrus, would you say that the technology is one of the most unique things about this center?

- It's one of the things that make this place so special. One example is our living portraits, which are motion activated. Take a few steps forward and see what happens.

- Okay, here we go, this is Calvin LeHew, one of the founding preservationists of Franklin.

- My name is Calvin LeHew and I was born and by country store out in .

- History very much matters. This is a town that is all about placemaking, about historic preservation, about history.

- [Laura] Bari Beasley is President and CEO of the Heritage Foundation of Williamson County.

- [Bari] You come in and you kind of think and feel you're in a museum, but it is a living, breathing history and culture center, so not only can visitors come in and experience everything in every room and all of the interesting technology and talk to the jailbirds in one of the places and go in the experience room and so many interesting things, and then there's a whole nother side of the business here in that, in addition to it being a history and culture center, we've created every room and every exhibit has been built where it can be turnkey and it can turn into event space. We want people to build their memories here.

- [Laura] You can actually record your own personal history up in the storytellers lab on the third floor, or maybe you'll get lucky to get a root beer float when visiting. But the exhibit that everyone talks about is the immersive experience room. The culture center sits on the land where White's Tavern used to be and Benjamin White even appears to tell his story, all taken from historical records. And there's more.

- I'm always really moved by Freeman Thomas' portrait in the experience room. My research wheelhouse is the Reconstruction Era and his story is really compelling. He was enslaved here in Franklin and he talks about when the Union Army first took over in Nashville, just kind of how excited they got and they ran to the Union troops for their freedom and then went to work for them, helping build forts in the area and then enlisted as soon as they allowed the African Americans to join the Union Army, he signed up on day one and his narrative just is so moving where he talks about what an experience that was for him and like the doors that he saw were gonna open for him in his brand new life.

- [Laura] It's a new way to teach history, this blend of old and new.

- I think it's a great way to really understand the heart and soul of the community 'cause that's really what you get from, it's not just history that's stagnant, it's why this community is the way it is.

- [Bari] I hope that visitors come to this town, or locals come here, and they spill back onto Main Street, and particularly visitors, and they have lunch somewhere and they say, "I didn't know..." fill in the blank, whatever it might be. I hope that it is a place that is inspiring and I hope it's a place that people wanna replicate. There's just nothing like it when you're in a historic building and so that's what we do every day at the Heritage Foundation. Our whole mission is about saving places and stories that matter.

- If you've watched our show for a while, you know we love to spotlight unique artists like the one you're gonna 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.

- [Brian] 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 wanna 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 was 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' tall fish boy sculpture for the Sounds Stadium. 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?

- [Brian] I had the community, had kids do little drawings and so 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.

- [Brian] 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' 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 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 a little story within the story and just kind of little things that people can continue to find.

- As most of us know from experience, working with family members can be rewarding on good days, and less so on others. Well, Cindy Carter found a pair of sisters who sure know how to work together at a little cafe in Campbellsville.

- Ready .

- Order up. All right, all right, all right, nice.

- [Cindy] No matter what time you drop by, there's always a lot going on inside the Campbellsville Cafe. Maybe that's because the food is so good. Maybe it's because the small cafe has just nine tables inside, high-demand tables.

- One veg.

- One veg.

- [Cindy] Or maybe it's because the two sisters who run this enterprise are so darn charming.

- Put some love on it.

- [Cindy] Heavy on the Southern charm.

- Bye y'all.

- Thank y'all.

- [Cindy] Judy Garrett and Dolly McConnell know most of their customers. They grew up in this area and have known them for years, which means they knew exactly what to serve their friends and neighbors when they took over this cafe.

- It's really, it's nothing fancy, you know, it's just home and we want everybody to feel at home and basically, right?

- Yeah. They come in and we want 'em to be at home. I know there's somebody somewhere that's going, "No girl, that's not the way to do that."

- [Cindy] The sisters and staff bustle around their small kitchen, cooking up breakfast in the morning, a menu that's available all day.

- And bacon.

- [Cindy] There's also a lunch menu that features sandwiches and Southern staples.

- You want a bowl of beans to go?

- [Cindy] And every day has its own special.

- It's a fly by.

- Pretty much. Well, we basically have the same thing every week, every day 'cause we found out that the folks don't like change too much.

- They want the set menu.

- We have like, we have country fried steak, mashed potatoes, sweet peas, and rolls on Tuesdays. Wednesdays we do usually fried chicken, but our most popular meal is the meatloaf on Thursdays.

- [Cindy] The ladies say there are two menu items they are exceptionally good at.

- Cheeseburgers.

- Cheeseburgers.

- It's hand-patted.

- It's hand-patted.

- Fresh every day.

- Correct.

- And it's a half a pound.

- And we'll make it any way you want it.

- In any way you want it.

- [Cindy] And the other dish they are very proud of.

- We're fish fryers.

- We're frog leggers too.

- That's what we are, frog leggers, yeah.

- Right?

- Right. We've raised up on cooking frog legs. Our mama cooked frog legs.

- Yes.

- [Cindy] Judy and Dolly were raised here in Giles County, Tennessee, just 11 miles from the cafe. This unincorporated Campbellsville community has been around for generations. Rosemary Dunnavant is a local historian. Her family owns the cafe's building and the empty buildings across the street.

- We have an old bank building that was here for a long time, and then it, I think it served as the post office, maybe even there too. We had a post office here at one time.

- [Cindy] Rosemary believes the Campbellsville Cafe is the key to eventually attracting new businesses to the area, a much needed revitalization.

- Our goal is to bring families together and the prosperity for the county and for our community.

- The cafe's walls are covered in old photographs and news clippings, mostly from Campbellsville High School, which closed in the late '70s. So the cafe is a very special place for locals to come and reminisce about their glory days. It also provides out-of-towners with a glimpse into the community's history. Catching up with friends on community news is as much a part of this cafe as the meatloaf special.

- [Cafe Owner] We have two that come in. Actually, we get here about five and they're here about 15 after. Yes ma'am, 5:30, 15 after 5:30.

- And y'all aren't open.

- No, ma'am.

- But they're that coming in.

- They coming in in. And we let 'em.

- For sure.

- Our meal's up.

- Every day these sisters and best friends work side by side.

- All right, one egg.

- One egg.

- [Cindy] And their chemistry in the kitchen is also in their cooking.

- Loving.

- Yeah.

- It's all made with love.

- Oh yes, absolutely.

- It don't always turn out that way, but it's made with love.

- Sometimes it has some cuss words throwed in it.

- Yeah.

- Hey, you make it work.

- Use a lot of words.

- If you've ever driven down 8th Avenue in Nashville, you may have noticed a massive circular structure overlooking the city. It happens to be a reservoir with a fascinating history, as Susan Watson discovered.

- It's an imposing stone structure sitting high atop a hill in the heart of Nashville, the 8th Avenue Reservoir, whose thick limestone walls contain millions of gallons of water and more than 100 years of fascinating history. Officially designated as an American landmark in 1971, it's not been open to the public for a century, but we've been granted special access. And despite the slightly overcast day, the view of the city is breathtaking. The gatehouse overlooking the reservoir is a charming edifice that was once where workman turned the valves to direct the water to citizens and businesses. It was the perfect spot to meet up with Gilbert Nave, Assistant Water Director, and Sonia Allman, Manager of Strategic Communications, both with the Metro Water Department, to find out about this impressive operation.

- Nashville had actually made several attempts to have a public water supply beginning in the early 1800s. This was not the first reservoir, this was truly the third reservoir, essentially our third water system, and is the one that is still in use today.

- Construction started in August of 1886 and concluded in August of 1889. The Cumberland River is our water source and the water was pumped up here and settled in one side of the basin, and the clearer portion of the water was fed to the city for its use for firefighting and for consumption.

- [Cindy] Yes, it was pretty basic back in the day. With no cover, it was open to birds flying over it and ducks swimming in it, and in the early 1900s, it was a popular spot for a Sunday afternoon rowboat ride, and when the river water settled and the sediment reached a certain level...

- Mule teams with a pond scoop would be hoist over the wall, let down into the area where, of course, just mud and muck, and that would be, the mules would pull that into pond scoops that would be hoisted back over the wall and disposed of.

- [Cindy] After a cholera epidemic, it claimed more than 2,000 lives in Nashville in the early 1900s, sodium hypochlorite began to be used for purification and to mitigate algae.

- Copper sulfate was a agent, a blue crystal that actually would be placed in a burlap bag and you had two gentlemen that would be in a rowboat, one would pull the burlap bag and the water behind them to disperse the copper sulfate with water.

- [Cindy] All in a day's work at the time. But what happened shortly after midnight on November 5th, 1912, was unlike anything the city had ever experienced.

- There was a rupture in the southeast wall, which is probably almost directly behind me. It was about 200 linear feet of wall was displaced. About 25 million gallons of water went rolling out.

- [Cindy] Suddenly people were awakened by a loud noise that sounded like thunder. Water rushed south, down Kirkpatrick Hill, washing people out of their beds and filling homes with mud and debris.

- I was reading one account where one family, actually, he pulled his daughter off the bed, set 'em up in a tree, set his wife up in a tree until the water subsided and kinda kept them safe. Houses were washed off their foundation. People's personal belongings wound up several hundreds of yards downstream. The cause for that was that basically it was a slip. The ground outside the base of the wall at that particular point had saturated with water and the weight of the wall and the lack of support for that just allowed it to slip and it didn't take a lot to slip for it to create that fracture in the wall.

- [Cindy] Miraculously, no human lives were lost, although property damage was extensive.

- We had crews that went out and met with each property owner to determine property losses, damage to homes, and all of that was surveyed and they were paid for their losses. When you look at those ledgers, which we actually still have, it's quite interesting to see the losses they had, everything from coal buckets to chickens to quarts of preserves that they had canned.

- [Cindy] Nearly $100,000 was paid out to cover the personal property losses. It took about a year and $100,000 to repair the wall. Legend has it, some of the stone used to make the repair came from nearby Fort Negley. Now you might be wondering, could this ever happen again?

- We monitor for any kind of slope instability, any instability in the wall itself, or any changes in the groundwater, and we do that every other week.

- John Barnett, a Project Manager With Metro Water Services says the renovations underway will ensure that this reservoir will remain a vital part of Nashville's water system for generations to come.

- The east side of the reservoir is currently in service and holds about 25 million gallons. Once the west basin is completely drained, we'll construct a new basin concrete, cast-in-place structure inside. Once completed, we'll drain the east reservoir and continue the construction into that basin as well. We will also renovate the exterior of the existing structure and a historic restoration on the gate house and the surrounding parapet wall.

- [Cindy] The story of the 8th Avenue Reservoir is an interesting one in the history of Nashville, and now this stone sentinel overlooking a rapidly-changing skyline stands ready to meet the demands of a growing population well into the next century.

- Well, we're out of time, but you can check us out anytime at TennesseeCrossroads.org. Download the PBS app while you're there, and we hope to see you again next week. Thanks for joining us.

- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is made possible 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 and byways, discover Tennessee's adventure, cuisine, history, and more made-in-Tennessee experiences showcased among these 16 driving trails. More at TNTrailsAndByways.com.

- [Announcer] Amazon, a proud supporter of programming on public television. Amazon focuses on building long-term programs that have a lasting impact in communities where employees live and work. More at AboutAmazon.com.