Episode 3808

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

- [Underwriter 1] 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.

- [Underwriter 2] 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.

- [Underwriter 3] 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.

- [Underwriter 4] 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 about amazon.com.

- This time on Tennessee Crossroads, we'll visit a happening hotspot in Pulaski. We'll go old school in an old school, grab a cup of cowboy coffee, and meet an artist who pushes the boundaries of photography. That's the lineup for this week. I'm Laura Faber, thanks for joining us. As our loyal viewers know, we are always on the lookout for fun places to grab a bite. Cindy Carter recently found a spot that fits the bill in a beautifully restored building in Pulaski.

- [Cindy] You know good food, friendly attitudes, and a dash of experimentation can usually be found in a kitchen, any kitchen. Some say it's the cornerstone of any home. So it only stands to reason that in Pulaski, Kitchen two 18 has become a cornerstone, a gathering spot for this Tennessee town.

- [Jake] I feel like literally the heartbeat of the town, like we get just such a huge amount of love from the people around us.

- [Cindy] Jake Pfeiffer opened Kitchen 218 in 2019.

- [Jake] Let me add some wings. Buffalo, just standard buffalo?

- [Cindy] And believe me, Jake knows his way around a kitchen. When he was 15, his family bought and took over managing the Corner Pit BBQ, which was already a beloved staple in Giles County. From the actual barbecue pit to customer service, Jake log lots of hours over the years, which laid the foundation for cooking up something new in downtown Pulaski.

- The goal was that when you stepped in the door, you felt like you left Pulaski and stepped into Nashville. We wanted to be that like you had stepped into the city. We were bringing what we left town for back to town.

- [Cindy] Jake and his wife Michelle were intentional about making this place an upscale dining experience that was still cool and casual enough to foster community engagement. And it's all driven by the kitchen's tasty menu.

- So we serve high quality burgers, wings, and flatbreads. All of our meat is raised in county, so we do all local farm sourced. We do steak nights twice a month that come from those same local farms. We try to do elevated high quality burgers that have quality locally-sourced ingredients wherever we can. And then same with the flatbreads and the wings as well. We actually smoke the wings through our corner pit location and then bring them up here and then flash fry them here. We do a lot of rotating food specials as well, so we try to bring in different specialty things. And same thing there is bringing in stuff that you wouldn't necessarily get to see or try here otherwise.

- [Cindy] Circling back to those high quality burgers, Jake says the most popular item on the menu is the 67 Fastback with pepper jack cheese, bacon, and a locally sourced pepper jelly. There's the cat burger, which features whiskey bacon sauce and fried shallots. The litigator is a special burger that moves on and off the menu and includes basil, pesto, and mozzarella.

- [Jake] Yeah, if there's something you can imagine on a burger, we've probably tried it or we'll try it.

- [Cindy] There's flatbreads filled with fresh ingredients. Wantons with, yes please, pimento and cheese, delicious specialty cocktails, a beehive honey bomb dessert. And of course, I mean, how could there not be some savory barbecue?

- 'Cause it's kind of a nod to where I came from is that like we do like the brisket grilled cheese and the pork grilled cheese and our loaded nachos and fries, and we bring all that in from the barbecue pits. We get to kind of pair off each other with that, and that's been very nice and worked really well.

- Big Machine Distillery, Sundrop, Hannah Hollers, Peach Bourbon Jam, and Daddy Bob's Pimento and Cheese. What do they all have in common? Kitchen 218 and Giles County. The restaurant says it's important to support local businesses and incorporate local products into the menu. Co-owner Danielle Kirkpatrick says the key to success comes from listening to both customers and staff. Sure, everyone's got an opinion, but a lot of good ideas blend together in this kitchen.

- Even if it's something that has been done before, like, "Hey, let's do fish and chips." "Okay, but let's do it our way. Let's put a little twist on it." And so we'll have a little powwow, talk about it, and put our menu together.

- Danielle and her husband, Josh Kirkpatrick, jumped into Kitchen 218 when Jake's initial investors jumped out during COVID. The Kirkpatrick's owned a contracting company and knew virtually nothing about the restaurant business, but believed in this concept.

- So then Josh came in and... Sorry.

- It's okay, keep going.

- Breathed just an incredible life into this project.

- [Cindy] Josh sadly passed away a week after the restaurant opened, but his smile and his aesthetic linger. You'll find his expertise in the restaurant's floors, woodworking, lighting design, the historic building's original tile ceiling, even in that popular keg burger, which was Josh's idea.

- He was able to enjoy it and he was really happy being a part of this and seeing it grow.

- Lunch meetings, dinner meetings, community event planning, it's all just kind of centered out of this dining room, which was the dream. That's really what I wanted to see happen was that you could become just kind of the meeting place of the town.

- [Cindy] Warm and vibrant, Kitchen 218 gives downtown Pulaski a dining experience that simply shouldn't be missed. For this community, the kitchen is most definitely open.

- It's a place for everybody to come together within a space and share a meal and talk, and it's the heartbeat of community.

- Long before classrooms were equipped with computers or air conditioning, many kids learned their reading, writing, and arithmetic in one room schoolhouses across the country. Most of them are long gone, but Ed Jones visited one a few years back that has been restored to its former glory.

- I am 88-year-old. I was a kid, I started school as a six-year-old here and went through the eighth grade and had the same teacher. Back in those days, like say in the '30s, and it was hard times.

- [Ed] Carl White has seen his share of hard times, and so has the area surrounding his alma mater, Doe Creek School, whose story began during the hardest time in our history. The Civil War turned brother against brother, and Henderson County was no different. This picturesque property started as the final resting place for two brothers who paid the ultimate price in that conflict. Shortly after the war, a church was added to the cemetery, which became a blessing for generations of children in need of an education, as Carl's brother Joe can tell us.

- Back in those days, public buildings was few and far between, so they started, at some period, having schooled here.

- [Ed] A school that molded young minds from the first through eighth grade for decades. And after all those years of instruction, there's one name that still echoes inside Doe Creek School.

- Elmer Duck.

- Mr. Elmer Duck.

- [Speaker 1] Mr. Elmer Duck, that was my great uncle.

- [Speaker 2] Who taught this school for 54 years.

- Back then, if you went through the eighth grade and was a good student, so on and they had some kind of exam, if you could pass that, you could get certified to teach. He did that and he taught for years and he was a good teacher.

- Oh, he was a fine old man, lineate old man. Back in those days, he'd paddle. But I never knowed, but two boys that got paddling, they very well needed it.

- [Ed] After Elmer bid farewell to his final pupil in 1949, the school itself was left in need.

- After that, the old building just sat here for a long time and no repairs or nothing. It was getting in bad shape when we restored it.

- [Ed] Restored, bringing us to the second part of our story, which also began with the Doe Creek Cemetery and a chance meeting between Freddie Kennedy and friends.

- Jerry Taylor and Bill Snyder came down and were installing two veteran markers, and we just kinda looked back here at the old building and it was in bad needle of repair.

- And they asked me, "Would I help him get it restored?" So I called Mr. Steve McDaniel and he called Mr. Carol van West and we got it going.

- [Ed] The going was tough, but as the old saying goes, "The tough got going." One of the go-getters was Betty Gurley-Hughes, whose father was a student at Doe Creek.

- Michael Gavin, who was with the MTSU Center for Historical Preservation, supervised the restoration of the building. With his help, I did the research and did the script for the Tennessee Historical Commission marker. We have it on the National Register of Historic Places. So even though Michael is no longer with us, he played a big part in the restoration, and we probably wouldn't have the restored school today were it not for him.

- [Ed] This humble backwoods building is recognized as Tennessee's oldest existing log school and has become a great source of community pride. That pride is showcased the first Saturday of every October as the community and dignitaries from across the state celebrate Doe Creek Day.

- Oh, the doors that little school has been closed for many, many decades is still educating today.

- What amazed me is the amount of response we got out of the people that had either been to school here or had relatives that did.

- I was really thrilled by seeing it fixed up that way. You don't know how something like that, what it means to you until it's gone. ♪ We'll see the lights ♪

- [Ed] Attending the gathering, you get the feeling that Mr. Duck is looking down with pride at what's become of his beloved institution, his legacy, and the legacies of Carl and his fellow classmates will live on in the little one room schoolhouse near Doe Creek.

- Up next, Tammi Arender takes us to a Java joint in Rutherford County that's off the beaten path, but has become popular thanks to its menu, its music, and a catchy name.

- The very beginning was the name. Actually, I heard someone say Rhinestone Cowboy, but when I heard it my third year, I heard grindstone. I said, "Well, that'd be a great name for a coffee shop." And then as much as I travel, I never go to the main coffee shops. I'm not gonna name any names, but I always was just intrigued by 'em.

- [Tammi] Grindstone Cowboy is the creation of country crooner Craig Campbell, since he and his wife Mindy live in the tiny town of Eagleville, population 804, they knew they wanted it located in the middle of this little map dot. Well, at first, Mindy wasn't sure she wanted it at all. She laid out her criteria for Craig.

- I did tell him, I said, "You find a location in Eagleville. You find it a half a mile away from my house. It has to have a drive through, and we have to own the building." And I said, "You give me those." And I said, "I'm in."

- [Tammi] So this building in downtown Eagleville became available, and they went to work on renovating. And Mindy set her mind to designing the cowboy decor.

- So I'm originally from Colorado, and I grew up on a ranch, and I lived in a one story log cabin, so I only know rustic ranch. So that was my style. So we just kind of went with what the building was like, like our wall is the original wall, and we just kind of stripped it down to what it originally was. And yeah, and then I just pulled in my wagon wheels and my cowhide rugs and just made it feel more rustic.

- Her upbringing was very ranch style, very rustic. Her family raised elk and buffalo and trained race horses growing up. So a lot of this is her out of her brain. I had a couple of things she let me have. The cowboy sign was mine. The hallway to the bathroom was mine. The stage and the sound system is some of my touches. But for the main, like all the colors and the leather and the barnwood and the tin, that's all her.

- [Tammi] So it's vintage vibe of old coffee grinders on the wall and wagon wheels that welcome each visitor, give it a friendly family vintage vibe while taking you back in time.

- [Craig] The vibe, you bring up the vibe. That was the one thing we had control over. We couldn't control how good the food was gonna be. We couldn't control how good the coffee was gonna be, except for putting our heart and soul in it. But the one thing we knew how to do was create a cool spot, a good space, a vibey space. We wanted you to feel like you had been here a thousand times the first time you walk in. We wanted you to feel at home. We wanted you to just have that. And I feel like we nailed that.

- I think sometimes coffee shops get a reputation of being very trendy and uppity, and we wanted it to be more of your like good old boy coffee shop, just kind of feel like family. And so like I have two girls and all their friends come in. We have a Bible study, we have two Bible studies. We have a bunch of just groups that come together. And that's basically what I wanted. I wanted people to work out of here, get a break from the house and just come hang out.

- So when you first walk in the door, you see this black floor worn with a lot of character. There is a reason for that. It came from the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. Some of the biggest names in music and the Broadway stage have performed on these very planks and wowed the huge crowds. Now, the crowds are much smaller, but the entertainment is still crowd-pleasing. Often, Craig will perform, but he also invites his musical friends to stop by. ♪ Just outside town ♪ On this night, it's Ty Herndon. For the Campbell's, the music is as important as the menu.

- I always wanted just a place to play for myself, my wife. But as we've gotten older and we have kids that are also showing signs of wanting to be in the music business, or not necessarily the business, they love singing, this was important, having the stage, so that they could call it theirs. And they didn't have to ask permission to play. They can just play and sing whenever they wanted to and always have an audience.

- [Tammi] Craig has had nearly a dozen songs on the country charts, but his hits today are on the menu board, from the Jalapeno Pimento Cheese to the Cowgirl Salad, or the Lucky Charms cake. This kitchen stays busy, and occasionally, even Craig is put to work in the kitchen. And don't forget about the coffee. From just drip to outlaw lattes, they can craft a cup of caffeine to your liking. They partner with the Frothy Monkey just down the road in Franklin to get their Java. And Mindy didn't have a restaurant background, so she had to do her research to get this business off the ground.

- I mean, I drink my coffee black, so I don't even go to any coffee shops, drink fancy lattes, nothing like that. So I just kind of Googled and then I met a lady at our church and she owned a coffee shop in Shelby Bill, and she let me shadow her for a couple weeks. So that really kind of eased my mind so I could figure out a little bit of how to do it. And then I just researched a lot and asked a lot of questions.

- [Tammi] So it's not likely you'll see a rhinestone cowboy in this little Java joint in rural Rutherford County, but you will hear some good music and get a great cup of coffee. Or is it a fabulous meal and a cup of Joe?

- We thought we were opening a coffee shop that offered food, which we actually ended up opening a restaurant that serves really good coffee.

- Remember loading film into a camera and taking pictures that couldn't be seen until you got them back from the developer? Today, the instant images come with unlimited possibilities, as Joe Elmore learned from a master of surreal photography.

- [Joe] When Kate Harold takes a picture, she sees more than what's in the viewfinder. She focuses on a part of what will be a fusion of images. It's all part of the wild world of surreal photography.

- I'm usually trying to think about the person in the image and what's going on in their head and their imagination, and how I can translate that. So that's why I have kids in a lot of my pieces because kids have these huge imaginations. And when they play, they go, who knows where they go? So I try to think about that and try to put that on paper.

- [Jake] In surreal photography, otherwise believable scenes and situations are transformed into waking dreams, even hallucinations. The results are often achieved by combining unrelated elements to create surprising and even humorous combinations.

- [Kate] As much as possible in shooting every element, even the arc, which has Venice Beach with all the animals across it, I shot most of those animals at the zoo here.

- [Jake] Kate says her style draws inspiration from the boundless imagination and curiosity of childhood. This piece, by the way, is called "Shipwreck."

- [Kate] I liked the idea of like just the little piece of tentacle coming above the water and grabbing the kids' boat. So they have their boats on strings, so in their imagination below the water, this gigantic octopus is just like lurking and playing with them.

- [Jake] Kate and her husband Jason often travel to capture images for future projects, although last year, COVID put a stop to that. In fact, she says the pandemic inspired her to create this surreal work called "Hold On."

- I didn't know what was going on, and I wanted to create that feeling of like everything just up in the air. But the women I used in the image, their feet are still on the ground and they're holding the house down. And so when the wind dies down, everything will settle and you move on from there. That is where the sidewalk ends. So it's based off of Shel Silverstein's poem. So I use that as the inspiration. And then I started figuring out how I could piece that together and build a sidewalk that falls apart. And I put the dirt underneath, and then I added all these little details like a bird's nest with birds flying from it underneath the sidewalk. And my dog Lucy is falling through the manhole.

- [Jake] Assembling many little pictures within a big picture is a meticulous process. Well, of course a lot of help from Photoshop. But finally, there's the last step capturing that work on paper.

- I print it really big and do like an addition of 10. And those are the pieces I'll hang on the wall, and then I'll also print some smaller pieces in a larger addition and sell them as more accessible prints.

- [Joe] She and Jason own this little gallery near Five Points in East Nashville where they display and sell their works. And when time allows, she sells at various art shows around the country.

- It's fun. People always say it's like something they've never seen before. And when kids come in my booth, it's really fun, because they're just like, "Whoa, why is that happening? And is that real?" And it's like each of my pieces kind of tells a story. So it's fun to see people react to it and try to put the story together.

- [Jake] Kate Harold could have taken the traditional path to professional photography, but her mind's eye seems to focus on more than conventional pictures. With surrealism, she can share dreamlike scenarios with her audience and stimulate their imaginations way beyond the picture frame.

- I want them to be inspired and I want them to smile. And I think because there's kids in a lot of pieces, it feels nostalgic a lot, and sometimes that brings people back, even as an adult looking at it. Any kind of response is good. If there's no response at all, that means there's something wrong with your piece.

- Her work is out of this world, and 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:

- [Underwriter 1] Students across Tennessee have benefited from over $7.5 billion we've raised for education, providing more than two million scholarships and grants. The Tennessee Lottery, game-changing, life-changing fun.

- [Underwriter 2] 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.

- [Underwriter 3] Middle Tennessee State University College of Liberal Arts help students explore the world, engage minds, enrich lives, and earn a living. More at mtsu.edu/cla.

- [Underwriter 4] 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 about amazon.com.