Episode 3814

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

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [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.

- This week, get ready for fresh donuts, amazing artwork, a Pioneer academy, and Bluff City Barbecue. Now that sounds like a scrumptious show. I'm Laura Faber, welcome to "Tennessee Crossroads." We all know barbecue is a hot topic of debate here in the south. Well now, it seems donuts may also be stirring up a lot of strong opinions. Whether they're fried, baked, yeast, or flour, everyone has a favorite. Coming up in our first story, Miranda Cohen finds a popular place where everyone agrees the donuts are delicious.

- [Miranda] Mr. Kitley Tang is the keeper of a secret family recipe, and luckily, he is abundantly sharing it with everyone in Fairview. In fact, people are driving from miles away to try the treats at Fairview Fresh Deli Donuts. But the closely guarded secret is not mixed up in the sugar and flour. It is the little something extra that the Tang family puts into everything.

- The secret, we make the donut by own family. We create a recipe by a family.

- [Miranda] Originally from Cambodia, Mr. Tang and his family started making donuts nearly 20 years ago. He has been in this Fairview location for almost 15 years. And the name Fairview Fresh Deli Donuts says it all.

- [Kitley] Day by day, fresh. That's why my sign is fresh because we make day by day, croissant, we make, today we make everything to roll it, everything, tomorrow, bake it.

- [Miranda] Mr. Tang sold the donut shop as a way to keep his family all together working in the community that they love. They then perfected a technique to make a fluffy, light, and delicately sweet donut, but without a hint of grease.

- [Kitley] Nothing included in, but we have a technique how to make especially dough, really important. Whenever you make a dough good, that's good, turn donut is good. First of all, no grease in the donut. Everybody can make a donut, but they don't know about the secret. Some people heavy, some people floppy like us, are floppy. No grease in there

- At Fairview Fresh Deli Donuts, you know you're gonna get a great donut, right? But what might surprise you, they also make delicious handmade croissants. The family has a secret recipe. They are buttery, they are flaky, and they are delicious all on their own. But you can also get lots of add-ons. You can add many savory breakfast options to the light and airy croissant, like bacon, egg, sausage, and cheese. But perhaps the biggest surprise on the menu hails from the Lone Star State. That's right, a big Texas kolache, handmade right here in Tennessee.

- This with the jalapeno flavor. It's not that hot, but you taste it. You're gonna know that what it is, huh? We sell a lot of those.

- [Miranda] The sweet or savory yeast-spread creation can also be filled with cream cheese or meats, but it is the plain and simple donuts and dozens of flavors that keep the loyal customers coming in.

- Some people come here every morning, they just come to get donut. I have a apple fritter, I have cream cheese, strawberry cream cheese, and I have a chocolate cream cheese. And the donut, we create all kind like sprinkle something, cinnamon, cinnamon twist and a long john.

- [Miranda] And about that apple fritter, it is one of their best sellers. Like everything, handmade fresh every single day.

- The best one, the most is apple fitter, glaze and a chocolate. It's kind of like every customer is different, they love all kind, but the most clay and chocolate, the chocolate maple, we make my own.

- [Miranda] The fresh baked on site goodies will sell out nearly every day. So go early. Simple ingredients with a simple concept. Their family baking for your family. And the community has embraced them.

- Tennessee, the first year, my wife and I, scary, but now, now we love Tennessee, Tennessee is the best place to live.

- Good morning. I'm good, how are you?

- [Miranda] Some of 17-year-old Angelina Tang's, very first memories are watching her parents bake and create for others.

- They both are very outgoing and like they will get the job done, they will. I've seen the amount of potential that my parents had, and even if they've been here for multiple years, I just never really understood the popularity until I actually saw it for myself when I started working here.

- [Miranda] And as the next generation, she is making her own kind of donuts. She created the Fairview Fresh Deli logo.

- I made created the donuts myself, like the base, the icing, the sprinkles. I did all that by myself, and I thought maybe adding a little arch would make it like artistic. And that's kind of how I made it.

- [Miranda] But even more than the donuts and the big breakfast croissants or even those fritters, the customers keep coming to see the Tangs themselves, enjoy a moment of their morning, and share in their joy.

- When you come here working with your family, it's a fun time to have, and getting to spend time with your family even at work is such a blessing in my opinion, yeah.

- They like the product first, the second, they like the service. So we are polite, not just lip to tongue. We're inside, we got family come from Cambodia. But we good, good family.

- Thanks, Miranda. Her love of music brought her to Nashville decades ago, but it was her artistry that kept her here and has allowed her to enjoy a long career. We think you'll agree that Tracy Ratliff's work is something special.

- For me, I have ideas constantly, constantly, constantly, that they have to come out, and I'm always to be doing what I want to do, which I do think it's a privilege, but it's one that you work for.

- [Laura] Artist Tracy Ratliff has never done anything other than art, a talent she discovered she had a knack for as a child. And you can't define her work by just one medium. She is well versed in many. Graphic design, illustration, animation, and painting using oil and acrylic. Texture is a big component of her art.

- [Tracy] Like the piece that we'll look at now, I'm using house paint and spray paint and things like that so that I can get more of that into it because I really like that. And then once I get that to a certain point, I coat it. It's got an acrylic coating on it, and then that's oil on top of that. And so that lets me, with acrylic and stuff like that, you have to work faster because it dries up. But with oil, you have longer. It is a personal piece. And of course it's another musician that probably a lot of people here haven't heard of, Matt Perry.

- [Laura] Tracy is also a teacher at the college from where she herself graduated from, Nossi College of Art.

- So I'm gonna kinda look at, I'm looking in your file here.

- [Laura] Tracy teaches everything from business for creatives, graphic design, animation, and advertising. She is brutally honest with her students who dream of a creative career.

- And that's why I tell my students all the time, you really gotta want to do this if you wanna make a living in it. This is just a lot of work.

- This piece is a collection of some of Tracy's past work. Everything from her graphic design, her illustrations, and actual paintings. What you'll notice is that music is a common theme throughout.

- If I have any musicality, I don't know where it is, but I was supremely into music. Almost as far back as I can remember that when I would listen to it, it would make me see things or a imagine a scene or imagine something happening visually.

- [Laura] A small record company brought her to Nashville.

- [Tracy] My dream was to do CD covers, well, record covers, record covers, CD covers, things like that. And what I ended up doing musically a lot of was poster work. Like I do a lot of concert posters for concerts and things like that. Screen printed concert posters by hand, that kind of thing. So that was really kind of how I ended up doing the musical part of things.

- [Laura] And she still creates concert posters, like this recent work for Les Kerr. She was recently commissioned to create several pieces for a new affordable housing development in Madison, Tennessee.

- So the pieces are to represent Madison, Tennessee, and the history of Madison. So of course I went straight to the musical history of Madison. That's James Brown and Mother Mabel Carter and Hank Snow.

- [Laura] All artists who recorded at the old Starday Studios once famous in Madison.

- What I'm interested in with those pieces is that I feel like when people are performing live, something happens to them, of course, when they're creating the work that they're creating. And what I'm trying to do is sort of capture what's happening there specifically in that moment. Most of my paintings when I paint musicians are, they're in the act of singing.

- [Laura] You can find some of Tracy's other work on social media. Her Paisley Pen Creative Instagram page gives you a taste of her style and use of color. And something else about Tracy. As well as being an award-winning artist, She is also a competition archer. She's been a member of the US Barebow team twice.

- There are some weird kind of similarities though between the mindset of Barebow archery, I think, and art. And by the way, in archery, it's the artsy side of archery. Barebow is no sights, no weight assistance. So you don't have the gears or anything on the bow to help you with the weight. Whatever you pull back is what you hold. So basically, just as it says, Barebow, there's nothing on the bow but the bow.

- [Laura] After more than two decades of making a living as a creative and teaching others to do the same, Tracy Ratliff is grateful every day to call herself a working artist.

- There's nothing like that little brain buzz that you get when you create something and when you know that it's complete. And then when I started teaching, teaching is the only other thing that felt the same way. I wouldn't do another job.

- We take public education for granted nowadays, but that was not the case back in the 1880s. Thanks to the efforts of Northern missionaries, Pleasant Hill Academy became one of the few educational bright spots in Tennessee. Ed Jones has the story of a museum that pays tribute to life and learning on the plateau 140 years ago.

- [Ed] In the sleepy hamlet of Pleasant Hill, just across Main Street from the elementary school stands Pioneer Hall, the last remnant of Pleasant Hill Academy, the first real school this area ever had.

- The American Missionary Association after the Civil War turned their attention to education of mountain children and American Indians. They established over 500 institutions.

- Now I'm taking over here as a boy's dorm. This was made for two and one desk, and there's no closet because they didn't have that much clothes. There's some hangers on the back wall, and that's basically all they had was their clothes that they hung up there.

- [Ed] The only time students walk the creaky hardwood floors these days is on field trips to learn about simpler times and a once grand educational institution built by a man on a mission. Sharon Weibel is curator at Pioneer Hall Museum.

- The AMA sent the Reverend Benjamin Dodge, a congregational minister from New Hampshire to come to Pleasant Hill to establish a school and a church. He was known affectionately as Father Dodge. He came with his wife Phoebe, and his daughter Emma, and they lived here for the rest of their lives. The first building that Father Dodge constructed was the academy building across the street from Pioneer Hall Museum. The second building was this building, Pioneer Hall, which opened as a dormitory in 1889. The school accepted boys and girls and any age, and many of the students who came were older than what we might think of as grade school and high school students, but it was their chance to get an education.

- [Ed] And what an education it was. The AMA employed teachers from the finest schools across the country to share their knowledge with the children of the Cumberlands.

- [Sharon] The academy had an excellent reputation academically. Students could go from the academy to college at the University of Tennessee or to Berea College. They were very well educated in a classical traditional education, but because of the work program, they also learned life skills.

- [Ed] Those life skills not only helped to better prepare the students for the future, but they were essential to keep Pleasant Hill Academy open.

- [Al] They had a blacksmith shop and a lot of woodworking is done, but all the stuff in here was handmade.

- [Ed] Docent Al Dwinger walks visitors through displays of items made and sold by the students to keep the academy afloat.

- I don't want this history to be lost to our children. You need to know your history. You need to know your roots.

- I hope that visitors take away a sense of the creativity and the courage and the hard work that was needed for people to flourish here.

- Thanks, Ed. When you think of Memphis and think of food, chances are you're thinking about barbecue. As a Memphis native, Danielle Allen knows where to find the real deal, and she did just that a while back when she sampled the smoky goodness at The Bar-B-Q Shop.

- [Danielle] Laughter. Good food.

- [Customer] The ribs, they're my favorite.

- [Danielle] And a stellar reputation.

- There's other places that have more of a name, but in my opinion, I've eaten at all of them, and this is the best place in town. So I would recommend anybody that's looking for good barbecue to come here.

- [Danielle] These are some of the things The Bar-B-Q Shop on Madison Avenue is known for. It's not their only claim to fame though. They're the originators of barbecue spaghetti, which has become a Memphis staple.

- The good thing about eating Memphis barbecue is you're never gonna go to a Memphis barbecue place and go, "Oh, that's kind of like this place," or that's the second barbecue shop. Everything has a complete different taste, and I've never eaten a Memphis barbecue spaghetti that was even close to the next one. To be honest, our barbecue spaghetti, it's sweet, it's oily looking, but no one else will have the flavor that we have in those noodles.

- [Danielle] One thing that is duplicated in this restaurant is quality. The owner of The Bar-B-Q Shop, Eric Vernon, ensures that every bite is just as delicious as the one before it.

- We have to make sure we're maintaining the way we cook our meats and cook our ribs, the way we make that coleslaw and the barbecue sauce, and the way we do the barbecue spaghetti. I mean, even daily, my job is to go back there and take that barbecue spaghetti throughout the day to make sure it has the right consistency, thickness, and taste that it should have. And that's it. I'm gonna taste the coleslaw. I'm gonna taste the beans. I am to look at the meat when it comes off in the morning, and it is supposed to meet the same criteria that we've had every day for years.

- [Danielle] That consistency is vital to the success of The Bar-B-Q Shop. With so many barbecue places in the Bluff City, their commitment to getting it right every time makes them stand out in the Memphis crowd.

- [Eric] I think all Memphis barbecue sauces give you a smoky flavor, but ours is a little bit of sweet and a little bit of tangy mixed together with that smoky flavor. And I think that's what sets us apart from everybody else.

- [Danielle] That one-of-a-kind sauce is made from scratch every day. It's then used to base, to marinate, or add flavor to meat that just falls right off the bone. But arriving to this delicious final product is not always a quick process.

- [Eric] We actually start cooking in the evening and it cooks through the night, and then we take it off in the morning when we get here. It's a 12 hour process for our beef brisket, our Boston butts. Ribs of course is much shorter, but anything that we're using like that, we smoked it for 12 hours.

- Of course, one of the most popular items on the menus are the ribs. Now you can get these with a dry rub or drenched in delicious barbecue sauce or just do half and half, but no matter how you order them, one thing remains the same. Each bite is infused with a delicious flavor that's been around for decades.

- [Eric] The Bar-B-Q Shop is, at this point, three generations. And if we go back to the first generation, you have Brady and Lil's, and Mr. Brady was a cook on the railroad and he had a love for cooking. But his two favorite loves within cooking was pasta and barbecue. And so he set out to open up his own barbecue restaurant.

- [Danielle] Brady and Lil's made quite a name for itself in the '60s. In fact, their unmistakable barbecue flavor struck a chord with a legendary music group.

- Brady and Lil's was a big place for Stax musicians. Isaac Hayes, you had Willie Mitchell, producer of Al Green. And actually when the Beatles World tour came to Memphis '63 '64, they went to visit Stax, and they went to visit Willie Mitchell. And Willie Mitchell said, "Hey, go to Brady and Lil's." And the Beatles came and bought up all the reels Brady had.

- [Danielle] Another customer who was impressed with the food was Eric's father, Frank. He ate at Brady and Lil's often, and he was there in the '80s when Mr. Brady decided to hang up his apron for good.

- Mr. Brady and my father were good friends. And one day they were having a conversation and Mr. Brady said, "Hey, I don't wanna do this anymore." And my dad said, "Look, I want to have my own restaurant again. I wanna be my own boss. I wish you would consider mentoring me and showing me everything about barbecue." And they made a deal. And actually when they went to sign the papers, he stopped and went in the other room and got the biggest Bible I'd ever seen and said, "Hey, if you are going to run this restaurant, you are going to need this Bible to make it through."

- [Danielle] Frank kept the Bible and many of Mr. Brady's practices. He did, however, add a new flavor to things. They changed the name to The Bar-B-Q Shop and moved to a new location. Eric grew up watching all of this and helping with the business, but he was cooking up a different type of career.

- [Eric] I was gonna get my business degree, I was gonna be a corporate guy. And right when I graduated, my dad told me that he was thinking about selling it, and I said, "You know what? I'll give you a year of my life." Since then, we've been on "The Bobby Flay Show," we've been on "Andrew Zimmerman" twice. We were hosting the New York Times 36 hours in Memphis video. We've just achieved so much since that time period and kind of never looked back.

- [Danielle] But just like his father, Eric wants to make sure some things never change.

- [Eric] My dad's advice was, "I know you want to expand on things. I know you have degrees and you can keep us in the present. But don't change anything that's working." And I'm a big believer of that. I've seen a lot of restaurants go through generational changes and people come in and change some of the core things that were working and it doesn't last. So I'm never gonna mess with this barbecue sauce. I'm never gonna mess with the way we cook it. I'm never gonna mess with the way we prep things and make things daily. That's always gonna stay the same.

- Thanks, Danielle. Well, that'll do it for this week. Don't miss our Crossroads Marathon next Thursday on Nashville PBS. And please pace yourself on Turkey Day. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

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

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [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.