Episode 3915

- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is brought to you 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.

- [Narrator] Discover Tennessee Trails and Byways, where adventure, cuisine, and history come together. With 16 scenic driving trails, you can discover why Tennessee sounds perfect. Trips can be planned at tntrailsand byways.com.

- [Narrator] The co-op system in Tennessee consists of independently owned co-ops, driven to serve farmer owners, rural lifestyle customers, and their communities throughout Tennessee and in five neighboring states. More at ourcoop.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.

- This week, we'll visit a one of a kind bakery in Columbia, we'll tour the ranch of a country superstar, and sock hop back to the 1950s. Oh, and we'll meet a man named Creape, who's really a nice guy. Speaking of nice guys, howdy, I'm Ketch Secor, welcoming you to "Tennessee Crossroads." We all know that feeling when we want a little something salty, and then we want a little something sweet. Well coming up in our first story, Miranda Cohen travels to Columbia, Tennessee, and finds a hidden gem where you can satisfy all your food cravings.

- [Miranda] B's Salty and Sweet in Columbia, Tennessee began as a love story, a love story that sparked in the lush hills of Guatemala, where David and Bethany Boran met. Fresh out of pastry school and having worked at some of the most prestigious bakeries in the country, but his heart was calling him back to Guatemala.

- You know what? It'd be great to go to Antigua and open my own place there. And that's what I did, and I just fell in love with it. Really, it's a wonderful place, wonderful people.

- [Miranda] Next, he fell in love with his wife Bethany, a fellow chef and Tennessee native. And when they moved back to Columbia, Tennessee to open their own eatery, that age old debate, salty or sweet, inspired the perfect name, B's Salty and Sweet.

- In my downtime, I'd rather eat a donut or a cookie. She's the savory person. She likes the salty things. She likes the chips and salsa, she likes the sandwiches, the soups, the pretzels, that sort of stuff. And I like the sweet things. And so like how, you know, we wanted our name to represent that we were gonna do both sides.

- [Miranda] So B's Salty and Sweet was up and running, serving a huge variety of savory and sweet items, all handmade fresh every day.

- [David] I think one of the more signature items are our homemade pop-tarts. So we use our pie dough that we make, and we like doing everything in house. So our strawberry pop-tart, we make the dough, we make the strawberry jam in-house, we make the glaze, we handle it all. So the pop-tarts, the croissants, I love croissants, and they're a labor of love. We sell a lot of cookies. We sell a lot of muffins. Our cakes, our cupcakes. We make as many things as we feel like we can make

- [Miranda] And taking cues from their loyal customers, the Borans noticed more and more people were seeking healthier choices and safer options for food allergies. So they made the decision to go entirely vegetarian, but they weren't about to compromise on taste.

- [David] As the population in Columbia was looking for either healthier things or dairy allergies, egg allergies, we slowly moved more of our items to be vegan. We don't consider our things to be good for vegan or our food to be good for vegetarian. We believe it stands on its own and it just happens to be vegan. Our focus primarily is on the vegan component. We do have vegetarian items, but there's, you know, none of our baked goods have any dairy. We only have one bread with egg in it. So people who are avoiding those things, people who have to, people with Alpha-Gal, people with dairy allergies, egg allergies, they can come in and they know they can look at that pastry case and they can have it all, and that it's safe for them.

- Also it's a safe place to eat for many people with dietary restrictions, including myself. So it can be stressful to go out to eat.

- [David] We think our things are delicious and filling and satisfying. And again, like the vegan, they just happen to not have meat. We still have eggs, we still have real cheese, but we have a vegan option for both of those if you don't want it.

- One of the most popular items here at B's Salty and Sweet is their sourdough bread. It is made from a starter David perfected years ago. It is rich and dense and hearty, all thanks to some special techniques and a special organic stone-ground flower.

- [David] And what's different about it, it's a denser flower, it's a darker flower, so everything has a weight to it. It holds onto moisture better, but it looks different, and it sets us apart from other places.

- [Miranda] And that sourdough will be sliced up at lunchtime and served on delicious and creative sandwiches, or as an artisan bun for the ever popular meatless burger offerings.

- I love their burger. The Aloha Burger is amazing, bagels are always a hit. Every Sunday we come in for donuts, and then the Guatemalan breakfast, like literally anything.

- [Miranda] And the menu is filled with an array of coffees, sourced through direct trade from Guatemalan farmers. And they found a way to give their customers who love their coffee and their inspired flavors a closer look at the process. Several times a year, they serve as tour guides on a trip back to Guatemala to see where it all started.

- [David] We bring up to eight people. And so now we go two to three times a year. They learn about the history of Antigua, Guatemala. They meet a coffee farmer and look at his or her coffee plantation, go back to their home, and learn more about the process.

- [Miranda] And if you can't make the trip, B's Salty and Sweet has started posting big communal dinners as a way of bringing the community together around the food they love.

- And we seat everybody around long tables and they just, we bring them, you know, some drinks to start the meal, and then we start bringing out the food. We explain the dishes, we explain why they're important to the culture, the cuisine.

- With all the beautiful sunlight, which really was a vision of radiating the beauty of their food, the joy, the openness, the beauty, nature.

- [David] Knowing that something we set out on the counter or put on a plate for you, it was made by the people you're watching. Maybe it was just baked an hour ago. I think we care a lot about what we do. I think our passion shows through, and we're real mindful about what we use to create things.

- Thanks, Miranda. Well who doesn't love a good rags to riches story? There's one that your whole family can experience about an hour outside of Nashville. It all started when Loretta Lynn bought a small country town, called at home, and then invited fans to come visit. Now sadly, we lost Loretta shortly after Laura Faber did this story. But her ranch is still a popular spot for her fans, and I'm one of them. ♪ 'Cause you ain't woman enough to take my man ♪

- [Laura] She is one of the original queens of country music. 24 number one hits, 11 number one albums. Loretta Lynn is a music icon. She also owns a town, which has become one of the top tourist attractions in Tennessee.

- This is a three part business, kind of all mashed in together to make one unique giant business here in rural Middle Tennessee. We're a campground, an event center, and a tourist traction, all based around Loretta Lynn.

- [Laura] Anthony Bruto is the general manager of the Loretta Lynn Ranch, which spans more than 3,000 acres in Humphreys County.

- I've always viewed the ranch as this event venue, this unique place that we can do all sorts of different things. We are at the 40th year for the Amateur National Motocross Championship. We are at the 38th year of our horseback week-long trail rides. We're at the 20th year of the MTDR Motorcycle off-road rides, the Jeep event that just happened, 1,200 Jeeps and 3,500 people, you know, they come out, and they get to enjoy the property like I did, like our family did and, and exactly how Meemaw wants it to happen.

- [Laura] Yep, Anthony called Loretta Lynn Meemaw. He is her grandson.

- For me, Loretta Lynn, there are two different versions of Loretta Lynn. They're the same, but they're also different. I have Loretta Lynn as a grandmother. She is just like everybody else's grandmother. When I got in trouble, I would get spanked with a wooden spoon, fly swatter, whatever was within arm's reach. But when it comes to Loretta Lynn as a stage performer, she is one of the most awarded ladies in country music. She is. I mean, she's won pretty much every award that you can, been nominated for every award that there is, she has everything from Grammys to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She still to this day is rocking out. She's got six decades of music under her belt. She's got 60 studio albums.

- [Laura] The 18,000 square foot museum is full of clues about Loretta's life, family photos, her many awards, her gorgeous dresses. Some weigh 30 pounds. You can even walk through her tour bus.

- All right, so this was the original bus of my grandmother, of Loretta Lynn. They say that there's about 3 million miles on this bus.

- [Laura] Tayla Lynn is also one of Loretta Lynn's grandchildren. An entertainer and ranch ambassador, she tours with Conway Twitty's grandson performing many of the duo's songs.

- I think that one of the most important things for me in my life is to preserve the legacy of Loretta Lynn, of my grandmother.

- [Laura] The property itself is of historic note, with many landmarks from the 1800s. The grist mill is one of three buildings on site that sit on the historic register. You could buy everything from baby formula to your coffin here, and it was one of the first hydroelectric plants in Tennessee.

- [Anthony] They say that people used to come from miles in horse and buggy to come and see the lights lit up at night. For a short period of time, it powered the town of Waverley.

- [Laura] Loretta Lynn's ranch is a special destination created for all of us, combining the outdoor beauty and history of small town Tennessee, and a snapshot of a superstar's well-lived life.

- My job is to preserve the legacy of Loretta Lynn Ranch. It's really a blessing and an honor.

- I feel so blessed to be able to be the face of sort of Meemaw's, to be able to step onto her social media, to step on the ranch's social media to say, "Hi, I'm the host, welcome to our ranch." Like that is not something that I take for granted or that I don't thank God for every day that I get to be out here and stand up and say, "This is my family's ranch, and we welcome you and we love you. And isn't Meemaw awesome?"

- Thanks, Laura. Few time periods bring back sentimental feelings like the 1950s. The birth of rock and roll, classic cars, sock hops, and malt shops. Well if you'd like to take a walk down memory lane, there's a restaurant in Alcoa that'll let you do just that. Gretchen Bates has the story of Hot Rods '50s Diner.

- I'm just looking for the step back in time feel with chrome, the neon signs, the Elvis records. I'm just trying to give you a more of a retro true '50s diner feel.

- [Gretchen] Move over, H.G. Wells. Ray Schwartz built a real time machine. From the jukebox to burgers and fries, everything about Hot Rods '50s Diner is designed to whisk you back to the days of malt shops and Marilyn Monroe. But Ray didn't always have it made in the shade. His first gig was working with amphibians.

- [Ray] I was a dishwasher and my breaded frog legs, and that's because nobody else wanted to bread them, I guess. And I was the lowest man on the totem pole.

- [Gretchen] Ray finally forgot the frog legs, leaped out of Squaresville, and into his dreams.

- [Ray] I always loved cars. You know, I always loved neon. And you know, the retro look.

- Every inch of real estate at Hot Rods is jam packed with '50s memorabilia.

- [Ray] I just really wanted to do something that was fun and I went to a lot of the local little antique shops and stuff like that and picked up, you know, whatever I could find that would fit, you know, the retro feel that I was looking for.

- [Gretchen] But you don't just run across authentic booths and chairs in an antique shop. Those babies are custom made.

- [Ray] They're actually modeled after a Chevy. You know, I think it's more like a Bel Air type backseat is the look they were going for.

- [Gretchen] Muscle car memories are nice, but it's the menu that's guaranteed to get your motor running. And believe me when I say there's a whole lot of shaking going on.

- [Ray] We make our shakes the old fashioned way where we, you know, we hand spin them. They're not from soft serve ice cream, they're actually hand dipped ice cream, 16 flavors of hard dipped ice cream. We have a lot of desserts.

- And I'll be honest with you, I've not had many of the desserts, because usually after the hamburger, you don't really have much room for anything after that.

- [Gretchen] Hamburgers? Yeah. Different styles? Hot Rods might have one or two, or 80.

- [Ray] We have over 80 burgers. We have cork burgers, we have black bean burgers. We have chicken burgers.

- Among the 80 burgers you can sink your teeth into at Hot Rods, this monster is the most famous. It might even be your ticket to the wall of fame.

- [Ray] We have a challenge called The Chubby, and that's why all the pitchers are on the walls. It's three patties that are 11 ounces each, for a total of 33 ounces. And they have to eat it with a pound of fries within 30 minutes. And they get their picture on the wall and they get a free shirt that says, "I got a Chubby at Hot Rods '50s Diner."

- [Gretchen] Now as you can imagine, the Chubby Challenge isn't for everyone. But every once in a while, a rare breed of dietary desperado moseys into town looking for a beef with the Chubby. A valiant effort.

- [Customer] Gave it my best shot.

- [Gretchen] Any advice for future challengers?

- 30 minutes sounds like a long time, but it's not a lot. That's not enough time. You gotta just eat.

- [Gretchen] Just eat, wise words, especially at Hot Rods, because burgers and shakes are just a fraction of the whole delicious story

- [Ray] Food wise, if you're not looking for a burger, we have all the traditional '50s diner food, including hot roast. Everything's made from scratch. We have killer grilled cheese, chicken pot pie. I mean, we have just about everything you would expect to find in a '50s diner.

- [Gretchen] And a few things you may not expect to find. Allow me to introduce The Hog.

- [Ray] We take a pork loin, we cut it, and then we'll pound it, and then we season it with salt and pepper. And then we also marinate it in a egg buttermilk batter, and then we bread it and pan fry it. And it's huge.

- [Gretchen] Huge aptly describes The Hog, as well as the menu.

- [David Bills] Our menu is so expansive, there's gonna be something for everyone, and everything is, you know, homemade. It's made in house. If you're ordering even onion rings, we're cutting them and we're battering them to order. So everything's very fresh. The patties are made probably an hour or two before you order them. No matter what you get, it's gonna be good. And there is something for everyone.

- [Gretchen] David Bills is the manager at Hot Rods. This young man takes great pride in his work, and you can taste it.

- We have plenty of options that we make from scratch in house. Anything from the marinara or the chicken pot pie soup to the burgers. We have chicken tenders, but we don't just buy chicken tenders. We take chicken breasts, we cut them to size, we use those scraps, we grind them to make burgers. It's all very efficient, very fresh. There's not anything that you're gonna get here that was made in, you know, a factory or something like that. It's all the real deal, local, good, yummy food.

- At the end of the day, when we start closing up and everybody's just happy and leaving here and, you know, we see all the comments on Facebook and everything and all the reviews, just gives me a great feeling. It actually makes me, you know, I have a great night's sleep after the day like that.

- [Gretchen] Chances are after eating at Hot Rods Diner, you'll sleep well too. Just wait until you get home, please.

- That hamburger's probably about the size I am, so I don't think, I might get it down, but getting back to the house would be the problem.

- People will come approach me and tell me how much they love the restaurant. It really means a lot to make an impact in the community. And just to have a place where people can come and make memories is really special.

- Thanks, Gretchen. We've had several requests to bring back a fan favorite. So we end this episode with a flashback that will conjure spooky memories for some of you. We ventured into the Crossroads Catacombs and dusted off this classic with Janet Tyson from 1988.

- I'm looking for a ghost from Nashville's not too distant past, so I thought I'd start my search here. Now many of you may recall a goofy ghoul who haunted Channel 4's airwaves back in the early '70s, Sir Cecil Creape. Now those were the days before the bizarre popularity of slice and dice horror movies, when fright flicks left a little to the imagination. Maybe we can resurrect Sir Cecil and return to a time when fright was all in fun.

- [Announcer] This is "Creature Feature," exploring the realm of the unknown.

- [Janet] From 1970 through '73, Channel 4 ran a Saturday night late movie called "Creature Feature." Those sometimes corny, sometimes camp, old scary movies did attract an audience. But "Creature feature" owed its popularity to its host, Sir Cecil Creape.

- Did someone call? Oh, there you are. Trick or treat.

- [Janet] Sir Cecil lived in the catacombs beneath the WSM studios, unearthing old movies, screening them on his dilapidated projector, and inserting his own little mini dramas between the reels. For old time's sake, I decided to find out what's become of Sir Cecil. I tracked him not to some dark damp tomb, but to this sunny tree-lined Nashville Boulevard and the home of his creator and alter ego, Russ McGowan. Russ's century old historic house is really more like a museum, filled with memorabilia and machines from the bygone days of film, radio, television, and the world of entertainment. It was Russ's flare for the theatrical that inspired the character of Sir Cecil Creape.

- Well, he's 180 degrees out of phase. He sleeps during the day, he's up at night. Anything that's good is bad, anything that's bad is good. Up to a point. He's never mean, he's never vicious, and he always fails. He really is a cross between the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Oliver Hardy. I mean, he gets frustrated. That sort of thing. And generally, that's not me. I'm a little bit more laid back than that.

- Well, did you ever feel like you had created a monster?

- I couldn't go out and cut the grass. The neighborhood children would come, they wouldn't say anything, they wouldn't do anything. Just stand out in the street and stare. Then when they stop doing it, then you start worrying about it. So I got where I can appreciate a little better. And I've learned one thing, that real talent never refuses an autograph.

- I'm about to create a disguise to where as I go knocking on doors tonight, I hope to disguise my natural charm sufficiently so that I will be a frightening figure.

- [Janet] "Creature Feature" was aimed at the high school and college age demographic, but it had quite a large children's audience as well.

- One little boy wrote in that his mother would not let him sit up till 10:30 on Saturday night to watch a show. So he would go to bed at 7:00 and set his alarm clock and wake himself up, watch the show, then go back to bed. That's the only way she'd let him watch it.

- That does it, Sir Cecil has blown his cool.

- I'm more technician than I am or was. I shot the first color TV commercial on film in Nashville back in 1956 at Channel 4, believe it or not. So I'm more used to being on that side of the camera than on this side.

- [Janet] But Sir Cecil made McGowan a local celebrity. Russ went on to appear in theater roles, but he's best loved and remembered as the silent long-suffering husband Elrod in the Elrod and Elvira commercials for the Tennessee Department of Tourism.

- Lovely family, didn't you think, Elrod?

- Yeah, but don't them Yankees dress funny?

- I'm still recognized from both Sir Cecil and Elrod. We have not done anything with the Elrod and Elvira. We're hoping that we'll do something with it because I think it's still a popular character.

- [Janet] So until Sir Cecil is summoned by some programming executive, Russ rehearses his lines.

- Did someone call? Oh, there you are.

- Well, we've run out of time for this week, but please check out our website and watch us anytime with the PBS app. Hope to see you again soon.

- Hi, I'm Mike Maddux, owner of Moonshine Mountain Cookie Company in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we were blessed and honored to be featured on "Tennessee Crossroads." As soon as the episode aired, our online orders took off. And for weeks, our lobby had people coming in telling us that they saw us on "Tennessee Crossroads." So thanks to "Tennessee Crossroads" and PBS for featuring small locally-owned Tennessee companies like Moonshine Mountain Cookie Company, and all the others across the state.

- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is brought to you in part by.

- [Narrator] Students across Tennessee have benefited from over seven and a half billion dollars we've raised for education, providing more than 2 million scholarships and grants. The Tennessee Lottery, game-changing, life-changing fun.

- [Narrator] Discover Tennessee Trails and Byways, where adventure, cuisine, and history come together. With 16 scenic driving trails, you can discover why Tennessee sounds perfect. Trips can be planned at tntrailsandbyways.com.

- [Narrator] The co-op system in Tennessee consists of independently owned co-ops driven to serve farmer owners, rural lifestyle customers, and their communities throughout Tennessee and in five neighboring states. More at ourcoop.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.