- Got a story that sounds like something out of an old time horror movie.

- Ooh.

- Woman attacked and bitten by a bat.

- Oh, is she a vampire now?

- Well, no.

- I mean, what do you do when you're bitten by a bat?

You gotta see this.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) We're here outside the Contemporary Art Center, where Preston Jackson, an artist, he has his studio right here.

He is really well known here in Peoria area, but he's known nationwide.

- And he's also something of an historian.

He likes to take on projects that involves civil rights.

It's really important to him.

And recently in St. Louis, there was a call for artists to build a memorial regarding slavery and freedom.

- Okay.

- Right downtown, this big project, and of all these, all these entrants, guess who got picked.

- Preston Jackson.

- Oh, yeah.

And they unveiled this monument just this summer.

You wanna check this out.

It's an incredible story.

Let's take a look.

As an artist, Preston Jackson has become an historian.

The Peoria sculptor and painter often strives not only for aesthetics, but meaning and truth, especially regarding civil rights.

Even if painful, the truth is important to him.

- Because it's all for the betterment of womankind, mankind, human beings, that we understand the truth.

And my only tool, or my only weapon, if you wanna call it, is to put it on canvas and into bronze.

- [Phil] That's why he spent five years intensely working on an ambitious and impressive sculpture that was unveiled this summer in downtown St. Louis.

It's the Freedom Suits Memorial, dedicated to hundreds of slaves who went to court to try to win their freedom.

Their stories had gone untold, and many people didn't know about the slaves' lawsuits at all until legal documents were discovered deep in courthouse storage.

Jackson helped bring to light a harsh part of American history, one that he believes many people would like to keep hidden.

- I was very happy to be a part of that discovery, something, I mean, new history, fresh.

- [Phil] About 20 years ago, a clerk at the Civil Courts Building in downtown St. Louis found a stack of old boxes.

They were stuffed with faded and deteriorated legal papers from the five decades before the Civil War.

During that period, St. Louis underwent an economic explosion, fueled by steamboat traffic on the Mississippi River.

There, as Missourians hotly debated the issue of slavery, you could find free Blacks and slaves working almost side by side.

- And this was a state, particularly a region, that was very mixed at the time.

There were a lot of free Black people just wandering around in St. Louis.

The state of Missouri wasn't really sure where it was gonna go during the Civil War.

Some areas had a lot of freedom, some areas had a lot of slavery, and there was a real debate here in Missouri during all that period of time.

- [Phil] At the time, Missouri courts often abided by a legal concept known as once free, always free.

- That once a person had their freedom, and they were entitled to it, no matter how they got it, and a lot of slaves got their freedom by being taken into free states, kept there for long enough to get past that state's residency requirements, and then bought back by their punitive slave owner, and then they were sued on the grounds that once free, always free.

- [Phil] Between 1814 and 1860, at least 330 of these freedom suits were filed in St. Louis.

After the discovery of those documents, Judge Mason poured over them with fascination, amazed at the bravery of the slave plaintiffs.

- Because all of these cases were tried in front of all white male jurors, who also were white male property owners.

You would think that an enslaved person, a Black person, suing a white slave owner for their freedom would have great difficulty even getting in the courthouse door, much less convincing the jury.

- [Phil] Yet more than a third of the plaintiffs won, including Dred Scott, who later would lose his freedom in an infamous decision by the US Supreme Court.

Otherwise, though, successful plaintiffs would leave the courthouse forever free.

- [David] One of the main reasons I felt this memorial was so important, because it also memorializes the judges who made sure that there was equal access to the court.

Despite the low level in society that the slave person had, the jurors who were able to say, okay, white slave owner, we're gonna disagree with you on this one, and we're gonna issue an order freeing this enslaved person who has sued for their freedom.

- [Phil] Judge Mason decided to spread the stories of the freedom suits.

- [David] It became clear that there was an incredible story here to be told.

- [Phil] A steering committee was formed to raise $1 million in private money to build a plaza on empty land outside the courthouse, centered by a memorial to the freedom suits.

Artists nationwide submitted ideas for a memorial sculpture.

St. Louis attorney, Paul Venker, who heads the committee, was floored by a proposal from Peoria's Preston Jackson.

- In my view, Preston's was head and shoulders above the rest.

His was such an in depth approach to the topic, that I've been calling a dynamic visual narrative.

That is it's very rich with imagery, very rich with storytelling.

- [Phil] Jackson would need five years to put together the memorial, which stands 14 feet tall and consists of 85 separate pieces.

The artwork depicts slaves at work, a slave auction, a steamboat, and other vestiges of everyday St. Louis life before the Civil War.

The focal point features a slave appearing in court before a white judge and white jurors, and the base is inscribed with the names of those hundreds of brave plaintiffs.

- [Paul] We are enjoying the feeling that we get when we think about these courageous people, but as Preston would say, there's ugly here.

Slavery is still at the core of this memorial, at the core of his sculpture.

- [Phil] The Freedom Suits Memorial and Freedom Plaza were dedicated in June before a crowd of hundreds.

Now, fundraising continues, still shy of the goal by about $150,000.

Supporters want to add a marker in the plaza to further explain the memorial, then perhaps add an interactive display inside the courthouse, maybe narrated by Preston Jackson.

He is always interested in spotlighting the truth.

- Because, see, we have a way of trying to deny what happened, like, changing the education system, changing everything, you know?

And wrong is wrong, you know?

Good is good.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hi, I'm Phil Luciano, and welcome to my garage in fantastic Worth Township, Illinois.

And we are here for "8-Track Time Machine", when we look back at some of the albums of the 8-track era, and today, sort of at the end of that 8-track era, we go to 1981 and REO Speedwagon's "Hi Infidelity".

Actually, that's not the anniversary we're looking at.

Well, the anniversary we're looking at is that Kevin Cronin realized this year, 'cause I was reading about this, he said, "Holy cow, I've been with REO Speedwagon for 50 years.

That's a long time."

That's what he said.

"That's a long time."

He's 70 years old now.

And how he got with the band is kind of interesting.

So, the band starts at U of I with Neil Doughty and Alan Gratzer, and Neil Doughty gets the name for REO Speedwagon, he walks into a class on the history of transportation or something like that, and written on the board is REO Speedwagon.

It was about a truck that was from 1915 or something like that.

And he's like, "Well, that sounds like a great name for our band," so it becomes the band.

And they've got singers and guitarists, they're coming in and out, and in 1970, along comes this guy from East Peoria, I think you've heard of him, Gary Richrath.

He bums a ride from his biggest fan, his mom, and he vows to where, I'm gonna get into his band, no matter what, and he does.

And so he joins the band and things are getting a little bit better, 'cause he's a good songwriter and things are on the upswing, but then the singer quits.

And so the band's like, well, now what are we gonna do?

Meantime, Kevin Cronin puts out this flyer all over the place, all sorts of cities, and it's called something like the Music Referral Service or something like that, and it's got a phone number.

And Richrath sees this thing.

He said, "Well, I'll call this company."

And there's an answer, "Music Referral Service."

And it's this guy, and Richrath's like, "Yeah, we're looking for a singer for our band.

Do you know anyone?"

And the guy on the other line says, "The best singer I know of, of everyone with our agency, is this fellow by the name of Kevin Cronin."

And Richrath's like, "Well, I gotta meet this guy."

And he goes, "Well, he'll be down to meet you."

Well, it was Kevin Cronin on the phone, he was just pretending to be this music agency.

And so he heads down there, and whatever tomfoolery was involved, the band gets together with Cronin, and he joins up, and they start recording music.

I'd like to say that was a happy ending from there, but things didn't work out for a while, Cronin leaves in '76, and so the band's still in a bit of turmoil.

But he comes back in time to put out their first live album, and then they crank out, "You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can't Tuna Fish" and "Nine Lives", and they're peeling off some hits there and things are going pretty good.

And I don't know where you were in 1980 and 1981, but we just kept waiting, waiting, waiting.

Man, this rockin' band, this REO rockin' band is gonna be coming up with an album sometime, and finally, they come out with "Hi Infidelity".

And I was so excited, I zipped on over to the record store, came back, dropped the needle on it, and at first, I was a little nonplussed, only because I expected to hear blazing Gary Richrath guitars all over the place, and it wasn't like that.

But I played it again and played it again, and I'm like, this is some pretty good craftsmanship, some pretty good songwriting.

And so it wasn't a really rocking album, but it was a really solid album.

And it had six hits that hit the charts, which was amazing considering especially two of 'em weren't even released as singles.

How did that happen?

And the biggest one of all was this one.

♪ And I'm gonna keep on lovin' you ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's the only thing I want to do ♪ - So, this album just goes ballistic on the charts, it's the number one album for all of 1981, and certainly the biggest album of REO's career, and you'd like to think that forever more, everything was sunshine and roses, but Richrath got a little sick of the ballads, Cronin got a little sick of Richrath, they went their separate ways.

But REO stuck together all this time, they're still out there touring, and Cronin says he's putting together a memoir, so maybe that'll come out to tell stories about him and Gary Richrath and Central Illinois and all that good stuff we remember about all that REO material and those songs and everything else that they've given us.

And so we salute Kevin Cronin, Gary Richrath, REO Speedwagon, and "Hi Infidelity", and we'll see you next time in the garage here with "8-Track Time Machine".

(upbeat music) The relationship between Mina Harigae and Travis Kreiter isn't what you'd call par for the course.

Not that she doesn't know about par or birdies, or even eagles, this summer, the California native took second at the US Women's Open, pocketing more than $1 million.

And Travis was right there at her side.

Travis, who grew up in Brimfield and golfed at Bradley University, is her caddy.

Actually, he's more to her than that, and vice versa.

This golf course couple is engaged to be married.

Call it, "Love on the Links".

(gentle music) We caught up with the pair recently at Coyote Creek Golf Club near Bartonville.

They came there to do some friendly golfing while in the area to visit his family.

- I love it, I love the Midwest summers and coming back every summer to play golf here, so, it's my second home.

(laughs) - [Phil] At Brimfield High School, Travis golfed his way to a state championship in 2008 before taking his clubs to Bradley.

From there, he tried his hand as a pro golfer.

By 2016, he was working and practicing at Superstition Mountain Country Club in Arizona.

Meantime, the club extended an invite to Mina, who at age 12, had won her first of four consecutive victories at the California Women's Amateur Championship.

At Superstition Mountain, she could work on her game with the Lady's Professional Golf Association.

- So, her and I were the only two practicing professional golfers there at the time.

And yeah.

And the general manager, actually, the first day she was out, made me go introduce myself to her, and then I asked her to play, you know, nine holes or whatever, so.

- [Phil] And the rest is- - And the rest is history, yeah, I guess.

- [Phil] Actually, the sparks didn't fly right away, but the next year, 2017, they started dating.

And the following year, when Mina's caddy had health problems, Travis stepped in.

- [Travis] And I just picked up the bag and started rolling with it.

- [Phil] At the pro level, caddying involves much more than just lugging around a golf bag.

Professional caddies have to know the course and competition, with insight and advice for each hole and shot, all along, pushing a golfer toward the best possible performance.

- It can be a mental coach one day, it can be, you know, just a fiance the other, it can be, you know, whatever, whatever I need it to be on that particular day.

It's definitely you wear a lot of hats as a caddy, caddy and fiance, that's for sure.

- [Phil] For everyday couples, spending every workday with their partner might be tiresome or challenging.

Was Mina ever worried that the daily togetherness might hurt their relationship?

- [Mina] No, we never really worried about that, but I know that it doesn't work for everyone, for sure.

But it works well for us.

I think just more, I'm more...

I'm the most comfortable with him on the bag.

Obviously he knows me and my game the best out of anyone.

And yeah, it was pretty easy for us from the start, and also, you know, if I'm by myself on tour, it gets pretty lonely out there, so just being able to travel the world with him makes it that much better.

- [Phil] But it's not all whispers of sweet nothings.

As a caddy, Travis knows when to get tough to push her harder.

- At the end of the day, it's still a job, and I have to do what's best for her or us, whatever that is, so I don't have any problem telling her, hey, you need to suck it up, or, hey, you know, it's time to go and, you know, take a deep breath or whatever it might be.

I know she doesn't like it in the moment, but she's thankful for it maybe, you know, later on in the day or two weeks down the road.

I think she appreciates me telling her, instead of, you know, saying, oh, it's okay, you know, you'll get the next one, and you know, just being another caddy out there.

- [Phil] Likewise, Mina doesn't hesitate to clap back at her catty fiance.

- I think in the moment, it's just whatever I'm feeling, so honestly, some days I'm just like, I don't wanna hear it.

Other days, I can take criticism, or you know, motivation more easily.

- [Phil] They also know how to keep things loose.

At practice, it's not unusual for them to make a friendly wager.

- Oh, yeah, yeah, it's very competitive.

You know, as little as I do practice these days, I still am very competitive.

I hate losing, and so does she, so, you know, anything competitive, whether it be five bucks to 100 bucks, whatever it is, or dinner later, yeah, we're still very competitive.

- [Phil] Do the wagers ever spark grumbling among the happy couple?

- I don't think it does, I think it's just more ammunition for him to, you know, trash talk to me the next time.

(laughs) - [Phil] They must be doing something right.

In June at the US Women's Open in North Carolina, Mina shot the best golf of her 12 year career.

- I mean, it was an amazing experience.

But I think just in the moment... That week, we were really, I don't know, it's just we were really in tune, in sync, and very calm, pretty calm for the, you know, magnitude of the situation.

But I feel like we were both really able to focus on what we were trying to do and needed to do.

And it's just, it wasn't super high, it wasn't super low, it was just everything just felt very calm.

- [Phil] Though finishing four strokes from the top of the leaderboard, she took the biggest second place purse in the history of women's golf, $1.08 million.

- [Travis] I mean, to be honest, I don't know if it's even really sunk in, even to this point.

- [Phil] They're too busy to count their winnings, practice and competition roll on.

- [Travis] It hasn't changed anything anyway.

- [Julie] Bats.

For many people, there are no creatures that are creepier.

In part, blame movies.

Even in the infancy of Hollywood, motion pictures played up the horror angle of bats and vampires.

Decades later, movies continued with the theme of deadly bats.

There's the 1983's "Cujo", based on the novel by Stephen King.

A good natured Saint Bernard named Cujo chases a rabbit across a field and into a small cave.

Bitten by a rabid bat, Cujo goes on a murderous rampage and claims the lives of several human victims, all because of rabies.

And in more recent times, few movies got as creepy as, you guessed it, the Batman series.

Bats also frighten Tiffany Curliss, who lives in Peoria County with her three children.

She gets spooked by the way they fly and move.

- I hate bats.

(laughs) They freak me out really bad.

- [Julie] She hates them even more since she's been bitten by a bat, which rarely happens in the Peoria area.

Worse, the bite meant she had to get shots for rabies.

But if left untreated, it is virtually 100% fatal.

(creepy music) Outside her home south of Bartonville, she has seen bats occasionally flip by in the night among the trees, but none have ever gotten up close and personal until a recent evening.

Around 10:00 PM each night, she typically would take her dogs out back to do their business.

But from neighbors, she heard reports of a bobcat sighting in her area.

So to keep the dogs safe, she accompanied them out back with her 14-year-old son.

On their deck, she held a flashlight to keep tabs on the dogs.

- But you're not really supposed to take a flashlight out because it attracts all the bugs, and this bat came straight from behind you, and he kind of swooped in on us.

I shoved my son down and I ducked, and then I told him to run inside.

And by the time I turned around to go inside, the bat had swooped back around, and he came right at me again, and I put my hand up and he bit me right on the arm.

- [Julie] She felt no pain and might have let the matter go entirely until she went back inside and talked about the bat attack with her children.

- [Tiffany] Until we got inside and my kids were like, "Hey, don't bats have rabies?"

And I'm like, "Oh yeah, I guess I should check for bites."

And I looked around, and then my son found two little bites on my arm, they had a little tiny amount of blood, like... - [Julie] So she got online to figure out what to do about things like bats and rabies.

Bat bites and rabies cases are rare locally.

The Peoria City County Health Department reports maybe one case of a rabid bat per year, and one bat bite every one or two years.

Bats often roost in the trees, but sometimes sneak into homes through small cracks or even chimneys and open windows.

According to health experts, if you're bitten by a bat, you should get a series of shots to prevent rabies from taking hold.

According to OSF HealthCare, precautions are necessary even if a bat bite isn't evident.

You should undergo treatment if you wake up and spot a bat in your house, as bite marks often go undetected, plus people can be infected by bat saliva, such as via a bat drooling into an open wound.

Do such precautions seem extreme?

Again, rabies, if left untreated, will almost certainly kill you.

That's what Tiffany Curlis found out as she googled bats and rabies.

- Well, you die from rabies.

I mean, if you don't get treatment immediately within a certain timeframe, you die.

- [Julie] She headed to OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria and got a little nervous.

- I literally thought I was gonna get shots in the stomach 'cause, you know, that's what you heard growing up in the '80s.

It was, you know, you're gonna get seven shots in your stomach, and so that's what I thought I was heading into.

- [Julie] Until the 1980s, treatment involved upwards of 30 injections.

Yes, 30 injections into the abdomen.

Why there?

Traditional injection sites, the upper arm or buttocks, were too small to handle the large volume of rabies vaccine.

Despite such thoughts, Tiffany remained calm as she got to the hospital.

After all, a bunch of shots beat the alternative.

- The first thing they do is they get an antibody which was actually made by another human.

- [Julie] One shot was the rabies vaccine.

Though veterinarians and others who routinely handle animals get rabies vaccine, most people, like Tiffany, do not.

In the instance of an animal bite, the vaccine is administered to fight against the disease.

After an animal bite, the victim is given Human Rabies Immunoglobulin near the bite site to trap the virus from spreading.

The number of shots is determined by multiple factors, including body mass.

Tiffany was given four injections around the bat bite.

The rest of the treatments, one shot each at days three, seven and 14, didn't phase her much, but her friends have marveled when she mentions the bat attack.

- I would not joke around about that, it's actually pretty scary, so yeah.

- [Julie] Unlike those movies of yesteryear, she hasn't turned into a vampire, but she does take more precautions now.

- Now the dogs go out front.

You know, I didn't really wanna have to clean up the front yard after the dogs, but now they go out front because I can clip them from inside and just let them out there.

And the dogs have their rabies vaccines, so they don't really care if they get bit by a bat.

(upbeat music) (bright music) - Hello, I'm Mary Disomma, and welcome to my kitchen.

Today, I'm gonna make guacamole.

Guacamole is my family's favorite thing to eat.

So what we need is some Hass Mexican avocados.

And what you wanna make sure is that they're nice and ripe.

So, I like to just press my avocados, and if they make a little fingerprint in there, then you know that they're ready, you know, to be made into guacamole.

I've chopped up some tomatoes, I've got some chopped purple onions.

Of course you need jalapenos.

Of course, this is to taste.

Some chopped cilantro, salt, pepper.

I put some cayenne pepper in mine.

I love garlic in my guacamole, but you could leave that out if you don't like it.

I add a touch a ground cumin in there.

That's an optional ingredient as well.

And of course, you need to add a little bit of lime zest and some lime juice.

Let's get started.

So we wanna spoon out the avocado, 'cause we're gonna take our fork to that and mash that up.

So now I like to add my tomatoes, my onions.

And start mashing.

You can use a fork, you can use a spoon.

You can even mash these avocados before you add the tomatoes and the onions, but they're all gonna wind up together in the end anyway.

I think I'm making my mother-in-law proud right now.

She's a good teacher.

I think we got a really good mash going on.

And it's just as good if you have a few little lumps in there.

Okay, so now let's add our jalapeno, our chopped cilantro.

Minced garlic, if you like garlic.

Gonna add a little bit of cumin in there.

It just adds a little something, something.

Now we're gonna zest a lime.

This brightens the flavor.

Okay, so now we're gonna put some lime juice in there.

Perfect.

Let's add some salt.

That, of course, is to taste.

Cayenne pepper.

A little or a lot, depending on how you like it.

And some ground black pepper.

Mix it up.

I like to put my guacamole, when it's all mixed and ready, to be served, I like to put it in a nice pestle.

It just makes for such a pretty presentation.

(bright music continues) There you go.

Invite your friends and family over and let's have a party.

- Uh-oh, no parking, police.

Better not loiter.

- Ooh, we better hit the bricks!

- Ah.

See you next time.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues)