tfor "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> BRANDON: Coming up, meet master wood carver Bob Taylor.

Take a trip to the Anne-Grey Cooperage in Fort Wayne.

Get on the ice with the Circle City Curling Club.

And take a wild ride down Pokagon State Park's historic toboggan run.

That's all on this episode of "Journey Indiana"!

♪ >> BRANDON: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Brandon Wentz.

And once again, we're coming to you from the WTIU Studio in Bloomington.

Up first, we are headed to Bartholomew County to meet master wood carver Bob Taylor.

Producer Saddam Abbas has the story.

♪ >> When I was growing up, it was during the Second World War.

So there was not a whole lot of toys out there.

Everything was being used for wartime.

So I was always making something with my hands, with cheese boxes or whatever you could find, little pieces of wood to work with.

When I started Boy Scouts then, my grandfather had given me a knife when I was 8, and I have a duplicate of that knife that we found years ago.

Then when I was a senior in high school, they gave us an aptitude test of some sort.

The test results came back and they said, well, with your aptitude in mathematics, with your interest in hands and drawing, it looks like to us that you would make a really good pattern maker.

And I said, well, what's a pattern maker?

I have no idea.

So I went home and I asked my dad.

I said, here's what came back with the test, and I said, I don't have any clue what a pattern maker is.

He said, well, I know what a pattern maker is.

My dad was a foreman at Cummins.

I finally decided that wood carving was my -- the chosen element because wood is warm.

If you are doing sculpture in stone, stone is very cold.

It's really hard on your hands; whereas, working with wood is more comforting and more -- and it's easier on your hands.

When I first started out, I was doing three-dimensional carvings, which is what you see on the wall and the narrative slides.

And then I did a lot of three-dimensional carvings for other people.

♪ In 1946, after the war, we had a -- what we called the ball diamond, which was next to the foundry here in Columbus.

And that field was opened most of the time, except when the circus came to town.

And that was our sandlot ball diamond.

All the kids -- neighbor kids would go over there and play ball.

But when it was circus time, the circus would come to town on the train, and then unload within a block there, which was two blocks from my house.

And we would always go over there then, and we would want to water the elephants or whatever, see if we could get a free ticket.

Of course, they would always run us off because they were afraid if an elephant steps on you, it's probably not too good.

But anyhow, that was part of that.

So that was one of my carvings now that I have.

It said in the paper -- I have a clipping that talks about the train coming in and unloading, and it said the train was almost a mile long.

And it was the second largest circus in the United States at that time, which was Cole Brothers Circus.

So all of those memories ended up within my memories also now, and so that's the fun part that you touch other people's memory.

Well, I hadn't thought about that in years, you know, but, yeah, I saw it happen.

♪ Mooney came to Columbus with his carvings in his truck, and that's what I'm carving right now.

I was about 8 years old at that time.

We went to the county fair.

His truck was just inside the grounds of the county fair.

So Mooney would come out on a platform that was connected to his truck, with a little piece of wood, and a knife, and he would make a few cuts in the wood, here and here and here, and make a pair of pliers.

And I said, wow!

I want to learn how to do that.

I told my folks, I want to see him do that again.

They said, well, we're going to go over to the exhibit and look at the 4-H exhibits, and then we'll pick you up on the way back because we were going to go ride a few rides, and then we were going to go to the harness races that they had every year, have some Cracker Jack and go home.

That was our yearly event to go to the fair.

So I'm standing there waiting for Mooney to come.

What he would do then, people would come out and go through his truck, and I think they paid a nickel or a dime, or whatever it was, to see his carvings.

And so then he came back out on the platform, and the people that had gone through were gone, and I'm standing there.

And he said, can I help you, son?

And I said, well, I want to see you do that again.

And he said, would you like to see what's in the truck?

And I said, well, I don't have any money.

He said, don't worry about it.

So he came down off the platform, and took me by the hand and led me through the truck.

And what he had in the truck exhibiting was called the History of Steam.

And it was from the little bitty steam engines, up to the bigger engines, up to the train engines, and even had the Lincoln funeral train carved out of ebony and ivory.

Most fabulous stuff that you had ever seen.

Well, that -- all of those carvings are now in a museum in Dover, Ohio.

♪ I have always accredited God for giving me the gifts of using my hands, and I believe that God does give us gifts, and he expects us to use them.

So that's kind of what I've done.

>> BRANDON: We always think about keeping memories preserved in writing or in photos, but the thought of having a wood carving like that your home for a memory, a moment of your life, I think I would have to pick Harvey, my dog, playing in a park while I was sitting on a bench watching the sunset.

I have a very specific memory of that moment.

In 2020, Bob received the Indiana Heritage Fellowship Award from Traditional Arts Indiana.

Just head to the address on the screen to learn a bit more about Bob and his fellow recipients.

Up next, we're headed north to Fort Wayne to meet the man behind the barrels at Anne-Grey Cooperage.

Producer John Timm has the story.

[ Tapping and machine whirring ] >> Something magical happens when spirit goes into a barrel, and there's really no substitution for an amazing white oak American barrel.

♪ My background is spirits and beverage.

I started working in neighborhood bars and honky tonks in Texas, and I really got bit by the craft cocktail bug.

So I ended up moving to Chicago at kind of the beginning of that scene, and lived and worked in Chicago for almost a decade doing all kinds of bar managing, beverage directing.

I met my wife in Chicago, and we had a daughter.

My wife is from Fort Wayne, Indiana, here, and it's a great city for families.

We moved here, and I had to kind of re-invent myself from being a beverage consultant who wore a suit every day, to being a cooper who works with his hands and swings a hammer all day and overalls.

♪ I'm very passionate about whiskey, and a big part of whiskey, in general, is maturation, and that happens with barreling, barrel age, oak age.

There aren't a lot of cooperages out there, and there was really, like, a craft distilling boom and people were opening up all of those micro distilleries and craft distilleries on a small-scale basis, but no one was making extra barrels or making newer, smaller barrels, or working with those people.

And there was even a barrel shortage for some time.

I started with hand tools learning how to cooper, not even learning how to make barrels in a production fashion, but sitting on a shave horse that I had built, with a draw knife from the 1890s making cedar buckets and piggins and tankards and tubs and churns, all by old-school methods with hand tools and no machinery.

And that's really how I got my start.

Not only did I have to teach myself the lost art of coopering and barrel making, but just having those basic woodworking skills as well, without losing any fingers.

It's really by eye and by feel.

There aren't a lot of machines that can make it a science.

It really is an art.

We have been in business for about three years.

The company name, Anne-Grey, is my wife's middle name Anne and my daughter's middle name Grey.

It's myself and a business partner, who is a friend of mine.

I'm lucky enough that business partner's wife works here.

She's managing partner, and she's a big reason why I can do the things that I do.

We work very well as a team.

We have our full-time guy who is out sanding right now, Jared.

And we have a part-time guy as well that's kind of helping me out.

His name is Jake.

And that's it.

So it's a very small shop in general.

We all come in, and we all do everything.

We make all of our barrels to order.

So we don't have a big warehouse full of barrels just sitting and drying over time that someone is just waiting to buy.

We make barrels specifically for whoever ordered them to their specifications.

People will put anything in a barrel, kombucha.

I have given barrels with neutral oak, and they are aging tea inside of them.

But for the most part, whiskey, bourbon whiskey, rye whiskey.

We sell locally to multiple local different smaller distilleries.

Our purchasers in Indiana are currently Three Rivers Distilling Company here in Fort Wayne, Edwin Coe and Churubusco, and Oakley Brothers in Anderson, but we ship coast to coast.

You know, some of these barrels that we're making in here now are going to New Jersey, and we just had a big order go on the truck and went out to Northern California.

That's what I'm passionate about, is having really high-end barrels that distillers are delighted to use because the flavors that these barrels produce, it's a night and day difference.

It really is.

♪ ♪ It's ready ♪ Yes, it's ready ♪ Got it all prepared ♪ It's finished ♪ It's stunning ♪ Yes, it's great ♪ It's, oh, so ready ♪ So just let it all begin ♪ >> BRANDON: In a day and age where so many things are automated or done by machines, it's really cool to see all of these hand crafted things, like Bob's carvings or these barrels.

Want to see more from the "Journey Indiana" archive?

Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org or follow us on YouTube.

Up next, we're off to Fishers, to learn all about the sport of curling.

Producer Jason Pear has the story.

>> I've heard curling explained as a couple of things, chess on ice, but I like to think of it as a mix of bocce ball and chess.

The goal is to get your color stones in the house, which are the rings.

You want more of yours closest to the center than your opponent's.

And there's a strategy in there with guards and takeouts, and that's where the chess component comes in, is that you are continually thinking two or three shots ahead.

If they do this, what do I do to respond?

♪ >> Hey, Ryan, try and do the same thing.

>> There's lots of chatter.

I'm yelling sweep, don't sweep.

My sweepers are telling me, okay, the stone is fast.

It's hit this, it's picked, it's taken a different turn.

So they are telling me what the stone is doing as it's coming down the ice, and I'm trying to read where it's going to end up.

The goal of the game, believe it or not -- we're so oriented to scoring all the time.

In this sport, it's cool to give up a point.

And actually, there's called having the hammer or not having the hammer.

Hammer is you shoot last.

So you know what you got to do.

If you have hammer, your goal is to score two points.

If you don't have hammer, your goal is to only give up one point so you get that last shot.

So it's really weird.

It's, like, okay, let 'em score.

And that's hard to wrap around your head, especially for new people.

Wait, we never give up points.

Yeah, in this sport you do.

The hardest part is getting that weight down, because the ice changes as the night goes on.

As you breathe, your breath goes on to the ice, changes the conditions, makes it a little slower.

Then it will get a little faster.

The stones get colder as the nights go on.

So they may go faster.

You may find a path, and you wear down that pelt by sweeping so much.

So it doesn't do the thing it did in the third end like it did in the first end.

So it's just continually thinking ahead, adapting to the changes, and then, you know, hoping your shots go where you aim them.

The stones weigh about 42 pounds.

They are a granite that comes from a particular island off the coast of Scotland.

It actually looks like a curling stone from the water.

It's crazy.

But that's where most of the granite comes from, because it doesn't absorb the moisture and break.

The stone is concave on the bottom.

You will see us out there before we started with water packs on our back.

We are pebbling because if we're flat ice, it would be like a big suction cup, it wouldn't move.

There's like a little ridge that goes around, about a quarter inch wide that touches the ice.

Those ride on the bumps or the pebbles.

The sweeping, that melts the ice a little bit in front of stone.

It makes it go a little further and a little straighter.

It doesn't make it go faster.

It just increases the distance.

The slowdown rate is much less.

So that's, you will see us sweep, not sweep, sweep, not sweep, because we are trying to get it on a certain angle or a certain path.

My shoe is a curling shoe.

There's Teflon on the bottom.

It's worse than skating because with a blade you can, like, push and stop.

With these things, you are going.

You don't have to buy the shoes.

We provide all the gear, the stabilizers, the stones, the sliders.

So we provide all that equipment.

We have curlers that are in their teens.

We have curlers that are in their 80s.

It's funny because we have a lot of Canadian members that grew up in Canada, and it's part of their gym class growing up in grade school, high school, things like that.

So it's second nature to them.

Here, you know, this is kind of new.

I mean, I saw it back in 2008 in the Olympics.

I called USA Curling, and said, hey, I want to start a club.

The stones are a grand a piece.

I need how many?

16.

That's 16 grand.

And then you got to find somewhere to put all of these circles.

So I gave up.

And then like a year later, I found out there was a club starting, and I joined.

The next growth for us is getting dedicated ice, because we're renting this ice, playing on what is called arena ice which is curvy and wavy and all that.

Dedicated ice is smooth, level.

We'll be able to host some tournaments, get some other colleges involved, get some high schools involved, and then hopefully get more of the general public.

Most of who you see tonight are just the general public.

People like me, saw it, loved it, said, hey, I want to play.

I know it sounds odd.

We are a USA Curling member club.

If four people here get together, play the right tournaments, win the right tournaments, they can get to the Olympics from here.

I mean, that's a very long shot, but it's doable.

Just a little more.

I love the camaraderie.

I've had the same two or three teammates for three or four years, and really, it's about the only -- we don't see each other a lot in the off-season, but when we play, we have a lot of fun.

We joke.

We have some adult beverages as we play.

We have them after.

It's called broom stacking.

Just hanging out, having fun.

It's like a -- it's an extended family.

It really is.

Talk about, oh, if I would have made that shot, and man, that was a terrible shot.

And, yeah, how bad the ice is, and it's the ice's fault that we screwed up.

So, yeah, it's just like the 19th hole in golf.

I mean, we are a very casual club.

We are not out for blood.

We just have a lot of fun.

I think that's the big thing is it's a blast.

It's a hoot.

I mean, a bad night of curling is better than a good day of work.

>> Great shot, Jeff!

Great shot!

>> BRANDON: You know, I've got to say, I'm pretty handy with a broom around the house.

I think this might just be the sport for me.

You can learn more about the club, maybe even sign up for one of their upcoming learn to curl events, at circlecitycurling.com.

Finally, we are headed downhill fast.

Producer Jason Pear takes us down the toboggan run at Pokagon State Park.

♪ >> Pokagon State Park is located in Northeast Indiana, and we are Indiana's fifth oldest state park.

So we were established in 1925.

We are about 1200 acres, and we are kind of known as Indiana's winter playground since we are so far up north.

We have programs all throughout the winter at the nature center.

So we lead guided hikes and things like that.

When the lake is frozen, people enjoy ice fishing and ice skating.

The toboggan run is probably our most popular winter feature.

>> Woo!

>> So in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps came to Pokagon State Park to build a lot of our structures and put in roads and trails.

And those young men who were working here, they were 18 to 25 years old, and their first winter here, they were just kind of bored and looking for something to do.

They found this awesome hill right outside their camp, and they actually made the first toboggan run, just for their own enjoyment.

And by 1938, the park manager decided to open that up to the public.

In 1940, we added a second track.

At that time, it was refrigerated by manually putting ice on the track.

So they would have to cut ice out of the lake and pack it down on the track.

So every time it would thaw, they would have to repeat that process.

So in 1970, the track was refrigerated.

So now we have technology, where we spray the track with water, and it cools itself from the inside out.

♪ So you walk your sled up to the top of the tower.

Our staff up there will help seat you in the toboggan.

They will kind of go over the rules with you.

>> All right, guys, no leaning, no reaching, no waving.

If you lose something, like a hat, let it fly.

We will get it for you and stay seated until the sled comes to a stop.

Got it?

Got it?

>> And then they send you down.

You are going to go down a quarter mile track.

From the top of the tower to the end of the track, there's about a 90-foot vertical drop.

So you are on the toboggan for 20 to 30 seconds, and usually average speed is about 35 miles an hour.

I always compare it to a roller coaster in the wintertime.

So you kind of have the butterflies in your stomach when you are right at the top and you are looking down and you can see that first big drop.

♪ It feels so much faster than it's really going, and that cold wind hits your face and kind of takes your breath away a little bit, but it's thrilling.

It's a lot fun.

It's a tradition for a lot of families that come here.

Christmastime, you know, they might have a family gathering, and they make this part of that tradition.

So we hear from people that have been coming back year after year now with their children and their grandchildren.

And then we hear from a lot of folks that it's their first time going down it.

We had a family here last week from Florida, who had never done such a thing.

And so that was pretty thrilling for them to be able to go down the toboggan.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, I think they would be thrilled.

You know, they spent so much of their time building a lot of our other structures, that are certainly important and well-loved, but the one thing that wasn't meant to be open to the public is the one thing that we're known for.

So I think they would just be thrilled that now 100,000 people ride it every year.

[ Laughter ] >> Woo!

>> Oh, God, that was a ton of fun!

>> BRANDON: You know, I just said that curling was the sport for me.

But seeing something where all I got to do is just sit back and relax and enjoy the ride, I think maybe that's my calling.

The toboggan run operates regardless of temperature through March 1st and you can get all the info at in.gov/dnr.

Just search for toboggan run.

And as always, we encourage you to stay connected with us.

Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

Before we say good-bye, let's spend a little more time with the Circle City Curling Club.

♪ >> My name is Andrew, by the way.

I'm originally from North Dakota.

I have been curling for, oh, about a dozen years or so, and I love it.

It's my favorite sport.

It's so tremendously fun, and we are so excited to be able to share it with all of you.

[ Laughter ] ♪ >> All right.

So let's go through how to curl.

Okay.

So quick tour.

First -- okay.

So we're all going to be using the left side of this hack when we are throwing.

Okay?

And then underneath our left foot is going to be where the slider goes.

Start with a little forward motion.

Hips come up, and then this goes underneath my belly button.

Excellent!

Excellent!

Very good.

Very good.

Very good.

>> Lift up, and then when you come down into it, sink into it, and push out with your leg.

>> Okay.

Good.

Good.

Good.

Let's try one more time.

♪ >> Sweep, sweep, sweep.

Yep, yep, hard!

Hard!

Real hard!

Whoa, whoa, off, off, off.

Yep, got to go hard.

Yep, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Whoa, whoa, off, off, off.

>> When you are sweeping the stone, you are taking the curl off of it.

>> They will often either time from one hog line to the other hog line, or they will time from how long it takes a stone to go from here to the hog line.

>> And the only rule is don't burn the stone.

>> You will know if it's a little light or a little heavy, and then you will be able to immediately jump on and start sweeping the stone.

♪ >> Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Okay.

Right off, off, off.

Perfect.

Excellent.

Excellent.

All right.

Fantastic.

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by Columbus Visitors Center, celebrating everywhere art and unexpected architecture in Columbus, Indiana.

Tickets for guided tours and trip planning information at Columbus.in.us.

And by WTIU members.

Thank you!