>> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> ASHLEY: Coming up.

>> BRANDON: Savor a popular baked cherry treat.

>> ASHLEY: Get on the court with the Paralympic goalball team.

>> BRANDON: Make some happy little accidents at the Bob Ross Experience.

>> ASHLEY: And bow down before the king of desks at the Indiana State Museum.

>> BRANDON: That's all on this episode of -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

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

I'm Brandon Wentz.

>> ASHLEY: And I'm Ashley Chilla.

And we're coming to you from the Vincennes State Historic Sites in Knox County.

In 1800, the U.S. Congress established Vincennes as the capital of the Indiana Territories, an area comprising what is now Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota.

>> BRANDON: And we'll learn more about this fascinating place in just a bit, but first, we're headed to Ripley County, where producer Jason Pear finds out how the Cherry Thing-a-ling became a thing.

>> 6 -- 6 a.m. or something?

Okay.

No problem.

We'll have them done for you.

>> We are a full line bakery, and we make breads and buns and doughnuts and Danish, pies, cakes.

We make a lot of cookies, dipped cookies, iced cookies.

So a lot of everything.

I mean, you can pretty much -- if we don't have it today, you can order it, and we'll make it tomorrow.

♪ >> But for one week each year, Schmidt Bakery in Batesville is home to a lot of just one thing.

The Cherry Thing-a-ling.

>> It's a cherry fritter with a cherry glaze on it, and it sells great!

I mean -- >> So my dad came across the recipe in the early '70s.

It was actually on one of our -- I believe it was on a bag of flour.

♪ He thought, I will make a few of those.

We will do it on President's Day weekend, on that Sunday.

It will be the only Sunday out of the year we're open.

And we'll make them.

♪ So, you know, we made 50 dozen the first year.

15 years later, all of a sudden, it went boom!

>> The fritter fans had spoken, and an expansion was in order.

>> So that's what we did.

We added Monday.

And then that got too big, just Sunday, Monday.

So then it became, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

And then we added Friday, and we added Thursday.

So it's now a five-day event, and it's incredibly crazy!

♪ >> The production numbers are equally crazy.

For decades, Schmidt's was making a few hundred dozen Thing-a-lings each year.

>> Then it started getting into, like, a thousand dozen and 3,000 dozen.

And I believe last year we did 16,000 dozen.

>> That's just shy of 200,000.

>> And I will tell you, they are tired when they get done because it's all manual work.

It's like you put the dough on the table.

You have to chop it up.

You have to weigh it.

Then you have to divide it, and then you have to put it in the steam box, and then you have to fry it, and then you have to glaze it, and then you have to put in the box and then eat it!

>> And all that hard work attracts customers from all over the region.

Some repeat.

>> I'm here every year for the last several years.

My girlfriend turned me on to it.

>> And a whole lot of rookies.

>> This is our first time doing this.

So it is a cherry doughnut as far as we know.

Cherry glazed doughnut.

>> I just heard they're good.

So we're here.

>> This is our first time here.

Hour and 35 minutes so far.

>> We've had three-hour lines.

I think the longest we had last year was a two-hour line, which we didn't think was bad.

One year we had a snowstorm, and we were, like, people aren't going to come out, and we still sold out that day.

Even though we closed at noon.

It's just insane!

>> First time.

>> Yes.

Yes.

From Wilmington, Ohio.

I like cherries.

>> She likes cherries.

We all love pastries.

So -- >> Something to do on a Saturday morning.

[ Laughter ] >> You look at the license plates in the parking lot, and it's Kentucky and Ohio.

And they want to come back and they want to support us, which is awesome!

>> Yes, some people make a vacation.

You know, some live in Wisconsin.

They said we're coming home for Cherry Thing-a-lings, visiting mom and dad and incorporate the Cherry Thing-a-lings.

I said, well, that's wonderful.

>> These days Schmidt's even offers shipping for those who would prefer to skip the line entirely.

>> It started off kind of small.

Like, it was usually like Kentucky and Illinois and Ohio maybe.

But now it's really branched out.

I think there's only a couple of states we haven't hit.

>> Clearly, these things are as popular as ever!

So is a further expansion in the works?

>> No.

[ Laughter ] We could make a limited supply.

You know, on special occasions, but it would be not quite the same.

There's something special with it falling this weekend and just the way it -- I don't know, I think all the energy that is in town and the way people talk about it, it's just a lot of fun.

>> We did it!

Look at this!

All this from there.

>> BRANDON: Now, I haven't talked about this much on the show, but I have a dangerous sweet tooth.

And so our producer was actually able to get us a box of these to try.

Are you ready?

>> ASHLEY: I was born ready for this.

>> BRANDON: Yeah, this is the perfect thing for us, I feel like.

>> ASHLEY: Yes, yes.

Maybe my favorite story we've ever done.

Okay.

>> BRANDON: Mm-hmm.

>> ASHLEY: I mean, how can you go wrong?

Cherry and doughnut and fried and delicious!

>> BRANDON: I will be making an order online next year.

You will have to wait until next year to get your hands on a box of Cherry Thing-a-lings, but you can check out their Facebook page to keep up to date.

>> ASHLEY: Earlier we spoke with Dave Weaver, the site manager at the Vincennes State Historic Sites, to find out a bit more about what there is to learn here.

♪ >> Just outside of Vincennes University stands a row of structures stuck in time.

These buildings are places of historic significance for the city, state and country.

The crown jewel is the original territory capital building that housed the legislature that governed the Indiana Territory, which in 1800 spanned across Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, a large portion of Michigan, and a small part of Minnesota.

>> The capital building itself is important because it's the only remaining structure that was utilized by the territorial government here in Vincennes.

The main floor we're on now, this was the House of Representatives.

All elected by the people of Indiana.

There were nine members.

And then in the upstairs portion then would have been -- what they called the Legislative Council, but it's -- well, it's the Senate really when you break it down.

And there were five members there, and they were still appointed.

In the fall of 1811 is when the territorial legislature first utilized the structure for the territorial business.

>> But the territory capitol building is only one of several historical buildings the Indiana State Museum maintains here in Vincennes.

>> Jefferson Academy is the first school of higher education in Indiana.

It was established in 1801.

The new Governor, William Henry Harrison, along with the Catholic priest here in town, Jean Francois Rivet, actually established that school for opportunities for people and their children to then gain this higher education of the day.

Of course, naming it after Thomas Jefferson, who was the brand new president at the time.

But the school itself eventually would start to begin to sort of change and sort of expand, so to speak.

Beginning in 1806 is when they would officially change the name of the school.

They would become Vincennes University.

The Elihu Stout Print Shop is a building that was utilized by a printer, Elihu Stout.

Came to Vincennes in 1804.

He was originally brought in by William Henry Harrison to print the laws for a new territory, the Louisiana Purchase.

So his initial job is to come here and print 300 copies of the book that is 200 pages long.

But while he is here, during that same time frame that he's printing these laws, he would also then establish the first newspaper in Indiana.

He starts the "Indiana Gazette" in July of 1804, and it eventually becomes the newspaper we have here today in town, which is the "Vincennes Sun-Commercial."

The French House.

Michel Brouillet, was the individual who built that structure.

What makes it significant to Vincennes is that it is the only remaining original French-style structure here in town.

So with the long French history in this region and in Vincennes, homes such as that would have been sort of the norm.

That's what you would have seen if you were traveling around and through Vincennes at the time.

The style of the building, the way it was constructed, lends itself into us being able to sort of help interpret in that early French heritage here in Vincennes.

So what we want to do is to provide this information to folks so they kind of get an understanding of how we go from a territory to a state, but there's a lot of time frames in there.

So there's a lot of stories that can be told.

Vincennes is kind of the jumping off point for Indiana as a whole.

And so, you know, the idea of coming here is getting on that ground floor of Indiana history.

>> ASHLEY: We've been to Vincennes a few times here on the show, and I have some background with Vincennes in my own life, and I have to say, I don't think I ever have noticed these buildings here.

And once you come up on them, they're hard to not notice.

>> BRANDON: Yeah.

>> ASHLEY: I don't know how we didn't quite see these here.

Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

>> BRANDON: Up next, producer Nick Deel takes us to Fort Wayne to throw down with the Paralympic goalball team.

♪ >> In most sports, it's a given that hand/eye coordination is essential.

But here at their training facility in Fort Wayne, the USA goalball team is practicing for a sport that demands coordination between the hands and the ears.

>> Goalball pits three-person teams of blind and visually-impaired athletes against one another as they take turns hurling a 3-pound ball at their opponent's goal.

Defenders have to think fast, using every inch of their bodies to block the incoming shots, which can reach speeds of up to 40 miles an hour.

>> Every part of your body wants to get the heck out of the way of this thing, right?

It's kind of like reverse dodgeball.

Instead of trying to get out of the way, well, you will actually stay in the way of this 3-pound ball coming at you at 40.

So goalball has a very unique start.

It is the only Paralympic sport that was not a derivative of an Olympic sport.

It was created shortly after World War II to assist in the rehabilitation of veterans who had sustained vision loss in combat.

And then from there, it really expanded first in Europe, and it was added to the Paralympic program as a test event in 1976.

In 1980, it became a legitimate Paralympic sport on the men's side.

In 1984, for both men and women.

And now it is played in over 150 countries.

>> While a casual observer may not notice them at first, there are subtle adaptations that give structure to this fast-paced game.

>> All athletes who are playing the game -- because it is a sport designed for folks who are blind and visually impaired -- wear eyeshades that are completely blackened out, and that takes away any usable vision.

During the game, because it is an auditory sport, the bench and the crowd has to be quiet.

The ball -- it's about the size of a basketball, but it is made out of a hard rubber.

It's not pressurized.

So it doesn't bounce very well, and it has bells inside of it.

The bells are used as auditory location devices for the athletes.

They don't run up and down the court.

They stay in their team areas, which are marked tactilely by string with tape over the string.

That allows for actual tactile identification of the floor.

There are goals, as well, that provide more tactile orientation.

>> The adaptations allow the players to orient themselves without needing to see the ball or their relative position, letting them do what great athletes do -- get in the zone.

>> You have to be really prepared for anything.

When you are getting ready to block that ball, that ball can come at you hard and fast, like a fastball, or it could have like a little skip to it.

It could have a bounce to it.

It could have a curve.

And so each one of those types of throws determines how fast you are reacting and how -- how you are going to react, how you are going to, like, change your body position to block that ball.

>> So players throw in different manners.

So, for example, you will see kind of an underhanded motion, similar to bowling.

You will have a way where players are spinning 360 around.

We just call it a spin throw.

As far as the types of throws that you can do, there's smooth balls, which are very fast and kind of hard to defend.

There are bouncing balls which make you need to elevate into the air because you might block a ball that's, like, your head height.

And then there's skip balls, which are kind of in between bouncing balls and smooth balls.

They are very fast.

They have elevation, and they could still hit you and go into the goal.

>> Both the men's and the women's goalball teams are among the best in the world, regularly competing for medals at the Paralympic Games.

However, that success hasn't necessarily led to more recognition.

>> You know, I like to say that goalball is the greatest sport you've never heard of.

You know, people reference wheelchair basketball or sled hockey, and there's that immediate connection to a traditional sport that people have grown up with, that they have that emotional connection to.

When people are exposed to goalball, they see it for the first time, they are enamored.

They love it, and they want more, but there's just not as much exposure.

>> “Here comes Amanda Dennis, she puts the rotation on it, she finds the spin, she finds the gap!

” >> Online streaming of the 2020 Tokyo Games, greatly increased the reach of goalball according to Coach Czechowski.

And now as the teams head towards the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, he's hoping to continue to expand that platform, for the players and the sport that centers them.

>> You are in a world every day where you can't see something or somebody is telling you you can't because of your vision, and you are finally in a space where you can be as good as you want to be.

People always say blind people have supersonic hearing.

I personally don't think that you do, but because you don't have very good vision in your everyday life, you learn how to use your ears better.

And so this is an arena where that is your strength.

>> ASHLEY: This sport looks very intense.

>> BRANDON: Mm-hmm.

>> ASHLEY: I mean, I think I talked on here before, I'm not a sporting kind of person.

>> BRANDON: Yeah.

>> ASHLEY: And I certainly don't think I could do this sport.

>> BRANDON: Oh, man.

It looks like so much fun.

Like just the silence that falls over the crowd, and just focusing in, trying to hone in on the sound of that ball hitting the ground or someone shuffling.

It would be very exhilarating.

>> ASHLEY: Yeah.

>> BRANDON: Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

>> ASHLEY: Up next, producer Jason Pear takes us to Delaware County to experience painter Bob Ross like never before.

>> We are at Minnetrista.

We are a museum and gardens in Muncie, Indiana.

We are the home of the Ball Brothers who operated Ball Brothers Glass that brought everyone that iconic Ball jar.

This was the family home of Dr. Lucius Ball, his wife Sarah, and their daughter Helen.

Lucius practiced medicine here in town.

So he actually wasn't involved with Ball Brothers Company.

After it was a private residence, Ed Ball, who grew up just three houses down here on the boulevard, he was really active with getting Muncie's local PBS station set up.

So Ed was able to kind of help -- help WIPB when they needed a home for a station and a studio, utilize this house which was available to do that kind of straight out of the gate in the 1970s.

Any time anyone walks in, they say, oh, it's so small!

This is it.

So it really just is.

It was the former living room of the home.

>> And through a series of happy little accidents, this living room, turned studio, became the home of a television icon.

>> Hello.

I'm Bob Ross, and for the next 13 weeks, I'll be your host as we experience "The Joy of Painting."

♪ >> Bob Ross, we all love and know him now as that bushy-haired painter on PBS.

Well, before that, he was a kid growing up in Florida.

His father was a carpenter.

His mother taught him to love nature.

He had always been very creative, doing things with his hands, and he really came to love painting.

>> And I would like to share that gift with you.

>> So one thing led to another, and he went from being an in-person workshop, you know, teacher, to having this really great, fun, TV show that everyone loves.

>> So let's do it!

Let's paint an almighty picture right here.

>> In total, "The Joy of Painting" is 31 seasons.

Bob would come into Muncie four times a year.

He would usually show up on a Sunday.

And then on Monday morning, he would come in, and what they would do is they would shoot all of the openings and closings.

>> Welcome back.

Are you ready to do a fantastic picture with me?

>> And then over the next couple of days, they would film those 13 episodes.

Every episode was done in one shot.

>> That's the most fun painting.

All right!

Now -- >> In the first year, they had, you know, about 30 stations around the country pick it up, and each year after that, more and more.

And really within just a couple of years, they had almost the entire country.

>> And I think we've just about got that one finished.

>> Pretty popular straight out of the gate.

We've been working on telling really great stories from our collection, from our community, stories that are connected to our site, and the Bob Ross story was tied to our site.

It's connected to our collection, and it's absolutely a story of our community and a point of pride.

But we really just hadn't done anything with it yet.

>> Well, I think you know what happened already.

>> So what we did is we started talking to the crew that worked on the show, talking to Bob's friends, talking to people that would have been in this space, and really culling their memories about what the space looked like.

If you come to the Bob Ross Experience at Minnetrista today, you will be able to step into that studio space.

You can step right up to Bob's easel.

It's his real easel.

It's part of our collection.

We want to get you right up there next to it, and you can really get immersed in what that really looked like and felt.

And then over in the living room space, you can really see what it was like in the late '80s and '90s to be experiencing Bob at home.

>> Because this is your world, and you can create anything that you want in it.

>> There are six original paintings in the Bob Ross Experience at any one time, and we will rotate those to keep it fresh.

We have 26 Bob Ross originals in our collection here at Minnetrista.

So those will rotate through, and we not only have ones that he painted on the TV show.

We have some that he painted for himself.

>> Okay.

I think we'll sign this one.

>> He wanted his show to be able to live after his lifetime, and in many ways, his message resounds just as much today as it did then.

Be fearless.

Be creative.

Try new things.

For him, it was all about just finding the joy in life, and I think that that's something that just doesn't get old.

>> From all of us here at this station, we wish you happy painting and God bless.

See you next week.

>> BRANDON: I don't know about you, but my artistic skills, I couldn't make one of those paintings in a month, let alone all of those episodes in a weekend.

>> ASHLEY: Yeah, and the fact that it was done in, like, this little living room.

I mean, that just goes to show you that creativity can happen anywhere.

>> BRANDON: Yeah.

>> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

>> BRANDON: Up next, we're headed to Marion County where producer Jason Pear pulls a chair up to the king of desks.

♪ >> Well, I think the phrase that sums it up is their advertising phrase, which is, "A place for everything, and everything in its place."

And the idea was that the successful businessman could have everything within reach.

Sitting at his desk, everything was right there.

>> All of that, thanks to a remarkable piece of furniture manufactured by Indiana's own Wooton Desk Company.

>> They were part of a larger movement towards what's called patent furniture.

If you had a patent, not only did that protect your property legally, but it also signaled to the public, again, that this was something that was new.

It was the latest, and it really was a modern device.

>> By 1874, William Wooton had two patented desk designs.

One was the rotary desk.

But the one that made the company's name was a tall, drop front model, officially titled Wooton's Patent Cabinet Office Secretary.

A hit at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the desk was soon being advertised under a decidedly more marketable moniker.

>> The king of desks was probably the other slogan that you see the most, and as far as I know, that was the company's.

You do have some competitors coming up with the queen of desks, which is kind of interesting.

Quite a few prominent people had them.

People like Jay Gould, Rockefeller, you know, these titans of industry.

And they are not purchasing them because that is the most efficient way to run their giant enterprises.

It's because it says something about your taste.

It says something about your importance.

And that you are here to stay, and that you have this level of prestige.

>> But they certainly weren't all show.

The compartments, more than 100 in all, served a clear purpose.

>> We have Quartermaster desks here in the collection, some of which are quite crude or essentially almost fruit crates that the cubbies designed -- they are sized for the way that documents were folded and labeled and filed.

>> The Wooton, although much more elaborate, was really no different.

>> That may look a little quaint to us today, but that really was the standard for filing and organization in an office at the time.

They actually made a ladies version as well, that presumably this was for her to run her home.

Again, with those Victorian virtues of efficiency and organization.

Really the last desks are probably produced about 1897.

By then, the whole way that filing takes place, the whole organization of the office, are changing.

So they just essentially outlived both their usefulness and their stylishness.

♪ We have several Wooton desks in the collection.

Our desks are from the period when the company was in Indianapolis, and then we have a ladies secretary, which is much rarer.

And it has lighter woods.

They all have this combination of, you know, usually walnut, but they were also made in oak, with burled wood panels, very typical of the Renaissance Revival design that's really at the heart of the Wooton desk design.

On view in our second floor galleries, we have what is sometimes known as the winged griffin desk, which is a superior grade.

And it's -- there's only a handful of superior grade Wooton secretaries that are known to exist.

And this one, the griffin design, appears in Wooton's 1876 catalog, and really looks like an exposition piece.

It is absolutely fantastic and was meant to demonstrate the extremely high quality of work that could be done should you choose to pay for it.

We have several what we call centers of excellence.

Those are areas where we have particular depth in the collection and in our expertise, and one of those is Indiana innovation and industry and agriculture, especially reflecting that post-Civil War period.

And the Wooton desks are such a great example of that, as well as, again, this whole surround of other manufacturers who were working, trying to figure out the same kinds of questions, and really were quite popular and quite visible for their time.

So there are a lot of things that we can learn from those desks, a lot of great stories from the whole innovation and manufacturing, to just what it says about how businesses were run and what people valued.

>> BRANDON: My desk is very sparse.

Like, there's a lot of open space.

The king of desks has a lot of cabinetry built into it.

How would you feel working at that desk?

>> ASHLEY: Overwhelmed.

I mean, my desk is also very sparse, other than Post-it Notes everywhere, but I don't know what I would put in all of those little drawers.

I mean, I can't think of enough stuff that would fill that drawer to make it -- that desk to make it worth it for me.

>> BRANDON: Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

>> ASHLEY: And as always, we would like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

>> BRANDON: 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.

Well, Brandon, my stomach is saying that I need more Thing-a-lings.

So I think that's what we should do next.

>> BRANDON: All right.

Well, we will see you next time on -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you!