- Here's what's coming up next on You Oughta Know.

Come one, come all to the funny farm rescue in May's Landing.

We head to Kensington to check out an urban dairy that's churning milk into handcrafted cheeses.

And we look at the rich African American history of Lawnside, New Jersey.

(upbeat music) Thanks for tuning in.

I'm Shirley Min.

We have a lot to share today, so let's get started.

We begin with a look at Lawnside, New Jersey, the first self-governing black municipality north of the Mason Dixon line.

- [Shamele] Lawnside's significance is that it is the only incorporated African American town in the state of New Jersey.

I grew up here in the seventies and eighties and it was an amazing existence.

At the time, I took it for granted as children do.

But now looking back, it was really very similar to what you experience in any small town community where primarily most of the people are homeowners, very insular.

It's kind of like a community of families.

So the origin story of Lawnside, still unfolding.

We know the earliest that we hear about Snow Hill, which was the original name of the town, is 1791, 1792.

The part of the origin story that we hear mostly is 1840.

Prior to 1840, the 1830s was a very tumultuous time in America.

It is when the abolitionist movement really got its legs.

You have all these abolitionist societies, anti-slavery societies starting.

One such society was the vigilance committee of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

Two men who were part of that committee, Ralph Smith and Jacob C. White senior came up with their own movement.

They started a development within Snow Hill in the center called Free Haven.

They bought plots of land where they sold them to African Americans and their goal was to encourage African-American home ownership.

The house that we're sitting in right now was owned by Peter Mott and his wife Aliza, and he was an agent and conductor on the Underground Railroad, and they were helpful and instrumental in helping to free so many people coming from the south trying to go north.

Peter Mott's significance to Lawnside with the Underground Railroad was one part of it.

He was also kind of a developer.

We noticed by the deeds, he actually encouraged people to come and live in Lawnside, free people.

In 1893, post office was established here.

Prior to that, a man who went to Haddenfield to sell his produce, he would pick up the mail and bring it back on his way home.

1917 is when the fire company was built.

Lawnside was actually incorporated in New Jersey in 1926 and it became a town and then it wasn't until 1935 when the police department was established in Lawnside.

One of the churches is on the national and the State Registry of Historic Sites, and that's Mount Pisca.

Mount Peace Cemetery, also on the National Historic Register.

It is an 11 acre cemetery.

There are over a hundred Civil War soldiers buried there and sailors.

Lawnside had many clubs in Lawnside Park and on the White Horse Pike.

Probably the most famous one besides like, the Dreamland and Cotton Club would be Loretta's High Hat.

Lawnside really is the center of black culture in this area and it has been for a very long time.

- Some Lawnside residents are concerned their history is in jeopardy of development.

WHYY's, Kenneth Burns wrote about it and you can read the article at whyy.org.

Well, the thought of a creamery in the heart of the city may sound out of place, but the seasonal cheeses from Perrystead Dairy have changed minds quickly.

- [Yoav] We are an urban Philadelphia creamery and we focus on American original cheeses.

New styles of cheese, working tightly with farmers right from right outside the city.

Hi, I'm Yoav Perry and this is Perrystead Dairy.

So we are part of this kind of a small but growing model of urban creamers that focus on making stuff right here in the city while supporting the farmers out in the farmland, and creating economic opportunity in our community.

We strictly work with Pennsylvania, small family dairies that do really great job with animal husbandry and taking care of their land to make sure that instead of you know, methane production, we actually have beautiful soil that absorbs the carbon emissions.

The act of making cheese is an act of expressing all of this beauty and taking these snapshots of time, and turning them into something that you can eat and preserve later on.

Today we have a beautiful milk that's mostly Guernsey cows.

We then pasteurize the milk.

We're a hundred percent pasteurized facility.

Once we're done, we culture it and we put the enzyme in it.

The cheese we're making today is a very long process.

It takes two days to make.

That's our cheese cave.

So basically we're mimicking the conditions of a cave.

It's existing chamber where we start kicking off the rind of the cheese.

So you see that little growth is the beginning of our rind.

The rind is really, really important to process the flavor, the texture, the aroma and the look of the cheese.

She stays there anywhere from 10 to 100 days.

We always have some seasonal cheeses and then we have a few cheeses that we just do year round, but they change year round based on where in the season they are.

We always have our (indistinct) because Philadelphia cheese was never, ever made in Philadelphia.

So we decided to come up with our own version.

It's not a cream cheese because we actually just use all milk, so there's less fat and more protein and calcium in it, which is beautiful.

Kind of tangy.

We have our intergalactic, which is an award-winning cheese that it's coagulated with the flowers of the artichoke thistle.

Then we have our moonrise, which is a washed rind cheese.

It's a bit of a trapeze style, but we actually coagulated with both traditional rennet and with the cartoon artichoke thistle flower.

So it gives it a really kind of a pickney finish and a very silky, smooth, supple texture.

Our cheese is sold all over the region.

There's about 60 different stores where you can get our stuff.

- I'm gonna have to try some of that cheese.

It looked so good.

You know what else I like?

Coffee, and I could go for a cup from barista Jake at the Coffee Closet in Norristown.

- Good morning.

This is Coffee Closet with barista Jake.

I am here up and running, but I have my own business, which is right behind there as you can see.

Oh, we have open mic and it's gonna be great.

- [Angela] Jake is funny.

He's charming.

He oozes personality and charisma.

He's so much more than just a man with autism.

During the pandemic, the record store was closed because we were not an essential business.

Jacob couldn't go to school.

Normalcy and continuity is very important for him.

I said to my husband, let's do a curbside coffee cart and like a pop-up outside of the record store.

He was always called Barista Jake because he loved to make coffee, but this was him being able to kind of live out his dream.

At the end of the day when we went home, he said, "I really had fun doing that.

Can we do it again?"

The mission of Jake's baristas is inclusion and philanthropy, and it's exposing the community of what someone on the spectrum is capable of.

It's important that we teach these individuals independent living skills, social skills, community outreach.

We do resume building workshops.

We'll do mock interviews.

We have between 12 and 15 associates that cycle through our program.

We have them doing basic customer service to mobile events.

We partner with different community based charities each month and we donate a portion of our proceeds to them.

- It's just been great.

I just really like working here.

It's a passion for me.

I just like having a good job and just working all the time.

It's great.

- [Angela] We are blessed and lucky enough to have found Jake's niche.

Prior to doing this, Jacob kept to himself.

He wouldn't make eye contact.

It was one word answers and now?

One of the biggest social skills that he has learned is being an organic communicator.

He will greet people when they come in.

He asks how their day is.

- Katherine, are you staying?

- [Angela] He engages with other young people in the community that he never did before.

All of those things are all direct result of him owning this business.

He's learning ownership of his job, his tasks, responsibility, keeping a clean workplace, being respectful to customers.

They're all very valuable lessons that he's learning.

- It's a good idea to get people to realize how to work in a real job someday.

- [Angela] One of the biggest problems in the hiring world right now is the talent that's being left on the table from those in the special needs community.

There are gifts that everyone has, we just have to change the perception.

- Got traded here from Detroit 1992.

First year was '93 and we played at the Spectrum.

That was pretty incredible.

I fell in love with it.

We had great success.

10 years I played here, we made the playoffs 10 years, went to six championship games, won four of them.

We had the swagger.

There's no doubt, we had the swagger, but we were hard workers.

- [Announcer] What a huge game for the Philadelphia Wings.

They regained the world championship and the city of Philadelphia is gonna love major indoor lacrosse.

- Playing 13 years in a row without missing a game.

I retired as the Iron Man of lacrosse and I was a grinder, but I also wanted to get to that level at the next level.

I was a sniper, lefty, scorer.

- [Sports Caster] Watch out for Fitteran.

- [Announcer] Kevin Fitteran.

- The greatest fans in all of box lacrosse, I obviously can't thank the fans enough for supporting me in the Philadelphia Wings and my teammates.

To be up there for the rest of my life and beyond is, I know it's a cliche, but a dream come true.

- A dream come true indeed.

Kevin Fitteran is here with me on set.

Kevin, congratulations and thank you so much for being here.

- Thanks for having me, Shirley.

I love me some WHYY.

- You know when you saw the banner with your number being unfurled, what was going through your mind at the time?

- 10 Great years with the Philadelphia Wings the team I love more than anything in the world and my family being there, my ex-teammates, the fans obviously, and being honored to be alongside some of the Immortals of Philadelphia sports.

- You kind of did a meet and greet with fans at the ceremony and there was one special story.

You met one young fan.

Tell me this story.

- Well, I was kind of being rushed around here and there, left and right and which was fine.

And after an hour of signing autographs, taking pictures, taking selfies, which was amazing.

This little young girl, eight years old came up to me with a little banner, thank you Kevin.

And it had the number of championships, 94, 95, 98, 2001.

She was so adorable and that was the last moment that I'll always remember from that night.

- I love that.

The career that you had, you played professional lacrosse for 13 years, 10 with the Wings.

How were you able to do all of that?

Like, how was your body able to keep up with the demands of that?

Because that seems like a long time to be running that hard.

- I was very proud of that.

When I retired, I was the Ironman of lacrosse, I didn't miss a game, 158 games straight and it took due diligence, taking care of my body, eating, running over the Ben Franklin Bridge right around the corner every single day, and just wanting to be the best player I could be.

- After your pro-career, you still continued with lacrosse in your life teaching kids, tell me about this.

- Yeah, so coaching lacrosse, this is my 27th year coaching in Philadelphia, in South Jersey, in in Villanova.

All around.

Anywhere I can help make a young boy a better player.

Enjoy the game, enjoy the passion, volunteer in any specific area in the city.

So that's my bread and butter and I love it.

- And you're just coaching boys?

- I am.

I'm just coaching boys.

Yes.

- Okay.

How has the game changed?

Because I think when you're growing up playing it's always a different sport and how does it compare to now?

- The gentleman are are doing it like year round, full time.

They have so many opportunities both in the National Lacrosse league, my beloved Philadelphia Wings, and the premier lacrosse league, which is the field version.

So they're able to really utilize their skills and make a full-time job out of it.

- I would say this is interesting 'cause you grew up on Long Island where lacrosse is just huge.

When did you get started?

- I didn't get started till 10th grade.

I didn't get started till 10th grade.

- That is late, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

My mommy blessed me with great genes.

Her father, he was a champion Gaelic footballer in Ireland in the twenties and so I, but I practiced every single day.

Every single day and that's what I tell boys.

Family, school and then lacrosse if you want to get to that next level.

- Yeah.

Wonderful.

Kevin Finneran, thank you so much for being here.

Congratulations again on the retirement of your number.

- Thank you Shirley.

- And we are going to stay on the topic of lacrosse, but we're going to take it back to where the love for the sport can start through recreational leagues like the Wilmington Wings.

The Wilmington Wings is a recreational league for lacrosse for kids ages kindergarten through eighth grade.

- We started in 1990, it started by Carol Spiker.

She was looking for a place for her son to play lacrosse and she created the wings and it has taken off since then.

We have just under 400 kids, boys and girls in our program at this time.

So quite a few.

There's a difference between club and rec.

Recreation is more for those kids that are beginners.

We take all levels.

They don't have to be the elite on the team.

We have all the way from beginners to the kids that are a little bit more competitive.

We don't do tryouts since we are a rec league.

Everybody can make a team, but we evaluate the players so we can place them on the team that's gonna fit them best.

If they're beginners, we place them more with beginners.

If there's some more of our advanced players, we place them with more advanced.

- [Coach] Go.

- [Erin] Having a rec league where kids can get a start I think is important because in fifth grade they can come in and still be beginners and still learn and grow and by the time they're older, they're able to play for their high school, they're able to join a club team if that's the route they wanna go.

We've partnered with Chase Field House this year in hopes to use their fields and to help them with their club teams grow, that way our kids have a spot to go to once they have the skills they need to join a club team.

I know a lot of us that are a part of it have been a part of it for a long time and stay a part of it even though we don't have kids in the program, we just wanna see it succeed and keep going.

- Once the kids are on teams, they play against other rec leagues in the area.

Now registration is closed for the spring, but here's where you can learn more about the Wilmington Wings.

- [Talker] Who out there is emotionally, spiritually, fanatically invested in sports like Philly?

Now we've all seen the videos, heard the chants, and we see what people say about Philly because of it.

- Even if it is from Philadelphia.

- Go Eagles.

- I hope everyone's having a good Monday after Philadelphia.

I assumed you spent it sobering up on top of a bus shelter.

- As rival videos of Philly fans draw millions of views, we wanted to get to the bottom of one of life's great mysteries.

Why are we like this?

- It's no laughing matter when it comes to caring for the animals at the funny farm in May's Landing, New Jersey.

- Everybody asks me, how did you start the funny farm?

My answer is, not on purpose.

My mother was going to be a nun and then married the devil, my father.

We had to escape to survive and we moved into a shack in the woods with no running water, no electric and she had no skills.

So, she started working at an animal shelter where she started bringing home all the animals that were going to be euthanized.

We were like, we could barely take care of ourselves, let alone these animals.

My mother always said, as bad as we have it, somebody always has it worse.

Hence, the funny farm began.

Now we were not an animal rescue, we just did it on our own.

And I said, "mom, why do you call it the funny farm?"

She said, "it's full of animals and fit for lunatics."

So the animals did live in the house with us and I always promised her that I was going to buy her, her own farm.

And in my late twenties she was diagnosed with cancer and I hurried up trying to buy this farm where I am today, and she died right before I made settlement.

But she is here, she lets it be known.

So we started with about 35 animals and quickly it kept growing and growing and growing.

They are all here from abuse, neglect, unwanted, elderly and disabled.

Now we are over 600 rescued animals.

I always say no matter what life throws at you, you better catch it because there might be a bigger plan for you.

I started out myself, I did it for 12 years and when my bills got to be about 4,000 a month, I thought what am I gonna do?

So I became a non-profit so I could get a tax break on my feed and then people started saying, can I volunteer?

Can I visit?

And I'm thinking, this is my house people, what are you talking about?

And now we are completely volunteer run.

I have people that just love animals and it makes them feel really good because they are helping animals that cannot help themselves.

We got voted top 10 places to visit with your family in all of New Jersey.

So when you get to the funny farm, it's free to get in because my mother couldn't afford anything for us kids to go anywhere.

So I want to be able to give back and in her memory we keep it free.

The other thing that we are known for is that the majority of the animals walk around loose.

So when you're driving in, we tell everybody drive one mile an hour, but when you get to your parking place, you better get outta your car as fast as possible because the animals will come in and greet you.

You have to like animals if you come here.

It's just amazing how some of the odd friendships happen.

So we have Emily the emu and she has Airplane the goose and wherever she goes, he goes.

So we have a donkey and a llama.

They're another odd friendship.

It's Jethro the donkey.

He is over 50 years old and he lost his horse mate.

When he died, I brought in Lorenzo the llama.

The largest animal I have is T-Bone.

He is a red angus deer.

He is 2,500 pounds.

That is a ton and a quarter.

I have two dogs that have Vega Esophagus.

They have to get fed about five times a day.

Every three hours they have to back into a chair and then they sit up, and then there's a tray and they have to drink their food.

So they cannot have anything hard.

So both of these dogs they said would live six months.

One is four and a half and the other one is over two.

We do not concentrate on where these animals were.

You wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I told you some of the stories.

We concentrate on where they are or where they're going and you walk around, you cannot have a bad day because you can see they love each other and just have such a great time.

It's quite the experience, just don't wear your best shoes.

- Turning now to this week's flicks, Patrick Stoner talks to Daniel Craig about how his theater background helps him on screen in his movie "Glass Onion."

- I've got the pre-defined detective in the world at my murder mystery party that is so legit.

- Mr. Braun, I've learned through bitter experience that an anonymous invitation is not to be trifled with.

- Okay, look, come on.

I'd love to have you visit me at my my home.

There, you've been invited, you're an official guest now.

Thrilled to have you.

I mean relax, enjoy yourself.

- [Patrick] Glass Onion is a sequel to Knives Out, but it stands on its own because Ryan Johnson, the director and writer, is simply that Good.

Has a great cast led by Daniel Craig.

What some people don't know about Daniel is that he's a creature of the theater.

That was his original training and it still shows.

- Having a theater background or at least starting in theater, it makes you very aware of the team, the collective and the collaboration, and doing Glass Onion and and Knives Out the same.

It's an ensemble cast, it's a lot of actors and you know, one of Ryan's major skills is to be able to sort of wrangle all these people, and get them on the same page as everybody.

But it's a collaborative effort and that's something that I think, you know you learn in the theater very early on.

- But you also have voice training and I know the voice in this particular character was very important to you.

- I struggle with accents actually.

I don't have a very musical ear, so I have to work really, really hard to kind of find something, but I found something with this of and put something together and it's, you know, it's supposed to be a little over the top.

It's supposed to be these things because you know, I wanted to make him larger than life and a little bit kind of otherworldly.

It's just fun to do.

(indistinct) - You said something I believe and I agree with it.

I had even more fun the second time because I can't believe the stuff that I missed.

- You can watch the movie as a murder mystery.

You can try and second guess.

You can try and figure out who's done it, who hasn't done it, what's going on, and you can just relax as well and just let it wash over you and just enjoy the ride.

But if you go back and watch it again, you'll pick up on all of the gags that you missed the first time around.

- Now you also, of course are in basically a franchise now.

To what extent is it important to you to make sure that it fits from Knives Out into the next one?

This character has gotta be coherent, right?

- I would hope so.

I mean, that's my job, I suppose, isn't it?

That's part of my job to try and keep him coherent.

I look, you know, I trust Ryan.

I know that he'll come up with something.

I know he's got some great ideas and the two movies I'm so proud of and I think are very funny and still stand up and all of these things, but we've gotta top it now and that's gonna be the hard bit.

- Daniel, thank you very much for giving us your time.

I do appreciate it.

- My pleasure.

- Now that you're in the know, I'm gonna say goodnight.

Thanks so much for watching.

Bye.

(upbeat music)