- We're hittin' the road for some tall tales and a tall hat.

- Definitely a tall hat and they are some interesting stories.

You gotta see this.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - In just a bit, we're gonna take you to a couple of central Illinois towns.

One of them, the local legends are so outrageous, at first even you didn't believe me.

- Oh, they are definitely some tall tales.

But we're gonna go to another little town in central Illinois that has a very unique sculpture.

It honors a president and it is curious.

- Very tall.

- Very tall.

(gentle music continues) - First, though, you're going to share a story about the power of words.

- I am.

There's an East Peoria woman who is going through the death of her mother and also at the same time becoming a new mother.

She took that emotional journey and she made it into a book of poetry.

- [Kathy] "The telescope turned to the rear side "of Jupiter and Venus, "so close they could be held together in a single lens.

"These bright orbs caught in this moment "as a pear, floating side by side.

"In a round curve of glass, I blinked through slowly.

"They had been growing closer for months, "the pull of cosmic forces "swirling them round round their orbits "'til one nearly lapped the other.

"Two playmates held in the darkness of a mystic night sky.

"In the exam room, I see them again, Jupiter and Venus "drawing near in the screen, being turned to ease my view.

"'Here is one' she says, 'And here is the other.'"

- [Julie] For the past nine years, Kathy Gilbert of East Peoria has had an incredibly emotional journey.

She was slowly losing her mother to dementia at the same time she was about to become a first time mother to a set of twins.

At that emotionally charged time, she found a creative outlet for her joy and pain in creative writing and poetry.

- I didn't set out to create a poetry collection.

I was just writing poems for myself I guess, sort of therapy.

I've written lots of poems throughout my life.

I've published poems and literary magazines and those sorts of things, but at the time, when you have really tiny infants and two of them all at once and you're very, very overwhelmed, you spend a lot of time with humans who can't communicate with you in the normal way, right, or in the verbal way.

- [Julie] Along with being a mother to two energetic 8-year-old twins, she teaches creative writing at Heartland Community College.

Gilbert hopes her writing will help her children better understand her struggles.

- You don't know what it's like to lose a parent until it happens and so I hope maybe when they read this down the line, they understand better a little bit what I was going through and how difficult it would've been for me to continue to be the strong anchor of a mom for them as I was dealing with that pain myself.

(gentle music) "I Still Haven't Cried."

"It's been three days since I walked my mother "around the halls of her care unit, held her hand, "took a deep breath, and answered her.

"Three days since she looked at me and had to ask who I was.

- [Julie] This collection of expressive poems wasn't something she originally had planned to share.

- I wrote something else first is how it happened.

I have a whole manuscript, a much longer one, about a completely different topic and I'd been shopping publishers for that for a long time with no luck and I'm still looking for that one, but it just sort of dawned on me that I had this other thematic collection, but I just thought, well, there's all these contests.

Let's just see what happens.

So I actually submitted this collection to a contest with the publisher and I didn't win the contest, but they liked it so much they said, "You're not gonna win the contest, "but we'd still like to publish it.

"Here's what that would look like."

- [Julie] Now it's being published by Finishing Line Press so the whole world can read those personal poems and find comfort from her words.

- I hope people find validation in it, right?

I hope that a lot of young mothers feel validated in some of the poems that talk about the difficulty or sort of make a little bit of fun of the things we worry about as young mothers, but also lay down some foundation to understand the gravity of some of those concerns that we have.

And then for people who have lost parents, I hope they find some solace or just recognition, right, that what they've gone through is not out of the ordinary.

(gentle music continues) (lawnmower running) - [Phil] Tre Thompson is teaching boys much more than landscaping.

He is providing on-the-job lessons and responsibility in kindness and showing them a better way than the risky lessons often learned on the streets.

- I strongly believe that we're all a product of what we're exposed to as a kid, so my main goal is just be able to expose them to as many positive things as I can to just increase their possibility of being successful men.

- [Phil] Thompson is the founder of the nonprofit group Boys to Men Empowerment.

- In order for a young man to be a man, he needs to see a man.

My whole thing with my organization is just be the example.

Be the example to the young man and be to them what I wish I had as a young boy - [Phil] Now, 26 years old, he owns Thompson's Carpet King, a cleaning service.

- So at a young age, I see more of the wrong ways to make money.

You know what I'm saying?

So I got caught up in selling drugs and making money the the wrong way.

My purpose with this is to show a young man you don't have to get in the streets to sell a drug or to do this or do that to make money.

There's more positive ways that you can make money that's more longevity than selling drugs, but a lot of stuff that I experienced, a lot of stuff that I got myself into, it had a lot to do with me not having a positive male role model in my life.

Again, what motivated me is to just try to be to the young man what I wish I had when I was a young man, so they can avoid some of the mistakes that I made.

Like I lost one of my closest buddies at they age to the street and it had a lot to do with what he was exposed to.

You know what I mean?

So to be able to save another young man's friend or another parent's child, that's beauty.

I love that.

- [Phil] Boys to Men Empowerment has about 20 boys ages 11 to 16.

- We usually meet every Saturday and Saturdays consist of me just creating that positive, safe environment for the young man.

So what a Saturday usually looks like, we'll come in and we usually have like a speaker that come through this, kind of tell they journey of life, mistakes that they've made, things that they've overcame and we also have like small group where we'll just pretty much open up discussion for the young man.

What I've learned, it's good to have speakers come to speak to the young man, but also to create that space where the young man have a voice as well.

We usually let them do a activity.

We just play basketball, kickball, dodgeball, football, feed 'em.

We're also a Christ based organization, so we talk to 'em about God, making sure they got an understanding of someone higher than ourselves.

- [Phil] And in the summer, the boys provide free lawn care for residents in need of a little help.

(lawnmower running) The boys earn a little pocket money, but the experience is much more valuable.

- And what I've learned, they wanna make money, they wanna work, so my whole thing with this project here is to teach them good work ethic.

Hard work as a man, you gotta work hard for what it is that you want in our life, but not being so self-centered, so still seeing a way that you can be a blessing to the community.

So with this project, us offering those free services to the elderly single parents and disabled, just kind of putting in their mind the power of being a blessing to other people.

- [Phil] Money for wages and equipment comes from an anti-violence grant from the Peoria Police Department.

- Summer months, when the kids are outta school, they're more prone to get their self in trouble and I like to say, no matter how old the kid is, if a kid is bored and don't have nothing to do, nine times outta 10, they're gonna find something to do and it's usually not the right thing.

So I created this to be able to allow them to be a part of something positive, just keep them productive throughout these summer months.

- [Phil] Thompson's group has impacted the boys.

- Basically guided me to be a better me, basically to do good things.

- Just stop doing the bad things you doing.

Change your life around, join a group.

- [Phil] And homeowners appreciate the help.

- It means a lot to me.

Being a senior citizen, I'm not able to do this myself and of course, I mean, not having to pay an arm and a leg is always a plus, but it means a lot to me.

I consider myself to be very blessed to have someone that will do this for me.

- [Phil] Eventually, Thompson wants the group to do year round service projects, such as snow removal.

For more info on the efforts, see the Boys to Men Empowerment page on Facebook.

Tre Thompson hopes the program will be the first step in turning young lives toward a productive path.

- I don't expect these young men for me to work with 'em for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and they just this drastic change.

It don't works like that.

I'm working with kids that got trauma, toxicity 13, 14 years, so the change is not going to come overnight.

It's gonna take time, but I know me doing my part in allowing God to use me as the vessel.

'cause it's not me, it's God.

God is just using me as a vessel to pour to the young man.

So I plant the seed.

I may not see the fruition of that seed, but I know I did my part and I planted the seed and I pray to God that later on down the road, everything that I poured into them, it helps them and it makes them be successful men.

(upbeat music) - Well, fancy finding you here in Bernadotte.

- Well, I was trying to enjoy nature and be outside with the dam here behind me and the beautiful nature.

- It is very picturesque here with the Spoon River and the Bernadotte Dam, but you know what, if you go back in time, this little town has plenty of remarkable tall tales.

Would you like to hear a few stories?

- Ooh, story time.

(gentle music) Okay, so there's multiple stories?

Hit me with the first one, let's go.

- Okay, so here at Fulton County, of course the Spoon River has always been here, but Bernadotte has not always been here or as some folks call it Bernie Dot.

1826, along comes William Walters.

You've never heard of him, but back in the day, he was known as this Tennessee frontiersman of mythic proportions, like a Paul Bunion from that area and he ends up here for some reason, I'm not sure why, and this guy was strong and brawny, known for his feets of strength.

For instance, he would take a 120 pound sack of wheat with his teeth- - With his what now?

- With his teeth and pick it up and fling it 10 yards or so.

- You're making this up.

- This was his reputation.

I don't know why he would do that.

Maybe he had two other sacks like this and he had to carry three.

I don't know why he would fling it.

He could get a job in the carnival.

I don't think they had carnivals then though.

- But cotton candy's not as heavy as bags of corn.

- But that's how strong he was.

An amazing frontiers man.

- Quote unquote.

- William Walters, okay?

- Can we have a little describer underneath that says may not be true.

Tall tales from Phil.

- All I know is what I read.

- Okay.

(gentle music) Okay, that was definitely an interesting tale.

Tell me more about this guy known for his feats of strength.

You're gonna get blown away by this one, okay?

- I'm so excited.

- It's winter time here, all right, and he's hungry.

He's gotta go get some game, he's gotta get something to eat.

He sees a deer on the other side of the river, of the Spoon River, right.

- [Julie] Must be a good shot?

- Mhmm, pulls out his musket and bam, nails the deer, right?

Well, here's the problem.

There's a river between him and the deer and it's winter.

So there's water, but there's ice, ice floes going down here.

What does William Walters do?

- Ice skates?

- That would've been the weenie way out.

Instead he jumps in, dodges the ice floes, the ice that's in there, dead of winter, it's cold, gets to the other side, tracks the deer through the wilderness that was there, finds the deer who is then dead, grabs the deer, drags it all the way back to the other river bank, then, well, how do you get it over here?

Well, he's William Walters.

He grabs the deer, puts one of the deer's ears in his teeth.

- That's not true.

- It's totally true.

- It is not true.

- And he swims across with the deer's ear in his teeth.

- In the icy water.

- Yes and he's back here.

He was a manly man of manly men reputation.

William Walters.

- It's a great story, but it's one of those like fishing stories.

Like it was this big, no, no, no, it's this big.

- It's not about fish, it involved a deer.

It involved the deer.

- Oh, I guess I wasn't listening then.

- That's right, he did it.

William Walters.

(gentle music) - Okay, this guy's pretty unbelievable.

What else can he do?

Leap tall buildings, faster than a speeding bullet?

- Probably could have if they had any buildings back then, but William Walters then settles this area as a town.

Do you know what they named it after?

- I have no idea.

- It's not William Walters.

They named it after John Baptiste Bernadotte, who is a French nobleman.

- Okay.

- You know why?

Because supposedly, and this is actually the weirdest part of the story I find, not even the deer, not even the sacks that he flung with his teeth, is that he supposedly came here from France and went to people who were settling there and go, oh, please, oh, please name your town after me, but with a French accent.

Oh, please.

I can't do a French accent, - You should not.

- Well it was kind of like how you wanted to call this the Julie Sanders Show and you said, please name it after me.

- It's still in the works.

It's still in the works.

We could do it.

- So anyway, they name it after nobleman Bernadotte and the town flourished for a while.

It was like 400 people by the late 1800s.

Like a lot of towns, they had businesses and whatnot, but like a lot of small towns, if no railroad comes by your town (Phil puffs).

So it starts fading, fading, fading, fading and in World War II, the town took another hit of sorts and that's when the US Army came in and said, hey, we need to use this area for Camp Ellis, which they set up just a ways yonder.

- It was an internment camp, right?

Prisoners of war.

- It was for German prisoners of war.

They had almost 2,700 of 'em at one time - Oh my gosh.

- Yeah.

And part of that whole construction of everything was there had been a stone dam, but it was really kind of weak and small, so the Army came in and built a new concrete dam and that's what we still have here today.

and that's why it's like, wow, this thing has lasted a long time.

Well they've redone it a few times and bolstered it, but it's a real cool place, a nice cool place to come and look at, just look at the water, listen to it.

It's very, very peaceful and there's maybe not even a hundred people that still live in Bernadotte, but Spoon River Drive, sometimes 20,000 people are maybe not at one time here.

- Come through, yeah.

- Fish and otherwise have fun, so you know William Walters and his teeth.

- True or not true?

We're not sure.

We're gonna trust Phil.

(gentle music) If you're in the Macomb area, make sure you stop on the north side of the square because you will find the living Lincoln topiary.

(gentle music continues) It is 16 feet high for our 16th president, Abe Lincoln, and who doesn't love a nice man with a beautiful beard?

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) Well, who's your friend you have here today?

- I have Sparky and he is a Indo-Chinese box turtle.

(gentle music continues) - He's gorgeous with these orange markings on him.

Is that typical?

- Yes, that is typical of their species.

There's different striping on the back is a little different.

Kind of like how we have a different thumbprint compared to everybody else.

That's different between all these different box turtles, but yeah, it's typical for them to be nice, brightly colored and orange.

- He's kind of frisky there.

Is he wanting to get down?

- [Kenzie] He wants to get down and run around on the ground.

- He's like, I see that pool over there.

- He loves to soak in water, so he probably wants to get down there.

- What does he like to eat?

- He loves salads, so any type of lettuce he likes to eat and then also fruits and vegetables.

He really loves strawberries, but he's an omnivore, so he'll eat things like worms or other sorts of little bugs, so he'll eat a variety of things.

- So what are his natural predators there?

- Really anything that could get a hold of him.

So he lives in forest area where there'll be a nice tall grasses so he can hide in those, but anything that can see him, because he has this bright coloring, they'll get ahold of him and then since he's a box turtle, he's actually able to close his shell all the way.

He can pull in all of his legs in his head and he can close up to kind of protect himself from that sort of thing.

- Is he looking at me like lunch or is he just not know what to think of me?

- I think he's just a really friendly guy.

He just wants to be your friend.

- He is very friendly and he has these really sharp eyes.

Do they have good vision?

- They do have pretty good vision.

Reptiles specifically, they see red colors really good, so they like to all sorts of different colorful things.

They like to go and just check it out.

They're very investigative little guys.

(gentle music continues) - He has some like very distinct markings on the side.

Are those his ears?

- Yes.

So that is just where his ear will be.

He has a little flap that covers him to kind of protect him, but that is where his ears are.

- What fun facts do you know about Sparky?

- I know that Sparky is not a American, he was actually born in Toronto.

He was born at the Toronto Zoo, so he came to us in 2017, so he's been here a little bit, but he had to travel a long way to come meet us and live here at Miller Park.

- [Julie] I love the markings, like even on his arms and legs.

- So he has these kind of harder scales here and they just kind of protect himself while he is out crawling around through all the grasses and if there's rocks or anything sharp that kind of protect him as he is moving around.

- Does he have a roommate here or is he by himself?

- He does not.

He lives by himself, but he gets lots of time with the keepers.

He's one of our favorites, so we take him out a lot and have a lot of time outside with our guests and with our educators.

- What do kids say when they see Sparky out and about?

- I think they love his coloring because you don't often see a turtle that has coloring like this, so I think that they really like his bright orange colors that he has.

- He seems very curious.

- He is a very investigative guy.

He loves to just cruise around on the ground.

When we were closed for COVID, we would just let him out and he would run around the commons out there.

He would get all sorts of little exercise, just exploring everything that we have here.

- What's your favorite thing about Sparky?

- I think my favorite thing is his personality.

He's just such a little outgoing little guy that I really just love to hang out with him and he's just so curious about everything.

(gentle music continues) My favorite thing is to give him strawberries because that's really something that he loves.

I'll give him a whole strawberry.

He just takes little bites out of it too, so that is something really cute that he does.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to Guitar Crazy Worth Township, Illinois and my garage for another episode of Eight Track Time Machine.

We talk about the stories and the songs of the eight track era and today I wanna share with you one of the most remarkable stories in rock and roll history, but one that almost no one knows about.

It's sort of a freaky Friday type of thing where two guys who are polar opposites and they kind of switch roles for a day and you won't believe what happened.

Take a look at these two musicians.

The one on the left is Richie Blackmore.

He is one of the greatest guitarists of all time, one of the founding members of Deep Purple, the heavy metal hard rock band from England.

♪ Smoke on the water ♪ ♪ A fire in the sky ♪ - The other is a founder of Yacht Rock, that's Christopher Cross who earned Grammys and an Oscar for songs like "Ride Like The Wind" and "Arthur's Theme."

♪ Sailing takes me away to where I'm going ♪ - You're normally not gonna confuse these two guys, but one special night they had a role reversal, at least halfway outta necessity.

It was the summer of 1970. and Deep Purple is finally getting some traction with some radio airplay.

In fact, they come to the United States for their debut concert tour and for that first show, they're in San Antonio and they're roaring and raring to go.

Problem.

Blackmore gets sick, legit sick, and he just can't play.

The promoter and the band are like, well man, we don't wanna cancel this.

What are we gonna do?

Well, it turns out the promoter was also the manager of an up and coming guitarist, this 19-year-old whiz kid who played all over San Antonio and that kid was also a fan of this new band called Deep Purple.

He knew a little of their stuff, but more to the point, he knew a lot of blues, so the promoter said, hey kid, you wanna play with Deep Purple and that guitarist came along to the show.

That guitarist, Christopher Cross.

Now that might seem kind of crazy right now, Christopher Cross, instead of Richie Blackmore, but back then Cross would just go to shows and just tear 'em up and so he shows up at the arena, they do a little, some run throughs, some blues numbers, a few Deep Purple songs, and the band does announce, hey, we're glad to be here.

Richie can't play, but we've got this new up and coming guitar whiz and the show goes off great.

In fact, later on Christopher Cross said, "This was a really, really special night for me."

- The next day, a few days later, when they left San Antonio, Richie felt better.

I saw him at the airport and he gave me his pick and he said, "Yeah, they said you did a good job "sitting in or whatever" and that was a huge thrill and the funny thing is I've never seen any of them since.

- It's too bad though they haven't collaborated because you think about it, there's Richie Blackmore with "Smoke on the Water," there's Christopher Cross with "Sailing."

they've got that watery intersection, hard rock meets yacht rock.

Why not?

(upbeat music) That was a great mix.

We had stories of the past.

We had stories of the present.

- True, but what about the future?

- We've got stories in the future and that's next time on.

- "You Gotta See This."

(gentle music) - Eh.

(screen beeps) - Very tall, very unique sculpture.

(both mumbling) (screen beeps) (Phil beeping) (Julie blows guns) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues)