- [Joe] This time on Tennessee Crossroads we go to Williamson County to catch up with a Tennessee treasure named Miss Daisy.

Then to Fayetteville with Rob Wilds to meet an artist who found his calling during some hard times.

Then to Paris with Ken Wilshire to explore Sally Lane's Candy Farm.

Finally to Hermitage where Tressa Bush meets a guy who has a fascination with illustration.

That's the show we've cooked up just for you.

I'm Joe Elmore, welcome again to Crossroads.

(jazzy music) Mention the name Miss Daisy to fans of good southern cooking and well, you'll conjure up thoughts of tea rooms, recipe books, and just all around great southern dishes.

Daisy King has been part of the area food scene for more than four decades, and she's still going strong.

Still creating dishes in demand at a new location called Miss Daisy's Kitchen.

(jazzy music) - My passion's food.

I wake up thinking about it.

I go to bed thinking about it.

I have, as a lot of other people do, a plethora of cookbooks that I still like to hold in my hand and read.

And it just makes me happy.

- [Joe] During the past four decades, Daisy King has made a lot of people happy with food.

As a restaurateur, author of 14 cookbooks, and popular celebrity chef.

Small wonder she's been called Tennessee's first lady of southern cooking.

Daisy grew up on a family farm in Buford, Georgia where she learned how to cook from her grandmother.

Many years later, after graduating from Belmont College, she was teaching, catering, and raising a family in Nashville.

But soon the lure of her first restaurant adventure came along, thanks to Calvin and Marilyn Lahey who opened a place called Carter's Court in Franklin.

- He said, well why do you think you'll be successful?

And I said, it's easy, the formula.

I love food and I love people, and I like to pair the two together and I like to have a party.

- [Joe] So, the first Miss Daisy's Tea Room was born, and it was a hit, but Calvin, the businessman, quickly noticed how many customers eagerly asked for recipes.

- I said, Daisy, y'all need to get a cookbook out.

I wanted to do like 1,000.

We settled on 500, and we sold out of that yellow cookbook before Christmas.

We have sold over one million copies of that little yellow cookbook.

- [Joe] Other restaurant adventures would follow.

Most were winners, but a few, well.

- I say it's kind of like a football game.

I had 17 years and had 15 great years, and I fumbled two, but that's all right.

You know, you learn from your mistakes.

- [Joe] In the 1980s, food companies often hired Miss Daisy to travel the country on media tours.

Which would lead to her latest endeavor.

- I would go into these delis, and they were wonderful and we're talking in the 80s, and they would have prepared foods.

My wheels started turning and I thought, I somehow need to get Miss Daisy's chicken divan and chicken pot pie and lasagnas, I need to get them on the shelves in a grocery store.

- [Joe] So in the early 90s, she opened a store within a store called Miss Daisy's Kitchen.

First in Nashville, now here at Grassland Foodland in Franklin.

- You know, people say, how could you go from a beautiful restaurant to working in a grocery store?

And I'm like, it's just been blissful because I can help people.

You know, if someone has a dietary need I can say we're going to aisle three and I'm gonna help you buy low sodium whatever, or, if you are a diabetic, okay, we're not gonna do chocolate, we're gonna use cocoa.

- [Joe] Now people can stop and buy her trademark recipe dishes for feasting at home.

Dishes like her famous chicken pot pies that seem to disappear as fast as she and her staff can make 'em.

- I don't use frozen chicken.

We get a lot of chicken breast in every week and we poach our chicken and then we mix it with the sauces and the vegetables and put it in a pie shell and we put the puff pastry on it.

If you look at southern food, it's comforting.

It just makes you feel good to look at it.

And when you see a big pot pie as a family, you can feed six people.

The children will like it and the adults will like it.

- [Joe] One food many adults don't like is kale.

Sure it's healthy, but it's bitter and has this rough texture.

Well, leave it to Miss Daisy to create a kale salad recipe even naysayers would savor.

- I will look at a recipe and then I decide what I like about it, and I actually saw a hit and miss version of this in a recipe book and I'm like, well I want to add this and I want to add that.

And I added the orange juice for the golden raisins because when it said citrus, I wanted my juices.

- So you can read that and say, hmm.

- Right, now.

- Good, but I can make it better.

- Well, I don't always say I'll make it better, but I'll make it according to how I like it and how I think the guests would like it.

Okay, now, come over with me over here and let's see if-- - That one's about ready.

- If we have succeeded in this.

Let's get a spoon and I'm gonna give you a little taste and then I'll let you decide.

Now, you're gonna have green all over your teeth, but that's all right because it's worth it.

Then here is a fork, and there's our, and this is enough, Joe, enough kale salad to probably serve 15 or 20 people, that's what a pound will make.

You like that?

- I like it.

- It's del-, and it's so healthy for you!

It's so good.

Well come back to Miss Daisy's Kitchen any time and we'll cook again.

And we'll cook something else you like.

- Okay, do you have any floss?

- Oh, I do.

(laughs) - [Joe] If southern cooking had an ambassador, it would likely be this lady.

She's delighted dignitaries from around the world with it.

She's enlightened countless fans of good food with it.

One could sum up Miss Daisy King's ongoing food for thought this way.

- [Daisy] I used to say, when Wayne worked in politics, politics can have enemies, but food doesn't.

So I've really never discussed with my guests that would come into my businesses anything political because food loves everyone and everyone loves food.

- It's been said that all of us have a special talent inside just waiting to be freed up and nurtured.

Well next you're gonna meet a Tennessee artisan who discovered his inner talent at a particularly rough time in his life.

In fact, he credits it with saving his life.

Here's Rob Wilds with his story down in Fayetteville.

(chainsaw buzzes) - I've been called the chainsaw guy, the man on the highway, or you know, the guy that carves the bears, bear guy.

- [Rob] He's known by all those things, but he goes by the name his folks gave him, Roark Phillips, an artist not with a brush, but a chainsaw.

- Flipping through a magazine, saw a picture of a chainsaw carved bear and I was like well, you know, wow, that's, I'd like to try that and that's what I did.

It took me six weeks to carve my first bear.

- [Rob] Before you know it, he was an artist with a following.

- Started my first bear, completed it, got a couple of other logs, carved a few more of 'em up, tried some different looks.

Still out carving bears, and my wife encouraged me to do a craft show and I said, well, nobody's gonna buy one of these.

And we went, sold out, bought another chainsaw.

I love doing it.

You can't keep 'em all.

- Roark's got a really nice shop along the main road to Fayetteville and he does some carving here from time to time.

Mainly to get the attention of the people passing by on the road.

But his main carving he does at his shop at home.

Which is appropriate, because it was at home the inspiration to become a carver came to him.

It was a good idea that came at a really hard time.

- Ah.

It's hard to talk about sometimes.

One of the reasons why I flipped through that magazine to find, and saw the picture of that bear, we lost our son ten years ago.

It saved my life, that's just all there is to it.

Just immersed myself in it.

- [Rob] That immersion helped him make it through the pain and anger of losing his 17-year-old son, Daniel, to an unseen heart ailment.

And began to uncover his talent for carving, which came... - Slowly, you know, slowly hitting at it with a chainsaw, side grinders, and it really boils down to how much you can manipulate the tip of that saw.

To make it look like it's supposed to look.

You do a lot of plunge cutting, a lot of tip cutting.

- [Rob] Plunge cutting, that sounds dangerous.

- Yeah, just stick it straight through the middle of the saw, I mean the middle of the log.

They're called commitment cuts in carving.

- [Rob] I bet they are.

- Yeah, you don't, you know, it's kind of hard to put the wood back together, but gorilla glue does work wonders.

- [Rob] Well have you had many times when you've committed and when you're in there, you've thought, oh, I shouldn't have.

- Oh, yeah, that's called a design enhancement from there, so... - [Rob] As time has passed, Roark has honed the skills he had, and uncovered some he never knew about.

- I could draw a stick man when I first started.

Now I can actually do some drawing with shades and depths.

Just with a pencil, though, and I'm true sketching.

Most of it's on a napkin when an idea hits me, I'll, whatever I have, I'm sketching it out and from that point I try to picture that going into the log.

In the beginning, the wood manipulated me, and it still does, but now I'm set in a direction and know what I want out of it and I will try to coax it out of it.

It's a cat and mouse game a lot and that's the fun of it.

- [Rob] The fun comes in creating something someone has requested, but also by letting his mind just go where it wants to.

- [Roark] The time comes to just get away from everything, which is what it originally was anyway was step back, just fire up the saw and have a good time.

I carve some of my best pieces.

- [Rob] Pieces that are appreciated by fans here at home, and a growing group of fans across the country, many of whom commission specific works.

Maybe not things Roark would have thought of carving, but even so, each piece is still a pleasurable challenge for him.

- [Roark] When you complete a piece that you have your heart in, that's a great feeling.

And try to make the next one better than the last.

- [Rob] That's the goal.

Every time he stands in front of a blank wooden canvas, what is the man along the highway, the bear man, Roark Phillips, what is he going to find waiting for him in there?

(saw buzzes) - Thanks Rob, well next Ken Wilshire takes you to a 100-year-old farm near Paris, Tennessee.

Now, don't expect rows of corn, wheat, or even livestock.

At Sally Lane's Candy Farm, they use all kinds of ingredients for a harvest of sweetness that attracts visitors from miles around.

- [Ken] This colorful pink and white building is called the Candy House, here on this Paris, Tennessee farm.

Actually, this is Sally Lane's Candy Farm and you won't see rows of crops, nor a barnyard full of animals.

Instead, you'll be lured inside by the tantalizing aromas of chocolate, mint, caramel, and freshly popped popcorn.

(popping) - When we did the caramel in the big copper pots back there, you can just smell it forever and you think, hah.

And you knowing, that that thing's been on a gas stove, you just want to stick your finger in there.

- [Ken] One of Sally Lane's owners is Pam Rockwell.

She's the second of three generations of these candy farmhands you'll find hard at work in the kitchen.

They're preparing a tempting assortment of sweet, homemade delights while preserving a family tradition.

- Sally Lane was a real lady and that's the question.

People call me Sally now, and I'll say, yes?

In 1958, they actually started the company.

It really was on a farm when Miss Sally started it, and then they had stopped, it was just Sally Lane's.

And when we moved it back, this is our family farm, and it has been for over 100 years, so we just took the name Sally Lane's Candy Farm back.

- [Ken] Pam's husband Rick and her parents Shelby and Bobby Freeman bought Sally Lane's in 2006.

Her daughter Amelia and brother Rob came on board to help turn this labor of love into a sweet success.

- [Pam] We thought this would be a weekend job and now it's just turned into a career for my brother and Amelia Kay.

This is what they want to do, is they want to do Sally Lane's for the rest of their days.

It's so much more than we ever thought it would be.

I guess when we bought Sally Lane's we turned into just the new candy family.

- [Ken] The pink and green fame all started with the first candies they made.

Honey mint and peppermint delights.

- The main products still are the pink and greens.

That was what Sally Lane's originally started with.

And then our number two product would be the white chocolate popcorn that we started making.

Then we do barks, which are just pieces of chocolates and, you know, peanut butter bar, dark chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, and we do the different nuts.

We do divinity fudge, and it's so yummy, and what's so funny now is so many people say, this tastes just like it used to.

And that's a compliment to us.

- [Ken] And to make sure every piece looks and tastes like it should, Shelby keeps a close eye on the operation.

You might say she's the quality control manager who knows exactly how it's all made.

- We start with the mints over here.

We have those weighed out and they're just ready to be poured in.

Someone does that ahead of time, and then we mix 'em in the mixer and then they're poured on the table and then they're cut the mints in the squares and then someone takes those and puts them in the little cups and they have 'em ready for me, usually, to just start and I box nearly everything that we do.

- [Ken] Not only does she package it, it has to look just right.

- When we first started, our husbands thought that we didn't need to gift wrap or do anything, but to us, the ribbons just what makes it.

So, we tie bows for everything.

- [Ken] They call the farm their candy commune with everyone living within walking distance to the kitchen, but it's much more than candy making.

Literally keeps Pam and Shelby, Amelia, Rob, and Bobby, kids in the candy store.

Even Amelia's son, Tate, is the official taste tester and could be the family's fourth generation of Sally Lane farmers.

- [Pam] Just knowing that we're carrying on our tradition and this is, you know, a family.

We're getting to be together and do something really fun.

- [Ken] They were honored when the white chocolate popcorn was chosen by Rachel Ray as the official audience snack for one of her TV shows.

Pam and Shelby hand delivered almost 200 bags to her New York studio.

- We didn't get to be in the audience, but we stood outside and watched people come out with our popcorn, and that was as neat as being in there, and people were having their pictures made with us, and it was just, it was another terrific thing from getting to have the candy farm.

- [Ken] But there's more, their retail store in Paris is another landmark.

It's filled with a bountiful harvest from the farm, where everyone in this candy family is cultivating a rich heritage and reaping the happiness of their sweetest dreams.

In fact, you might say they possess a love and affection for creating confections with pride and passion, family and tradition just a short walk down Candy Lane, here at Sally Lane's.

(pleasant music) - Well finally, have you ever looked at a book or a package, and wondered, who did that fancy artwork?

Well, that's the job of a commercial illustrator.

Recently, Tress Bush spent some time with one in Hermitage, and learned what it's like to create artwork that never gets hung on the wall.

- I drew all the time when I was a kid.

I'd get in trouble drawing army figures and baseball players in the margins of my papers.

I was always drawing.

- [Tressa] For Bob Jones, getting into trouble at school for drawing only meant he would draw less while in class.

In fact, that little bit of trouble really paid off.

It led Bob to a career as an illustrator, and it's all he's ever known.

Professionally, it began in the mid-60s while he was stationed in Germany during the Vietnam War.

Bob sketched to pass the time, and one of his superiors found out and assigned him a very special job.

- He decided that the best thing for me to do, in his eyes, was to send me to the motor pool and letter the insignias and big stars and numbers on the Jeeps.

And I painted white numerals and white stars on all of the vehicles in the motor pool.

- [Tressa] Later, another boss assigned Bob to liven up the barracks with a mural.

- It had been a Panzer Tank barracks during World War II and they repainted it and put us in there and they wanted to make it look more cheery, so we painted historical murals, which I don't know whether they made them more cheery or not, but that was my portfolio when I got out of the army.

- [Tressa] That portfolio was good enough to land him several jobs in New York City in advertising and package design.

Then in 1976, Bob moved to Nashville to work for Aladdin Industries.

His job?

Illustrating some very famous items, children's lunch boxes.

- We had us a big sales meeting at Aladdin in June or July, that was when the television season was being ready to be announced to the public and we'd get all of these VCR tapes and we'd watch these things all day and they'd say yay or nay.

They liked this show, this show was going to be good, and most of the time they were right.

Most of the time they were right, they picked winners.

At first, it was a little nerve-wracking because you didn't, you know, there were so many levels that I had to go through in my own company and the stars usually didn't care.

It was their agents, or the studios.

The studio wanted to make sure that you were doing something that they agreed with.

- [Tressa] Metal lunch boxes are highly collectible and even the most famous museum in the world, the Smithsonian, thinks they're worth preserving.

Four of the ones Bob worked on are on display there.

- They're down in the cafeteria area now on display and it makes you feel kind of old to say that you have something in the Smithsonian, you know?

But, that was exciting.

- [Tressa] When the demand for lunch boxes dwindled, Bob pitched his work to the religious publishing houses in Nashville, and they loved what they saw.

This is the bulk of his work now.

He illustrates just about anything you can think of from 3D puppets, to puzzles, to cutouts, to maps.

- These people are so nice.

They used to, of course, tell me exactly what they wanted, you know.

Put a building here and a person here and now they tell me, this is the storyline.

Do whatever you want to do, and it's kind of nice.

- In 2005, Bob's career took another turn.

That's the year his daughter Jennifer asked him to do something very special, and very personal.

Create her wedding invitations.

- [Bob] She wanted her wedding invitation to look like it had been done 200 years ago and stuck in a box someplace and then found.

And so, that's what we did.

It was fun doing that, and someone else said, well, would you do one for me?

So I put a website up and that's pretty much what it's geared to.

And we've had a little bit of success doing that.

They're, every one is individual.

They're all hand done.

- [Tressa] And if that wasn't enough, Bob somehow finds time to make whimsical wooden sculptures.

Most of these sculptures are political in nature with quotes and facts.

They're designed to make the viewer think and sometimes laugh.

Bob got the idea to do this type of work after seeing an exhibit by multimedia artist, Red Grooms.

- I was so impressed with Red Grooms stuff.

It was just fun and some it moved, a lot of it didn't move, and I said, you know, I'd like to do that.

- [Tressa] Bob shows no signs of slowing down.

As long as his hand is steady and his eyesight is good, Bob says he will continue doing the very thing that got him into trouble as a kid, drawing.

- Well with that, we must sadly bid farewell.

Well, almost, that is.

That's after first reminding you of our website, tennesseecrossroads.org and second, taking a look at next week's show.

We're gonna take you to music city where Rob Wilds meets the creator of harp guitars.

Then, to west Tennessee with Ken Wilshire to explore the Humboldt Strawberry Museum.

To Memphis with Tammy Oringer and a dining destination called The Arcade.

Finally, the Belvedere, home of historic Falls Mill.

Gonna be a good one.

Our next Tennessee Crossroads, we expect to see you then.

(jazzy music)