- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is made possible in part by... - [Phil] I'm Tennessee Tech President Phil Oldham.

Here in Cookeville, Tennessee's college town, we are bold, fearless, confident, and kind.

Tech prepares students for careers by making everyone's experience personal.

We call that living wings up.

Learn more at tntech.edu.

- [Announcer] Averitt's Tennessee roots run deep.

They've been delivering logistics solutions here for over 50 years, and though Averitt's reach now circles the globe, the Volunteer State will always be home, more at averitt.com.

Discover Tennessee trails and byways.

Discover Tennessee's adventure, cuisine, history, and more made-in-Tennessee experiences showcased among these 16 driving trails.

More at tntrailsandbyways.com.

- [Joe] This time on "Tennessee Crossroads," we'll sample some of Perry's Smokin' Pig in White House, then take a stroll through Robertson County history.

We'll take an underground boat ride in Bowling Green, and finally explore a train station, now hotel in Memphis.

Hi, everybody, I'm Joe Elmore.

Welcome again to "Tennessee Crossroads."

(pleasant music) Have you ever driven by a roadside eatery and just knew the food there had to be good?

Well, coming up in our first story, Miranda Cohen travels to White House, where a barbecue sign on the side of the road may draw you in, but the smoked goodness will keep you coming back.

(upbeat music) - [Miranda] In the wee hours of the morning in White House, Tennessee, if you smell something cooking or smoking or grilling, you know Perry Morris is starting his day.

- [Perry] We'll get everything prepped.

I get everything out and set up the oven's on, tea going, everything starting to get warm.

Then we have to get all the pork that we've cooked right off because we have to reload the smoker to get everything, the lunch stuff done by 11.

(calm music) - [Miranda] And when the clock strikes 11- - [Perry] Pork sandwich with slaw on it.

- [Miranda] The lines are already forming at Perry's Smokin' Pig.

- [Perry] It's just what I've always liked to do.

I mean, ribs and brisket, pork, burgers, steak, anything, I like cooking it all.

But I always wanted to make good ribs, so I think I've cooked ribs more through my life than any of the other stuff.

(calm music) There you go.

You let him out today.

- [Miranda] And Morris knows barbecue is a hot topic around here.

So he will personally oversee every detail, using techniques and recipes he mastered years ago, with delicate blends of herbs and spices.

And if you want to hit the sauce, well that's up to you.

- Oh yeah, woo.

That was two pieces.

I thought there was two when I put that on there.

More of a Memphis style.

I do like the ribs or dry rub rib.

We just hickory smoke the pork and briskets, and we don't put any sauce or anything on our pork.

We let you add your own sauce.

- Perry says the secret ingredient to his barbecue comes down to one thing, patience.

He will smoke these meats anywhere from 3 to 13 hours, and they always come out perfectly.

- [Perry] Sausage is getting close.

You got the bologna rolling, patience, and you gotta constantly watch your smoker and consistency on your temperatures.

And so yeah, just patience.

(upbeat music) - [Miranda] Perry's Smoke and Pig will serve up all the barbecue classics and you always know what day it is just by looking at the parking lot.

- [Patron] Tuesday that's smoked meatloaf.

Best thing I've ever ate in my life.

It is, you gotta come try the smoked meatloaf on Tuesdays.

The wings on Wednesday.

I love my wings.

Friday's the ribs, so whatever the special day is, that's what I'm getting.

- [Perry] I'm doing three or four briskets today.

And ribs, we'll go through maybe 50 rack of ribs on Fridays.

Like Wednesday, we did over 600 wings.

- [Miranda] And there is one southern barbecue staple that Perry insists he didn't invent, but his customers say he's certainly perfected.

We are talking the Smoke Stack.

- [Perry] We start off with the cornbread.

We do the little cornbread fritters and put that on the bottom.

Then you have a choice of beans you put on top of the cornbread, you can do the cowboy beans, baked beans, or the white beans and you put cheese and then a pork on top.

And some people like to put slaw on top of that.

It's just kind of a just stack, stacking it.

- Rodney, what you going to have today?

- [Rodney] I'm gonna wait on Mike.

He's on his way - [Miranda] And look no farther than this refrigerator case for the perfect ending to your meal.

And here's a tip.

Get your dessert when you order, or they just might all be gone.

- [Perry] My mom makes all my desserts homemade, and they change out, banana pudding mostly every day.

Then she'll do four different pies and then different days she'll do different cakes.

Carrot cake, I think she did carrot cake today.

Strawberry cake.

She does a red velvet hoho cake, chocolate cake.

Can you grab me that mustard bottle of there, mom?

- I was just told I needed to go get the dessert before they get sold out because they will sell out of the banana pudding like the first time.

And my husband has to have that.

- [Patron 2] you will not find better barbecue than even find it here.

And I think I come just as much for the great people that work here too.

- Oh my God, they just let anybody come in here don't they?

What's up?

How are y'all?

- How you doing?

- [Miranda] For more than a decade, the big Perry's Smoking Pig sign outside has been known as a sign of great barbecue and a great experience.

When you are here, you're more like family.

And that is exactly what the humble and talented grill master intended.

- [Perry] Just building up a customer base and being here every day.

And I guess keeping your food the same is what a lot of people say.

You know, you gotta be consistent.

The community, you know, people just keep coming and buying.

I mean, they're the ones who made it, not me.

- Thanks Laura.

It's not unusual for the big city museums to get all the attention, but you know, sometimes the smaller county museums offer some of the best walks through Tennessee history.

Laura Faber visited the Robertson County Museum and discovered it's a far cry from just a closet full of artifacts.

(upbeat music) - [Laura] Just off the pretty town square of Springfield a stone's throw from the courthouse sits a beautiful building that's packed with history.

What was the original post office back in the early 1900s is now the Robertson County History Museum and has been since 1998.

- [Danny] And we're not just a dusty old museum.

We're dedicated to preserving our history preserving our artifacts, and becoming an educational center for not only the Robertson County people or citizens but also the students.

- [Laura] Danny Atchley is president of the Robertson County Historical Society.

He says what visitors will first notice is the architecture of the building.

Constructed an academic Roman revival style, it boasts arched windows, brass handrails, and a gorgeous terrazzo floor bordered by rose colored Tennessee marble.

- [Danny] People come in and they look at, especially that lobby, they look and they go, oh wow.

This is something, it's just special.

- [Laura] This museum also has everything that is Robertson County from the Civil War to agriculture, Main Street, Springfield, whiskey and tobacco, specifically dark fired tobacco.

- [Danny] It's still kind of controversial, I guess you'd say.

Robertson County wouldn't be where we are right now without tobacco.

It was a cash crop.

It was always grown here.

The unique thing about Springfield and and Robertson County is we're one of the few counties in the country that grows dark fired tobacco.

Now dark fired tobacco is a unique tobacco crop and it takes special soil, which is found here.

- [Laura] Dark fired tobacco is used in chewing tobacco, and snuff, not cigarettes, but it does smoke.

- [Danny] In the fall, this tobacco farmers will bring the tobacco in and they'll hang it inside these barns and then they will light sawdust, which will smoke to the tobacco that's hanging there and gives it a unique color and also a unique flavor.

Oftentimes when people that are new to the area, they'd be driving down the highway and they see a barn off the road and see smoke coming out of it, and they would stop and tell whoever lived there.

Your barn's on fire.

- [Laura] Janet Palmore is Operations Manager of the museum.

- We are recognized by the state as one of the top museums because we do, you know, carry such rich history here.

- [Laura] She says visitors definitely gravitate toward a couple areas of the museum.

Alright, Janet, this exhibit is interesting to people why?

What are we looking at?

- We're looking at some of the tobacco exhibit we have here at the museum and it is so popular because we're from Robertson County and we're known as the world's largest dark fired tobacco.

And a lot of people here, their family and grandparents and stuff have grown tobacco.

And it's still known throughout the parts of Robertson County.

I find the 1892 Winchester Night Rider gun right here to be pretty, you know, neat to see, because it's one of the guns that would've been used during the Night Rider's time.

This is just a replica of a tobacco barn, that if you're riding around Robertson County you're definitely gonna see 'em and they're gonna be smoking around fall time.

- [Laura] Which means there's tobacco.

- [Janet] There's tobacco in it.

- [Laura] Another popular exhibit tells the story of the Wessington plantation.

- [Danny] Wessington plantation was made up of thousands and thousands of acres.

It was settled by the Washington family and they were cousins of George Washington, the first president of the United States.

And they settled there on a land grant and amassed to all this property.

And of course, you know, tobacco was king.

They started raising huge amounts of tobacco.

Tobacco is very labor intensive, even to this day.

And so they unfortunately had to have a lot of manpower.

And in those days it was slave power.

And Washington Plantation just prior to Civil War had almost 300 enslaved people that lived and worked there - [Laura] For years, the exhibit remained the same, but it's about to be updated thanks to local author and resident, John Baker Jr.

He saw this photo in a textbook while in school and came to learn that he was related to that family, one of many enslaved on the plantation.

What he found on the journey into his past will be on display here.

This is the existing exhibit of Wessington Plantation, one of the largest tobacco plantations in the country.

But this is about to change.

What's coming?

- We are going to tell the rest of the story.

What happened to the formerly enslaved people of Washington Plantation after the Civil War ended?

Well, first thing they did, they started building churches.

Second thing they started to do was build schools.

Third thing they started to do was buy property so they could become landowners.

And then the fourth thing, those people that left Wessington Plantation started their own businesses.

Many of them right here in Springfield.

- [Laura] The goal has always been to preserve the history of Robertson County, and you can find it inside the Small Town Museum, with big and important history lessons.

- [Janet] I love working here because you get to meet new people, and you get to meet the little ones that's coming in on a field trip.

And you're someone who plants a seed that may make them grow, you know, into a historian as well.

- [Danny] We're very proud of what we do and we're very proud of what we preserve.

- Thank you, Laura.

For our next story, we head up to Bowling Green, Kentucky and a unique urban nature center.

That main attraction there is a legendary little river that flows underground into a cave, the Lost River Cave.

An ancient marvel of nature that attracts modern day adventurers.

A river runs through Bowling Green, Kentucky, one that flows above and below the ground, eventually escaping into a mysterious, natural wonder, the Lost River cave.

- [Roe] We are a urban nature sanctuary in the heart of Bowling Green, surrounded by the history of the cave and the beauty of nature.

We have an amazing place to come to work every day.

- That's Roe Lansing, CEO of a 60 acre attraction that draws about 80,000 people a year.

Many come just to walk the trails, others come to fly above them.

More about that later.

But the main attraction is of course, the cave.

And according to tour manager, Chad Singer, it was once a refuge for ancient Native Americans, a few famous outlaws, and much more.

- [Phil] Even near the Civil War, Lost River cave, this whole valley that we're in at one point may have had between 15,000 to 20,000 troops from both sides here, at one point.

- [Phil] For about a century, the river was damned to make power for grain and lumber mills, which either flooded or burned.

But in 1933, the Mill Dam was rebuilt to run a water wheel that generated electricity for cave tours and even a nightclub.

(jazz music) The Cavern Nightclub, complete with Bandstand and dance floor was a popular entertainment attraction for decades.

Thanks in part to its cool temperatures, in a time when air conditioning was rare.

But by the early sixties, the nightclub closed and the cave fell into neglect, eventually becoming a dumping site.

- But then, you know, Western Kentucky got involved with trying to find the true depths of the blue holes and you know, trying to see what was really going on here, this unique geological feature that we have.

And then some students got extra credit to help do the cleanup, and we were able to pull out 55 tons of trash from the cave from the valley.

- [Phil] In the mid 1990s, a non-profit group, friends of Lost River reopened the cave, and now explorers of all ages can enjoy boat tours through this geological wonder.

Now, when you begin the tour, the operative word is duck.

As you pass under this low limestone ceiling, before the cave opens up into a four story cavern.

- [Explorer] Now this room that we're in is what we call the breakdown room.

It's about a four story tall room.

Caves in this area are gonna be kind of notable, by having these bigger portions to it first, and then they're gonna kind of taper down as well throughout.

As you go through here, you may feel a nice cold little wet drip of water on your heads.

And that's what we call cave kiss.

Yep.

We know it's not that big, but we still think it's impressive.

It's pretty neat.

- [Phil] Eventually we arrive at a newer down built to control the ever-changing water level.

- This is a great example of cave coral or popcorn.

This is just, its gonna be littered with it.

No matter where that water's going it's gonna be carrying those minerals too.

- [Phil] The natural beauty is obvious, but the tour also offers a lesson in the cave's delicate ecology.

- [Explorer] Now, and here's the thing.

In a karst environment, a drop of oil, say leaving a car that's going over top of our road, with a little bit of rainwater like we're gonna have today within an hour and a half, those oils can get down here.

You know where you have caves, oils and pollutants are gonna move very fast and it's going to damage these environments that are here.

Like I've been saying, it's a very unstable ecosystem.

It's not gonna bounce back.

- [Phil] Before long, we returned to the mouth of the caves, back into natural light.

But we're not leaving until we sample a new adventure of the Lost River Valley.

(upbeat music) In April, 2018, the Flying Squirrel zip line was open to visitors who want a high ride over this wooded wonderland.

So with help from Chad and his assistant Heather, photographer Paul and I geared up to give it a go.

(upbeat music continues) What a ride and what a place to commune with nature, whether you're zipping through the trees, floating through a cave, or just strolling down a quiet trail.

All too often, historic buildings fall victim to the constant push for new construction.

Well, everyone benefits when beloved old structures can be restored and re-suited for use in the present day, such as the case with our final segment.

Len Sitler has the story of the Central Station Hotel in Memphis.

- [Linn] It's a train station, it's a hotel, and it's also sort of a radio station where disc jockeys spin records, piping Memphis music into every room of the Central Station Hotel.

The Central Station Hotel has opened in downtown Memphis as a jewel in the crown of Memphis, Tennessee.

And who better to oversee the train station's transformation into a luxury hotel than McLane Wilson?

- [McLane] My grandfather founded Holiday Inns in 1952 and what we're doing here at Central Station is an attempt to do the exact same thing he did relative to being innovative.

What we're attempting to do is really create an authentic, genuine expression of what Memphis Tennessee is.

The building itself has a storied past, so there's a lot of architectural details and design details that pay homage to the past.

But we also wanted to make it relevant for not only today but for the foreseeable future.

And so we had to create some modernity to it as well.

And really the big notion for what this hotel offers that a lot of hotels around the world don't, is a music lounge with world renowned speakers, acoustically dialed in perfectly and an album wall full of records that all harken back to some tie to Memphis music, to really showcase that which Memphis has done for many, many decades.

And that's put out really wonderful music.

- [Linn] And thanks to the technical genius of Jim Thompson, guests can listen to Memphis music through custom made Egglestonworks speakers.

- [McLane] Memphis has played such an important role in the development of popular music, that we wanted to highlight that.

So the music is not necessarily just Memphis musicians or Memphis bands.

It is writers, producers, bands that recorded in Memphis, for the reason that it is Memphis.

- [Linn] You can listen to the Memphis music in the hotel bar called Eight & Sand.

In this sleek redo of the train station's waiting room, you might even see a Memphis music legend or two, like David Porter and Boo Mitchell.

There's even a listening room, appealing to the most serious music lovers.

- [McLane] It's a small room that has a pair of speakers in it and a few chairs.

It seats only about six people.

So that one, that one was a lot of fun.

And I don't think you're gonna find that.

I know you're not gonna find that in any hotel, but you probably aren't really gonna find it in any public space at all ever.

So it's really unique.

- [Man] When you're at the Central Station Hotel.

There's no doubt that you're at the South Main historic district.

And really where that's represented is in our art.

We recruited a friend of ours who's a phenomenal photographer named Jamie Harmon.

And so every guest room is littered with photographs that he took along the train lines.

That was one idea of how we stay connected to the past and to the present, which is the fact that we are a train station.

It is an active line that Amtrak has, going to Chicago and New Orleans.

And the other piece is curating original pieces of art from Memphis artists as well as artists in Chicago and New Orleans.

And so all of the public area art is hand selected, handpicked, and all that you experience is rooted in a Memphis feeling.

- [Linn] Each of the rooms has a view of the downtown south main historic district, or a view west toward the Mississippi River.

Each is a little different in shape, designed from the nooks and crannies of the 106 year old building.

Looking back at the train station's transformation, it's hard to imagine that the project grew out of the city's desire to simply turn the train station into a transit center.

But when legendary Memphis developer Henry Turley took the bait... - [Henry] I thought about it for a minute and I said, when the train arrives, you want someone that will welcome 'em and show 'em a good time.

Well, that's pretty easy, a hotel.

So I picked up the phone and called Kim and Swell.

I said, will you do a hotel?

He said, well, will you go anywhere with us?

I said, sure, just so I don't have to work, you've gotta run it, 'cause I don't know anything about a hotel.

I said, I've got one specification.

When someone gets on the train in Chicago and buys a ticket to New Orleans, I want 'em to get off at your hotel and be so happy that they tear up the ticket to New Orleans.

Stay in Memphis.

And that's the only thing I did.

And from what I see, they've pretty well done that.

- Well with that, we must bid you adieu, but not before a reminder to visit our website, tennesseecrossroads.org.

And while you're there, why don't you click onto that new PBS video app.

You can get our shows and others anytime, anywhere you are.

Oh, and don't forget to join us next week.

I'll see you then.

(jazz music) - [Announcer] Tennessee Crossroads is made possible in part by... - [Phil] I'm Tennessee Tech President Phil Oldham here in Cookeville, Tennessee's college town.

We are bold, fearless, confident, and kind.

Tech prepare students for careers by making everyone's experience personal.

We call that Living Wings Up.

Learn more tntech.edu.

- [Announcer] Averitt's Tennessee roots run deep.

They've been delivering logistics solutions here for over 50 years.

And though Averitt's reach now circles the globe the Volunteer State will always be home.

More at averitt.com.

Discover Tennessee trails and byways.

Discover Tennessee's adventure, cuisine, history and more made in Tennessee experiences, showcased among these 16 driving trails.

More at tntrailsandbyways.com.