- This time on Retro Tennessee Crossroads, Joe Elmore will take us to Memphis and a museum dedicated to The King's rides, Susan Watson will take a leisurely stroll through the woods, and we'll tell you the history behind these lovable bears.

I'm Laura Faber, and welcome to Retro Tennessee Crossroads.

(cheery guitar music) I am sure you've driven by this corner in the Edgehill neighborhood in Nashville and thought, why polar bears?

Well, back in 1988, Jerry Thompson saw them and thought the very same thing.

Here's what he found.

(bright folk music) - [Jerry] If you should happen to be driving down Nashville's Edgehill Avenue, you could see a surprising sight, polar bears.

For 50 years, they've been poised here ready to pelt passers by with snowballs.

Now most of us just drive right by without giving the bears a second thought.

Yet, I've always been interested in their history.

I've heard these bears formerly stood in front of an ice cream parlor and then later a funeral home, and my interest was intensified when I heard recently there might be two more polar bears in Nashville.

So as unlikely as it might seem, I decided to see what I could find out about Nashville's polar bears.

I started my bear hunt in the most obvious place, Mary Anderson's home on Edgehill Avenue.

There, we found Mary polishing up her bears.

A polar bear in this climate needs a lot of attention.

Mary is Nashville's most recent unofficial caretaker for the bears.

Tell me a little about your bears.

- Well, the undertaker that built this house, his name was Reverend Zema Hill, and he had four bears.

He had two at his funeral home on South Street, and he put two here, and we have more compliments of the bears.

So if anybody asks where's Edgehill?

I don't know.

You know where the bears are?

Yes, that's Edgehill, and we have busloads of people coming to make pictures of the bears, just it's just historic, you know, the bears.

It's just a trademark, a Nashville Landmark.

It's a funny thing happened.

This man was intoxicated, and he was going up the street, and so he looked and saw the bears with the snowballs.

He said, if you hit me one of those D bears, I'm gonna hit you back.

(both chuckle) - [Jerry] You don't know of anyone that the bears have hit, do you?

- No.

- Okay, Mary, we understand that originally, there were four of these bears cast in Nashville, and maybe more than that.

Do you know where the others are?

- Well, now, Patton Brothers Funeral Home used to be on Eighth Avenue South.

So when Reverend Hill died, they bought Patton Brothers, which is located now at the old Zema Hill funeral home.

So they did not want the bears greeting peoples in mourning.

So anyway, the bears left, and someone came here and told me that they saw one over on Sixth Avenue North off of Monroe in a vacant field.

- Finally, using the hunting skills I acquired growing up on a farm, skills I later honed a fine edge conducting hunts in singles bars, I located one of the other bears.

It stands on a porch on sixth Avenue North near Monroe Street.

The fourth bear is also in the area, stored in a garage.

They belong to Phil Rush and Mike Emery.

Phil and Mike have done extensive research on the history of Nashville's polar bears.

Phil's bear stands on his porch, while Mike plans to stand his on his lawn when he finishes a much needed restoration.

Both men live in Nashville's newly renovated historic Germantown community where we sat on Mike's porch and talked about the bears.

Phil, you are probably the only person in north Nashville with a polar bear on your porch.

- Well, I am the only person now with a polar bear on my porch.

A friend of mine told me about two bears up here in North Nashville.

The second set, the brothers of the ones on Edgehill, I've always had an affection for 'em, grown up with them as a longtime Nashvillian.

I searched them out and decided that they needed a new home.

- You brought the bears in with a crane, right?

- We ended up having to get a boom truck from a masonry company, one of those that would deliver pallets of brick and concrete block, and just used some straps rigging much like a parachute harness to pick up the bears and get them off the site.

- As this one came off the truck, he actually had a happy look on his face, but then I suppose if I'd been lying for years in a vacant lot, I'd be happy to get back to civilization too.

What's the history of these bears?

- Well, they were cast in the early 1930s, and they were cast in pairs and put in front of a soft ice cream store that had two branches, one on Gallatin Road, where these came from and one out west end where the ones on Edgehill came from.

The ice cream stores were torn down.

They were taken into salvage.

A guy bought 'em who had a funeral home on South Street over near Music Row.

He had both pairs, one at the funeral home and one at his home.

- That was Zema Hill.

- Zema Hill, right.

These were the ones that were in front of the funeral home.

They passed through a number of hands and ended up at 20th and Booker and then came to us.

- Mike, you brought a portion of your bear with you, didn't you?

- Unfortunately, he is in pieces.

He was the more damaged of the pair, just happened to have his arm here.

Not the easiest thing to move.

This probably weighs about 50 pounds.

This is the upper raised arm with the claws and the, well, now green snowball and green claws.

- Why are the snowballs green?

- Well, apparently the color's pretty much a owner's preference.

The polar bears on Edgehill, I've seen pink, and apparently they've been black and all different colors.

Phil, I think is gonna keep his snowballs green.

I think I'm going to, the arm load of snowballs, I'm gonna do in mixed flavors when I redo mine.

- [Jerry] Michael, why don't you show us your polar bear, the remains of it anyway?

- Okay, we'll go visit the carcass right now, if you like.

- [Jerry] That'll be fine.

Mike took me to a nearby building where I finally located Nashville's fourth polar bear or at least his remains.

While the other three stand proudly, unfortunately, the fourth one lies on the dirt floor of this garage on Eighth Avenue North.

He's got some extensive recuperation to undergo, right?

- [Micheal] Yeah, we've been telling people that he's been in the concrete yard art hospital all this time.

So he's just been resting until I had time to get to him.

- But you think this summer is the time you're going to restore him to his proud position of throwing snowballs in fields?

- I hope so.

It's gonna be an uphill battle putting him back together.

- [Jerry] Well, he looks to be resting comfortable.

- [Micheal] Yeah, hopefully not permanently this way.

- I'm sure he'll be back soon.

If this concrete polar bear could talk, it'd have an interesting story to tell.

It's part of Nashville's history, and now it'll be a part of Nashville's future.

- I love it.

I moved to Nashville in 1990 and will never forget the first time I drove by the polar bears and thought, what in the world?

But I love anything that speaks to Nashville, the original Nashville, and my guest feels the same way.

Jessica Fitzpatrick is a preservationist with Metro's Historical Commission.

Thank you for being with us.

- Thanks for having me.

- We are at the intersection of Edgehill and 12th Avenue.

Let's talk about why we're here.

The two of the polar bears are here now, and as we saw in the story, they were still at that home where they had sat for so long.

How did we get here?

- Yeah, so we are really in the heart of the Edgehill neighborhood right here, and so in 2000, the Metro Arts Commission, knowing how important these were to the community, and there was really a rally from the community to save and preserve the polar bears, they were just down the street on Edgehill Avenue, as you said, at the former home of Zema Hill.

So the Metro Arts Commission purchased them, refurbished them, put them right here in the center of the neighborhood to really celebrate their connection to the neighborhood, and so everyone could see them.

- [Laura] And it's really become a symbol of the Edgehill community.

- [Jessica] Absolutely, they have.

Absolutely, they have, yes.

So everyone associates the polar bears with Edgehill.

There's signage all around the neighborhood with the name of the neighborhood, Edgehill, in big letters and then giant polar bear.

- [Laura] Let's make it clear, it's not 12 South.

It's not the Gulch.

- Absolutely.

- [Laura] This is Edgehill.

- Edgehill, it predates those neighborhoods by decades.

Edgehill's been around since the Civil War.

It started from formerly enslaved African Americans who flock to the US Army where they were building Fort Negley, and after the Civil War, those neighborhoods, of course, just continued to stay there right in the shadow of the place that symbolized their freedom, and that's how the Edgehill neighborhood grew to what it is today.

The other two, I believe, disappeared from the funeral home when it sold in the fifties.

So no one knew where they were, what happened to them.

In the 1970s, Germantown was really in this sort of renaissance of becoming a new neighborhood and revitalizing all of these grand old homes that were up there, and it was really finding its own identity and a new life as a neighborhood.

So some of the new residents there knew the story of the polar bears and were kind of always, I believe in the piece, Michael and Rick, he was determined to find these polar bears.

He was a historian.

It's one of those things.

- Thank goodness for him.

- Once we get it in our mind, we sort of like latch on, and you have to look everywhere to try to figure out the puzzle.

So they found them.

They were in a vacant lot, not a very nice place for a polar bear, rescued them, as we saw, and both men have sadly passed away, but the Germantown Neighborhood Association and a lot of the neighbors, some that knew both of them, they really want to keep that as a legacy, just as these polar bears are really a legacy of the neighborhood.

The ones in Germantown are really a legacy of those early Germantown residents who made the neighborhood what it is today.

- [Laura] Right, so they exist, the fourth one that we saw, in really pretty bad disrepair.

- It has, yes.

- They've both been fully restored.

- [Jessica] So a local artist helped to restore that polar bear, the one with the broken arm.

I believe his arm was broken again right a little later, maybe a little sensitive to future damage, but yeah, they're both in great shape, and they're both just sort of tucked away.

- [Laura] What do you think these bears are gonna mean to this community going forward, Jessica?

- I think it's really important that they have been here for such a long time.

They continue to speak to the resilience of Edgehill, a neighborhood that really continues to redefine itself but really wants to be a strong neighborhood.

They don't want to blend into the Gulch or to 12 South or to any other neighborhoods around them.

They have a very strong identity.

They've been around for a very long time and so have these polar bears.

So I think people are gonna continue to be interested in them.

They're gonna continue to see them as a way to learn more about such a special neighborhood.

- Well, there you have it, so much history on this corner, and what a great update to that great old story.

Now it's time to head west to Memphis and the former home of Elvis Presley, Graceland.

Even back in 1990, Joe Elmore's love for old cars was well known.

In this story, The King of Crossroads visits The King of Rock and Roll's collection of vintage autos.

- This is no doubt the most photographed car in the whole state of Tennessee.

It sits out in front of a new landmark here at Graceland.

Elvis never owned this car, but he owned a lot of others, and although we're all familiar with the Graceland mansion where The King once lived, the Lisa Marie, the airplane in which he flew, and maybe even the new plaza where Elvis fans come to shop.

If you haven't been to the Elvis Presley Car Museum, well, I guess you just haven't done Graceland.

♪ You may have a pink Cadillac ♪ ♪ But don't you be nobodies fool ♪ ♪ Now come back, baby, come ♪ - [Todd] We wanted something that wasn't like the typical Car Museum, not something sterile with a bunch of cars behind a red rope and nothing exciting going on.

So sort of the mood we wanted to create was a summer night in Memphis, only without the mosquitoes and the humidity and the heat, and you have a roadway to walk down and streetlights and trees and shrubbery that all looks real, and feels like you're in a Hollywood movie set.

- [Joe] Todd Morgan works at Graceland and helped design this showplace of Elvis cars.

Elvis was famous for his love of cars.

So a car museum was the inevitable and profitable way to show off The King's machines.

- We were open for seven years for tours with the cars out on the carport where Elvis had them, and people would always ask us, why aren't you taking better care of the cars?

Why aren't they inside?

It was historically correct for them to be parked on the carport where he had them, but we had to wait all of these years until we could get the right plan, the right financing, and build a museum that would protect them forever, and we spent quite a bit of time and money having them perfectly restored.

- [Joe] The collection includes a beautiful 1973 Stutz Black Hawk, one of the entertainer's favorite cars and the last one he ever drove.

He also loved this '56 Continental, which he owned longer than most of his many cars.

- Elvis used it, different people around him used it, and Priscilla used to drive it to high school.

If you can imagine little bitty 5'2" Priscilla with her big hair behind the wheel of that big car.

- [Joe] Wow, I hope she sat on a pillow.

- I bet she was cute, though.

- [Joe] Elvis gave away countless cars.

Priscilla Presley donated this 1970 gift from her former husband to the museum.

Now in the sixties, Elvis drove his way through many movies.

This was his race car in the movie Spin Out.

This museum has its own drive-in theater, which has just about become part of American car history itself.

In it, visitors can sit in a '57 Chevy car seat and watch a montage of Elvis Car movie clips.

Now many of the cars here, such as this purple Cadillac, have interesting stories behind them.

- Elvis had just gotten started in his career and was just beginning to make money, and he walked into a car dealership, and the salesman ignored him, brushed him off, wouldn't let him test drive a car, and he saw this '56 El Dorado convertible.

So Elvis storms out of the dealership, finds an old man washing cars out front, and asks him how much he makes a week, and the old man says, "30 bucks a week."

He says, "Come with me."

Elvis takes the old man back in, asks for the manager of the car dealership, and he says, "I'm Elvis Presley.

"I want this car.

"I'm willing to pay cash for it, "and I want you to give this man his commission "that would be due a salesman."

(laughs) - [Joe] What was Elvis' favorite car of all times?

Do you have any idea?

- I think whichever car was his newest one at the time.

He would enjoy it and then go on to another one, but if you had to pick one, I'd say the pink Cadillac.

He's known to have said that that would be the car he would always keep.

It was special to him, because it was one of his early purchases when he had just made it, and it was his mother's favorite.

So a lot of memories tied up in these.

- [Joe] Here's a home movie obviously taken by Elvis himself of the pink Cadillac when his parents drove it home one winter day.

There are other movies of Elvis here too, some with Priscilla and all during happier times in the life of the legendary singer.

Now if you're not an Elvis fan, you may just see this as yet another way to dig deep into the pocketbooks of tourists.

If you are a fan, it's a worthy home of the King's motorized treasures and worthy of the admission price, but in any event, most customers seem satisfied with their visit down this driveway of dreams.

- Oh, it's fabulous.

They look so huge compared to the cars that are around today, but like I graduated from high school in '57.

So there were a lot around at that time but not anything near as pretty as these.

- I'd like to have some of these cars.

I like 'em all.

They're really beautiful, especially I was just looking at that little old Honda back there.

It's about a 150.

I remember those when they came out.

- [Joe] Would you like to have one of these cars?

- Yeah, oh sure.

I want that pink Cadillac.

I want that one definitely.

- There are other assorted vehicles that Elvis owned from golf carts to go-karts.

Now I imagine some parents have trouble explaining their significance to young children, but to the many loyal fans who come here, no other of King's treasures could compare.

Well, the end of the line of the Elvis Car Museum is this replica of a 50s service station, complete with authentic gas pumps.

Now behind me here is a Cadillac convertible that's been cut in half.

Oh, but don't worry.

As the license plate says, it's not his.

♪ Come back, baby, I want to play house here with you ♪ - Such a fascinating collection, and you can still see it today at the Presley Motors Automobile Museum on the Grounds at Graceland.

Though, I'm sure it's had some updates since that story first aired.

Next, we'll head back towards Nashville and make a quick stop off near McEwen, Tennessee.

That's where Susan Watson discovered a mecca for horse owners and lovers, called the Bucksnort Trail Ride.

- Tennessee has truly been blessed, not only with the breathtaking beauty of the land, but also with the heartwarming friendliness of the people who call these rolling hills home, and one place to find both in abundance is just about an hour's drive west of Nashville at the Bucksnort Trail Ride.

(hooves clatter) (soothing folk music) About 85 people saddled up for the first Bucksnort Trail Ride five years ago.

This year, three to 400 riders are expected for each of the three week long trail rides.

After a hardy breakfast on the grounds, the trail bosses lead their groups out for either a half day slow ride, a half day fast ride, or a full day fast ride, depending on your skill and stamina.

Well, it had been a while since the last time I was on a horse.

So I opted to join the slower version led by Mike Davidson.

- I lead the half day slow, and our group is mostly amateurs or quarter horses, and we stay at just a walk or a small canner and not very fast at all and kind of helps 'em get initiated into the ride, not too rough, but still not boring.

- [Susan] To keep everything running smoothly, there are a few rules to follow.

- [Mike] Try to stay grouped and keep everyone together so we don't get strung out and not throw any trash down and keep everything looking nice, and if you do have a horse that kicks or acts up, tie red ribbon in the tail and try to keep them to the rear, and I guess just most of all, have a good time.

- [Susan] And have a good time they certainly do.

Halfway through the ride, (cow moos) we take a break to sip on a cold drink, admire the view (girls giggle) and do a little horsing around.

Jenny Housley of Franklin has found the trail ride to be the perfect vacation for her family.

- It's great.

We came last year, and we came back this year, 'cause we liked it so much.

My two boys ride mules, and my husband has a mule, and I still have a horse, and it's something we can all do together, and they've gotten to know all the people here, and they just hang around with the cowboys and learning to be cowboys.

(woman laughs) - Okay, let's go.

(whistles and clicks) - [Susan] It's cool and still in the woods.

The gentle sounds of nature wrap themselves around you.

Body, mind, and spirit are renewed.

Your eyes and ears take in sights and sounds you'd never even noticed back in the city.

- Camera, we've been lost out here since August.

That's the truth really.

- [Susan] Well, maybe those gentlemen should have talked to Norman Fowler before they left camp.

Norman swears by the dependability of a horse of a different color.

- I ride a mule all the time here, sure do, and the mule does do a good job with riding in farther trails.

He's steady and he goes up the hill and down the hill real cautious and everything, and he kind of takes care of me.

- The ride is so relaxing and fun that time just flies by, and all too quickly, we're at camp once again.

Why I even think the horses were sorry it was over.

Whoa, end of the trail.

Thanks, Rambler, couldn't have done it without ya.

Oh, horses and mules alike are lovingly brushed, fed and watered, and then tucked snugly away for a good night's rest, unless, of course, a shoe needs replacing.

It seems a trail boss's work is never done, especially if he happens to also be a blacksmith.

Mike and his wife Dawn love horses and trail rides almost as much as they love each other.

Last summer they combined all three.

- Dawn and I got married in June on the horses over at the swimming hole at the trail ride here.

- [Susan] Now whose idea was that?

- That was mine.

(laughs) - [Susan] And they didn't even have to look too far for a preacher.

- They have one here that that's a regular trail rider, and we got in touch with him to marry us out.

(crowd laughs and cheers) - [Man Off Camera] All right.

- [Susan] Well, the first kiss was a little tricky, but it's been a smooth ride ever since.

LD Cercey is the soft spoken gentleman that started the trail ride after his retirement allowed him the free time.

- We met a lot of nice people all across the country, made a lot of friends, and we just enjoy doing the trail ride.

I've always wanted to do this.

I think this helps to keep you young.

- [Susan] This is Sue Marketey's third time here at Bucksnort, even though there are many places to ride near her home in Central New York.

- We like the ride, and we like the food, the fires, the jokes.

We like it all.

My favorite thing, the people.

I've met a lot of really nice people from Tennessee, and we've made some good friends, and we've been down two or three times since in between the trail rides just to visit people.

We come to dance.

We've learned a lot of the dances just coming down here.

So we have to practice 'em all and then get out here on the floor.

We enjoy that too.

- [Susan] Well, I got a quick dance lesson on the side myself, but the sweetheart schotticche is a dance that's best left to those with a bit more experience.

(upbeat country music) It won't be long until the last song is sung, the last two step danced, and another trail ride comes to an end, but the memories and friendships made here will most likely last a lifetime.

- Well, that looks like a great time and a beautiful ride.

I wonder if those guys ever got out of the woods, not a bad place to be lost, though, if you ask me.

Well, that's gonna do it for this episode.

Thanks for coming with us back in time as we explored the Crossroads vault.

Check out the Tennessee Crossroads website for more of your favorite stories, and we'll see you next time here on Retro Tennessee Crossroads.

(upbeat jazz music)