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>> ASHLEY: Coming up.

>> BRANDON: Savor an Indiana fall tradition.

>> ASHLEY: Explore the history of a bygone Hoosier automaker.

>> BRANDON: And meet a father/son duo literally carving out a name for themselves.

>> ASHLEY: That's all on this episode of -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> BRANDON: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Brandon Wentz.

>> ASHLEY: And I'm Ashley Chilla.

And we're coming to you once again from the Mesker Park Zoo and Botanic Garden in Evansville.

Hundreds of animals call the 45-acre Mesker Park Zoo and Botanic Gardens home.

Visitors can stroll through exhibits from North and South America, Africa, and Asia.

And don't worry, there are plenty of opportunities to interact with some of your favorite zoo pals.

>> BRANDON: And we'll learn all about some of their conservation efforts in just a bit.

But first, producer Nick Deel takes us to Lawrence County to give us a taste of the Mitchell Persimmon Festival.

♪ >> The Mitchell Persimmon Festival is a fall tradition not to be missed.

Sidewalks are packed with vendors selling fall treats, and a parade stretches on for blocks through the small southern Indiana town.

♪ But it's on the other side of Mitchell where the real action is happening, where home bakers are competing in the annual Persimmon Pudding contest.

>> Good luck.

>> This Indiana delicacy, much like English pudding, isn't much more than flour, sugar, spices and, of course, persimmons, but the final results vary wildly.

♪ >> This one here is good.

It's caramely.

There's not hardly any tears in it at all, and the top of it is beautiful, smooth, beautiful color.

And I bet the taste is almost as delicious as the pudding looks.

>> Alverta Hart has been involved in the persimmon pudding contest for decades.

She won first place in 1992 and is overseeing this year's judging.

>> I'm looking for them to be the same size all the way around, and not be lopsided on one side.

I want it to be a perfect piece.

And sometimes you can't have that.

I don't care if you try if you made 100 puddings, you are not going to have that.

♪ >> But what really goes into making the perfect persimmon pudding?

First, you are going to need persimmons.

>> These persimmons are about the common size you see on most trees.

>> Jane Root was the Mitchell Persimmon Pudding Champion of 2021.

She knows all too well that the quality of your persimmons can make or break a recipe.

>> Make sure, number one, they're always on the ground.

You don't want to pick off the tree because they'll be green.

And I usually remove the cap.

Call it a cap and the bottom stem.

You can do that once you get home, but just one less project you have to do.

>> While many local stores in southern Indiana sell frozen persimmon pulp, many bakers still hunt for the fruit themselves.

American persimmons grow abundantly in southern Indiana on trees that can grow 60 feet tall and 35 feet wide.

These persimmons have a light, sweet flavor similar to an apricot.

When the fruit is ripe, it will fall from the tree.

Pick them too early and they'll have an overwhelmingly tart taste.

>> One unripe persimmon can ruin a whole pudding.

♪ All right.

♪ And the best way to do it is just to get in there and smash 'em.

>> Persimmon pudding recipes are often passed down through generations.

>> Buttermilk first.

>> Jane's recipe -- >> Baking soda.

>> -- comes from her mother-in-law.

>> A cup of milk.

Two cups of the pulp.

Two cups of sugar.

Two eggs.

Everybody has their own different method of making a persimmon pudding.

A dash of cinnamon, vanilla extract.

I think the secret to a really good persimmon pudding is not to overbake it.

I'm sure there are other things that people will say, but to me, not to overbake the pudding.

Usually 50 minutes.

And that is a persimmon pudding.

♪ >> Back in Mitchell, the judges are getting down to work.

♪ >> I believe that one, just sayin'.

♪ That one.

>> That one's not bad either.

>> From dozens of entries, the puddings are eventually whittled down to three.

>> What are we looking for when we taste the pudding?

The main thing, you want to taste the persimmons.

You want to taste whether they are sweet, or are they gonna be puckery?

And you want it to be inviting.

Just like if you are having company, do I really want to serve this or do I want to pitch it?

>> That's the thing.

I don't think the sugar got mixed well.

>> Yeah.

That's gotta go.

♪ >> Hmm.

>> That's -- that's good.

>> That's good.

♪ >> Winners are announced at the closing ceremony of the Persimmon Festival and receive cash prizes, bragging rights, and the knowledge that they are helping to carry on a Mitchell tradition.

>>> My mim used to make me persimmon puddings growing up.

So when I married my husband, the property that we are on now we have six trees.

So it produces quite a few persimmons.

I think the secret is that we have fresh.

So we picked the persimmons yesterday, before the contest, and ran them through the colander.

So we have fresh pulp.

Wasn't frozen, and right into the contest.

It feels pretty good.

Um, I got second.

So I'm not sure.

I think I can enter again next year maybe and try for first.

We'll see how it goes.

>> ASHLEY: Some people may watch that and think, wow, I want to be the person that wins that competition.

I watch that and I think, I wanna be one of those women on the judging committee.

You know, the ones that are like, there's too much egg in this, and they throw it away.

You know, they get to taste everything, and most of is gonna be good.

I mean, that's my perfect job, minus this.

Want to learn more?

Head to persimmonfestival.org.

Earlier, we spoke with Leigh Ramon, the animal curator here at Mesker to learn all about the conservation efforts for the endangered eastern hellbender salamander.

♪ >> In 2014, Purdue University came to us and said, we've been studying the eastern hellbender in Indiana, and have found that they're disappearing from the waterways.

And if we don't get help to do something now, we're gonna lose eastern hellbenders in Indiana forever.

And so that's kind of what blossomed the program at Mesker Park Zoo.

Eastern hellbenders are an adorable, not so adorable animal.

This animal is brown, very big.

It's the largest salamander in the U.S. and they get to about 2 feet long.

So they are -- they're a species that's difficult to gather a lot of excitement about because they aren't the prettiest of animals.

However, they are amazing species, and they are great indicators of how the environment is around them.

They're sort of the canary in the coal mine.

So if you have an issue with hellbender populations, then you know you have an issue with the water.

And before you lose all of the species in the water, they kind of give you time to turn that around.

The eastern hellbender in Indiana is endangered because of the water quality in the rivers where they live, and also their habitat is being destroyed.

Hellbenders live in rock crevasses inside the bottom of the river.

And all those spaces are being filled in with silt from soil from the land.

We have several areas in the zoo that house hellbenders.

The exhibit space that you can see in our Discovery Center, we also have a room that has an artificial stream, and in that stream, we have adult hellbenders that we are working to breed in human care to increase the population numbers on our own.

I've spent my entire career trying to save wild animals and wild places and working for conservation organizations.

And so to really be in the thick of a conservation project is just a really amazing thing to do.

Success for the hellbender program is us being able to back away and hellbenders living in the stream, breeding, and doing their thing without us.

So we are doing a lot of education, both here at the zoo and with the hellbender partnership, people going out into the community where hellbenders live and sharing what they are, how great they are for the environment, what they can do to help so that we can create a sustainable environment for them to live into the future.

♪ >> BRANDON: Ashley, have you ever seen one of these salamanders in person?

>> ASHLEY: Well, I mean, given that they are endangered, no, I haven't.

>> BRANDON: Yeah.

>> ASHLEY: But I'm hoping we get to see a lot more of them soon.

>> BRANDON: Yeah, a very rare treat.

>> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Head to meskerparkzoo.com.

>> BRANDON: Up next, producer Tyler Lake takes us to Marion County to go for a spin with the Stutz Motor Company.

♪ >> On May 30th, 1911, Ray Harroun won the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in a Marmon Wasp, but the car that came in 11th place was a little different.

The team behind it didn't have time to do proper testing, and in a move of either practical desperation or marketing flair, they drove it to the track on its own four tires.

It was the splendid Stutz Bearcat, the car that made good in a day.

The Bearcat was the creation of inventor, salesman, and entrepreneur Harry C. Stutz.

Born in Ohio in 1876, Stutz was almost destined to be a pioneer of the motoring age.

>> He made his first car in 1902 in Ohio, his native state.

And then quickly sold it to an Indiana firm, which then moved to Indianapolis, and then that started this career path.

>> New to Indianapolis, Harry got to work founding the Stutz Auto Parts Company, to make his revolutionary transaxle, and he was in the right place at the right time.

>> With the advent of the automobile, business and manufacturing business in the Midwest, particularly Indianapolis, it became the hotbed for manufacturing.

>> Harry realized his auto parts business didn't consume all his time.

So he took a position as a factory manager at the Marion Motor Car Company.

The owners of that factory were working on something else at the time.

>> The Indianapolis Motor Speedway was the brainchild of an entrepreneur named Carl Fisher, and he had this idea to build a test track to compete purpose built or production built vehicles to not only show the audience or the visitors what they could purchase in the salesroom, but also improve the American auto industry, because it was lacking against its European competitors.

>> So with little notice, Harry went to work on the first Bearcat in April of 1911, and just five weeks later, drove past the showroom floor and straight to the raceway.

>> Stutz created this prototype car and Gil Anderson finished 11th in that race, which was just outside of the money paying positions, but it was enough to show Harry Stutz that he had something.

>> Harry left his job at Marion, and he and his new car company were off to the races.

>> The prototype Stutz, or what they called at the time, The Ideal Motor Car Company, that was a great example of this idea that Harry put together, built this car.

It was something that you would see on the road, minus headlamps and fenders and things like that.

>> With a new factory in Indianapolis, the Stutz Motor Car Company started building road-ready versions of that race car, and the Bearcat became an instant classic.

>> What stands out to me and most Stutz owners are their stance and their magnitude as being sturdy and somewhat brute, but yet beautiful at the same time.

That was a very rare quality.

This Auburn behind me is a beautiful, beautiful car.

It doesn't quite have the presence of a Stutz.

>> And to prove the prowess of the Bearcat, Harry fielded a race team that took first place in the 1913 and 1915 National AAA Championships.

Erwin "Cannon Ball" Baker, a native Hoosier, did his first run from L.A. to New York City in a Bearcat, a testament to the speed and reliability of the sturdy Stutz.

In 1916, Stutz shares went up on the New York Stock Exchange, and by 1919, control of the firm had changed hands.

Harry Stutz, frustrated by the new management style, resigned.

Harry Stutz passed away in 1930, after a career of booms and busts, highs and lows, and everything from race cars to fire engines.

In 1920, the fallout of a disastrous stock shorting scandal upended the company's management.

The newly reorganized firm took a different track marketing what they called Safety Stutz.

>> Safety components that they put into the cars, they were a bit ahead of their time when it comes to that.

Their transaxle that Harry Stutz developed and would use in his cars, that was really before its time, when you think about it.

There's a lot of cars today that still use a transaxle design.

It's neat to look back at these old cars and be like, man, they were doing this back now 100, 90 years ago.

>> In 1926, Stutz sales peaked with over 5,000 cars rolling off the line, touting new body styles, safer designs and bigger engines.

The Stutz became the car of choice for many well heeled motorists of the age.

>> They were making high-tech fast cars, but they were adding a lot of what we would consider now elegance and style that you wouldn't really see with an American car at the time.

>> In 1928, a Stutz Blackhawk finished second at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a feat that would not be topped by an American car company for almost 40 years.

By 1935, The Great Depression and shifting tastes spelled the end of the road for Stutz, but not before building more than 35,000 cars in a dizzying variety flavors.

In the early 1970s, the Stutz nameplate was resurrected, sharing little beyond brand and model names, these new ultra luxurious vehicles drew on the Stutz reputation to sell extravagantly expensive automobiles to America's wealthiest consumers.

>> Elvis Presley bought the first two.

Frank Sinatra owned one.

It was the car of the Rat Pack.

They were designed and the bodies built in Italy, shipped over here, and then coupled with either Cadillac or Pontiac drivetrains.

>> Over 100 years later, the legacy of the splendid Stutz has far outlived their production run and the life of their eccentric creator.

They stand now as monuments to a bygone era of Hoosier motoring excellence.

>> ASHLEY: One of the most interesting parts of that story is the idea of, you know, a normal car just sort of, like, going in off the road on to the speedway.

It would be like as if I was driving my Honda Pilot, you know, to Indianapolis and just went on to the Speedway and placed 11th in the Indy 500.

>> BRANDON: Yeah, yeah.

It's a real Rudy moment.

If you'd like to learn more, just go to the address on your screen.

>> ASHLEY: Up next, producer Saddam Abbas takes us back to Lawrence County to learn how the folks at Kopelov Cut Stone turn rocks into art.

♪ >> I was raised in a way where I was given the space and the freedom and the opportunity to take an interest in a lot of different things.

And how exactly I became so interested in stone carving or stone cutting, I'm not sure, but it's also a larger interest.

I really love a lot of the whole process of it, that it takes certain ingenuity and machines to accomplish the carving that I do or the -- the architectural details that we make here.

Working with my father from an early age in masonry, because he did a lot of different kinds of masonry, stonework, third quarter.

So I did start learning to use chisels and carve stone for walls and things related to what he was working on.

And he really gave me that opportunity to learn how to use the tools.

>> I spent 40 years in New Mexico.

I didn't grow up there, but that's where the business started, in New Mexico, near Albuquerque.

There, we did a lot of stone projects for California or West Coast, and we did a lot of sandstone restoration.

Well, the main reason why we moved to Indiana is that the shipping costs for getting blocks of stone from Indiana out to New Mexico was starting to rise.

We started thinking, well, it might be better to be located where the stone is -- where the material is, rather than shipping it all the way, you know, to New Mexico, and then cutting it up, having all that waste sitting in New Mexico.

Because there is waste when you are cutting stone.

If you start with a block, there's probably anywhere from 25% to 30% waste that you bought, that you can't use in the finished product.

So it does come down to economics.

♪ >> Here at Kopelov Cut Stone, we carve limestone and other calcareous stone.

And we do mostly carving and cutting for restoration projects and historical work, as well as monuments.

And we specialize in historic textures, tooling, things that were done, you know, 100 years ago with chisels.

>> We definitely are into old world architecture, as well as even the technology.

I mean, we do use some modern tools.

They are handy.

But there's a look that you can only get from using the tools that were available at the time when some of this old architecture that you see around the world, and even in this country, you need to actually finish stone a certain way to get that look.

So what I'm talking about is things like certain textures that were used on buildings.

A lot of times these textures, it's -- they're not just for aesthetic reasons, because somebody thought it was beautiful.

They actually also had a purpose.

It created certain shadows on buildings.

Whereas, if you just had a flat, sawn surface, something like Indiana limestone, which is rather monotone, it would just disappear.

So when you are standing 50, 100, couple hundred feet away, it would just look rather flat and uninteresting.

And a lot of the older architecture is interesting looking.

I noticed this ever since I was a little kid.

So I've always been attracted to old world architecture.

My son Kino, he is as well.

When we were trying to come up with a business model, I think it was pretty evident that that's what -- we were going to go after what we were interested in, where our hearts were.

And that's why we do this.

♪ >> So we start with the blocks or the slabs, and then depending on the project, we cut it into sort of the overall shape with a little bit extrad depending on if we're cutting molding or, you know, cornice or if we're going to carve something, we have to leave a little bit extra.

The project I'm working on now is a monument, and I did plane a rough profile on it, but then quickly I went to using patterns, marking on to the sides, and doing everything else with air hammers and chisels.

With more decorative work, it moves quickly to hand work.

From -- from our saws, we'll -- we'll usually set it up on banker tables, and then we'll have patterns to lay out the shape we are going to need to carve, and then we'll go to chisels and air hammers.

The reason I do limestone is I just love the look of the finished product.

It's gonna last.

I've worked in wood.

It just moves around too much.

It's not my kind of medium.

But stone, it pretty much stays where it is.

Some stone carver, some stone cutter, would have had to have done this work thousands of years ago.

They did do this work, just so that I have the ability to look at it.

It's more a historical perspective.

It's not just my lifetime.

So I'm continuing the craft so that people can look at it, you know, 100 years from now.

>> BRANDON: I think one of my favorite things about this piece is watching how they take something that has to be done in a modern way, and then use older tools and techniques on it to make it seem like it was all done with those older tools.

I just love the idea of not forcing the technology to change the way the art form is done.

>> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Just head to Kopelovcutstone.com.

>> BRANDON: And as always, we'd like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

>> ASHLEY: Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

>> BRANDON: We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

>> ASHLEY: You know, we're in this beautiful space.

I want to go actually see some birds up close and personal.

>> BRANDON: Yeah, okay.

>> ASHLEY: Well, we'll see you next time on -- >> TOGEHTER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> ASHLEY: Okay, Brandon.

>> BRANDON: Yeah, yeah.

I think that they are -- oh, yep.

They are -- >> ASHLEY: They're ready.

>> BRANDON: Not even gonna wait.

Hi, just hanging out on my finger.

>> ASHLEY: This is like a true Beauty-and-the-Beast moment for me, you know, where Belle feeds off of her arm.

>> BRANDON: Oh, no, he's aggressive.

He's like, no, no, mine.

Hi.

>> ASHLEY: Oh, my goodness.

>> BRANDON: Hello.

No, not me.

>> ASHLEY: You've got two of them.

>> BRANDON: I had quite a rotating cast for a while.

Then there's the smart ones down below who are catching the pieces that drop.

>> ASHLEY: Yeah, they're like I'm not gonna go do all that work and stand up there.

>> BRANDON: Yeah.

Yeah, climb on up.

>> ASHLEY: Do you want to get off?

Come on.

>> BRANDON: He's like nope.

He's like no, no.

He's like, I'm gonna get your thumb if you try that again, mister.

He's like you thought you were going home with a penguin.

You are going home with me.

I'm your new friend.

>> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you!