(music) (music) (music) Welcome to Prairie Fire.

I'm Sarah Edwards.

You know, sometimes a trip to the hair salon can feel like a chore, just something to get off of our to do list.

But let's face it, our hair and our haircut is an important part of our identity, and for many black men, a trip to the barbershop is about more than just a hot towel and a little off the sides.

It's a place for sanctuary, community, education and fellowship.

Tinisha Spain has this portrait of the rose and Taylor barber shop in Champaign.

The black barbers have been keeping generations groomed and crispy since the birth of America.

But before enslaved black people were emancipated, they weren't even allowed to get haircuts in the very places they were forced to work.

Instead, they would retire to their own neighborhoods in the evenings and find a place to gather and take care of each other.

I'll say for black men, we don't have that many spaces that we can do that in.

Part of the barbering the barber client exchange is is that the barber is providing one, you know, almost, it's almost a luxury to it, and that, if we can provide that, that's one place for some people.

It's one place that they have control.

Ray glass is the current owner of razor sharp hair design at the Rose and Taylor barbershop in downtown Champaign barbering and an entrepreneurial spirit runs in his bloodline.

His grandfather was a barber.

Also, he had all these stories about him cutting hair on a back porch in Mississippi, and they complained because he wanted to charge a nickel, so he threw his clippers in the trash.

My dad's father was he was a mechanic.

My mom's dad had his main thing was livestock.

So he would have hogs.

My mom was a seamstress.

Actually, my mom would always say, if you can do something with your hands, you'll never be broke.

She would say, if you can do something with your hands, you're never gonna be broke.

So he put his hands to work, eventually becoming a licensed Barber.

So I started cutting my own hair, and then my friends started seeing it.

My little brother started trusting me, and then we got consistent enough to where people started asking me to cut their hair.

The Rose and Taylor barbershop has deep community roots.

The original owners, lum rose and Joe Taylor, opened the shop in the 1970s I was able to talk to Joe about his more than 50 years behind the chair.

I I used to live across street from Tommy's barbershop when they first opened up 1960 I used to see them standing out there in front of the shop talking and it looked like fun.

A friend of mine he said he was going to go to Barber College, but he didn't make it.

And I made it when he started cutting hair, his barber school in Chicago was still segregated.

Joe Taylor is still cutting hair in his own shop at home.

Lum has since passed away.

Lum was like a father on top of everything wrapped up.

In a way I feel I have to continue what they did, and sometimes that means lending a listening ear.

Not everybody doesn't know that I'm a preacher.

They don't know that if I don't believe what I believe, I can't take what you drop on me when you come here.

So I can't take your grief if I don't have somewhere to put it.

It's not just like the barber, you know, it's the person.

So that's really what you coming back to.

And then, you know, to have a good person that's gonna get you grooming right.

That's, that's the bonus you the barbershop has always been a place of resistance.

Barbershops played a huge role during the Civil Rights Movement, serving as a hub for information, a safe space and a place to organize.

So whatever is happening in the larger scale of the culture, you're going to hear about it in the barbershop.

I think it's part of, like, our identity, you know, like just the culture, just the vibe, everything.

It really signifies our identity, because it represents us.

The things that go on in the barbershop are things that affect that community, but like, it's literally, you could be having a bad day, get a haircut, poising, like the sun would come out, birds start chirping.

You have, like, theme music as you're walking around like it just it's a whole nother, whole nother experience.

The black barbershop is not just for black people.

There are things that the black barbershop offers to the world that very few places can duplicate.

See, very few places don't have enough time in the community to duplicate what the black barbershop can do.

So the black barbershop is also necessary.

I think I'll hit I bought my daughter this typewriter a couple years ago because she's a great writer and she's fascinated by the look and feel of these old typewriters, even though she's living through the age of smartphones and computers, but I just can't seem to get this thing to work properly.

Good thing, we have a great typewriter repair guy in Illinois, and he's only in his early 20s.

You I was still alone.

I got my first typewriter in royal 10.

When I was 14, it didn't work.

I didn't know anything about them at the time.

I just wanted to figure out how to take it apart and get this thing back to what it once was.

As a kid, I've always kind of been involved with analog tech.

We used to go to Blockbuster to rent the new VHS releases and things, you know, I'd steal my dad's cassette tapes out of the car.

I also went through the time of when the internet kind of became big and computers started to take over.

And through all of that, I maintained an interest in reading and writing and taking apart little things and fixing them.

So that kind of set the stage for an interest in typewriters, horses.

I didn't get along well with my peers, so I never really discussed interests and things like that, or mingled with people outside of school.

And by the time I was getting into typewriters, when I was like, 13 or 14, you know, people saw it as kind of a weird hobby, but they were interested in it.

One of the first people who had me fix a typewriter for them was the brother of one of my classmates who had no Smith Corona that he found on the side of the road, and I fixed that for him on the lunch table in the cafeteria, for the things you told me.

I love bundeslis, tactile element to it.

There's something concrete and physical to everything that you do.

You know that the medium that you're handling is truly there.

It's something that you can interact with.

You can directly change it.

You can influence it.

It's a very nice kind of organic medium that is entirely what you make of it.

How much I think I need you.

So I write another.

The very first commercially successful typewriter was souls and gliddens typewriter in 1873 and they sold that patent to Remington, and that had the first QWERTY keyboard.

That's where we get that today.

And then around the 1910s we figured out one good way to make a typewriter.

It had to be a pre layout, and it had these standard front strike ribbon machines.

They were all kind of basic until IBM came around back in 1961 with the IBM Selectric that we introduced a preexisting concept of a single type element, and that changed the game for typewriting.

This is the best thing that's happened to typing since electricity.

The IBM's electric typewriter.

So rather than having all of these individual bars in the machine, you had one single piece that you could swap out that contained all the type on it.

You since I started in typewriters, I always wanted to have like the typewriter shop.

I thought that would be really fun, really cool.

I wanted this place to feel like some traditional typewriter repair shop that's been here forever.

I get a lot of younger people who are interested in typewriters.

It's something that maybe they've been around a little bit in movies and TV shows, and I think it's interesting.

I get a lot of elderly people who just never switched over to computers.

But there's also a lot of writers who love using a typewriter specifically for the reason that you can just sit there and write and you don't have to worry about anything outside of what you're working on.

I also have a lot of business owners, doctors offices, that kind of stuff, to use typewriters to fill out forms or send invoices and make documents.

And then there are the people who are collectors, who like these really obscure antique machines, or they just like having a few around that they can use to write letters to family members or grocery lists or whatever.

I work mostly with mechanics and getting the machines working.

I don't have a lot of the patience to sit there polishing all the time, but if people do want the restorations where everything looks clean and brand new, I will sit down and do that.

It is definitely a difficult job.

There's a lot of work involved and not a lot of people, so it's very community focused.

Work with a lot of people.

Make a lot of friends, and we'll kind of help each other out.

I think that these machines were made for a single purpose.

They're made to type, and if they're just sitting there on a shelf, they're not fulfilling that purpose.

So regardless of how old or how valuable a machine is, I have always typed on them, and I encourage other people to do the same, because I think that is the best way to honor the legacy of these machines, and it's also the best way to keep them working.

Lovely Tom Higgs typewriter that anybody can type on if they want.

I sent him a letter during the covid lockdowns, and we maintained correspondence for a little bit.

He is most definitely as nice as everybody says, and he had mentioned that he was looking into getting rid of a lot of his collection, because none of his family was really interested in typewriters, and he didn't want to leave them with a hoard of 300 plus machines.

So he was working with a lot of shops across the country to kind of offload his machines on them.

Slowly but surely, all the shops in the country started getting one from them.

Earlier this year, that machine showed up at my doorstep, and I was very surprised to see it.

It's a wonderful machine.

He's a very generous person, very kind.

Everybody's from the dawn of humanity has wanted to create things.

That's kind of what sets us aside from other species is just our desire to create something, to have something that represents, you know, what we are, what we love.

I find a lot of people just kind of coming back to typewriters, because there's a sense of permanence about paper and ink.

And it's nice to have something that's, you know, physically, something that somebody put their time and effort into making.

And every letter is slightly unique in the way that somebody wrote it, the way that the ink gets the pay is the characteristics of the way that it was created, because it's organic, there's only one copy, and there's a depth to that that just isn't really present in text or emails.

It's true, when we rely on high tech.

We kind of lose the traits that make things unique.

The process of dyeing yarn has also become a lot more high tech.

But there's a shop called leading men fiber arts in Clinton, Illinois that uses really old techniques to make one of a kind skeins of yarn.

Leading men fiber arts is.

Is a love story.

It's a love story of Steve loving yarn and his passion for yarn and knitting My passion is trying to help him succeed in his passion and to make it a business, we took $500 which is all the money we've ever put in our business, and we bought our first set of pots and pans and dyes, and I've just watched him work his about all five ever since.

With our yarn, first and foremost, you're getting a work of art in one skein.

So you know with our company that every skein of leading men fiber arts has been personally dyed, handled and touched by Andy or myself.

With hand dyeing, it's going to have a little bit of some lighter areas and some darker areas as well.

And when you work with that yarn and knit it up, or you crochet it, you're going to get highlights and lowlights in the fabric, and that gives your piece movement, which is something that people who are looking to make things with hand dyed yarn they want, that added little pizazz that it is that, you know, people will stop and take a second glance because they're starting to see some subtlety and colors, I think, for makers, the feeling of yarn running through our hands, or prepping fiber, or spinning fiber and making it into yarn.

You're not just making something, but you get that tactile feel.

And people who are really doing this and doing it a lot, and Gina, they knit or crochet or make every day, they want something soft.

They want those different feels, like silk and cashmere and Merino.

They're not just getting that tactile, but it's also the visual, because you get the color running through your hands as well.

A lot of makers will say, I live for that little pink speckle in that.

You know, every time it pops up, I just get this spark of joy.

We hear that all the time, and it's so funny how just one little, minuscule thing brings somebody joy and happiness.

I think that's why we do what we do, and why we continue to be successful, is because we love sparking that joy and creativity with people that we get to meet.

The process of starting to dye yarn starts with the yarn itself, and we prep the yarn by getting it wet and soaking the yarn with water.

And what that does is it allows the dyes to permeate into the actual fibers, and allows the dye to then disperse across the yarn.

We prep our different types of dye pans.

We have different shapes to get different dye techniques, and in the water that we put in those pans is where the citric acid goes, and that is the agent that actually bonds the dye to the yarn.

We use professional acid dyes.

We will then apply the dye powder, either onto the pan or we have a variety of different techniques that we do, and then it's got to heat up.

So it's got to cook, it's got to get to a certain degree to where that citric acid will adhere the dye to the fibers.

And then it's got to cool down, and then we got to rinse it, and then it hangs up to dry, and then it comes upstairs, and it works with our studio assistants, who will then use machines to twist the yarn, make it look really pretty, hide all the ties that keep the yarn in a big loop, and they will label it and then put it out on our shelves or get it ready for our wholesale clients.

With going full time with the business, I felt a sense of security in myself.

I stopped doubting myself and worrying so much about what other people think.

I think a lot of us have that crux in our personality, and I still do, but allowing me the freedom to be successful with our business and what we created gave me a sense of confidence in what we were doing was the right thing, and so I try to bring that confidence to what we represent here in Central Illinois, and provide a voice to those who may not feel like there is a loud enough voice here.

Clinton has been our home for the last 15 years.

We've lived here before we opened a business, and like most small towns, our downtown has suffered us putting this on the square in Clinton is also us planning our flag is two gay men in rural Illinois, and that we're not afraid to live our lives how we want, and we've been very open about it, but we also feel that we need to bring people back into downtown.

And so since we've opened our business, we've had several other businesses next door.

We have a fish store.

We have a boba tea shop now and an ice cream so in the last five years.

Seeing our town people investing their own time and their own money into these buildings to help revitalize our small town and to make Clinton maybe a little weird, a little different, a destination for people to want to come see hand dyed yarn in central Illinois, you know, or buy a tropical fish.

Steve is very dedicated and determined, and that's what drives our business.

He's the one who's pushing us to expand in all ways, always, and try to grow our business and grow our community.

For me, I don't have the passion of yarn.

Since I don't knit, I don't crochet, it's not something that's ever appealed to me, but seeing his dreams come true appeals to me.

This gave us a topic to focus on.

What are we working on for our business?

How are we growing our business?

We are truly a love story without us being together.

This doesn't exist and it can't be done separately.

You the University of Illinois, Fighting Illini football team has played every home game at Memorial Stadium in Urbana, Illinois since 1924 which makes the stadium 100 years old, which also makes it the oldest college football stadium in the state of Illinois.

Here's a look at the new documentary, a house of brick.

It is great to have you with us, and I mean great a very full stadium tonight, full of orange as it continues to fill in for Illinois football.

Tonight, Memorial Stadium.

You're part of something you feel you're just very uniquely connected to something that's special.

Really means a lot to me to walk into the stadium and sit where we sit, and watch the whole game and be part of the crowd.

I'm home again the it's a classic piece of art, and it was built in honor of so many people, not just in name, but on a pillar that stands for over 100 years.

Right after World War One, there was a great patriotic fervor in the country.

We need to honor the men and women who served in the armed forces.

So they latched on to the idea of a memorial stadium to honor the Illinois Illini students, alumni, faculty, staff who served and who died.

George Huff had a vision that this was going to be essentially what we see today, and it has to be a grand edifice.

It can't just be a basic football stadium.

So in the early drawings, it is a very neoclassical structure.

It has a kind of grandeur to it that is different from the stadium that we see.

It was a trailblazing design, because a huge amount of people literally sat between the goalposts.

This maximized visibility onto the field.

The ambition of the institution was to be big, strong, important.

So if you're going to build a stadium, build it for tomorrow.

Build it for 10 years from now.

Build it for 100 years from now, Champaign County, around 1920 was about 30,000 people to build a stadium of basically almost 70,000 was more than double the population of the area, but people came from all over the Midwest.

The stadium, from day one, was conceived as a focal point for the entire state of Illinois community.

They were literally building the infrastructure of the state of Illinois around the opening of the stadium.

They were deciding where the funds would go, which highways would be constructed first, and how that could get you from all over the state, presumably all over the country, to Memorial Stadium.

The 1924 what you might call the Red Grange game against Michigan, was incredible.

On the opening kickoff, Red Grange takes the first kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown.

In fact, he scored four touchdowns the first five times he touched the ball, ran for 265, yards in that first quarter alone.

It was one of those things that no one could believe what they were seeing a game certainly gave football an empathy.

You had people from all over the country coming here because grains was such a big name.

From that point on, it's hard to separate the enthusiasm for the game versus the enthusiasm for the stadium.

The articles that begin to appear where sports writers are saying, Hey, Big East, this is one of the finest places to enjoy a football spectacle.

I don't think that this is the kind of stadium that you just knock down and you build something that will never compete with the look, the heft and the importance of this one.

That's what happens when you build your house of brick, like the three pigs.

If you build your house of brick, nobody can huff and puff and blow it down.

This is a house for eternity.