Page 15 - AAA Magazine – AAA Ohio Auto Club – September 2021

Nashville’s Big Back Yard
By William J. Purpura
M ‘American Pickers’ star Mike Wolfe unveils the magic of Tennessee’s two-lane towns.
ike Wolfe grew up in Bettendorf, Iowa, trash picking his way through his early years. Bikes in bad shape were his passion, pulling his
two-wheeled loves from his neighbors’ trash to breathe them back to life to sell to other neighborhood kids. Wolfe’s been covered in the
dust and rust of Americana ever since, mining for buried treasures in backroad barns and leaning sheds across the country.
His discoveries of all the bits and pieces of American history that have survived the ages in the hands of amateur collectors and serious hoarders end up in one of Wolfe’s Antique Archaeology stores in Le Claire, Iowa, or Nashville, Tenn.
Wolfe lived a simple life on the road in obscurity, driving from one small town to the next in a non-descript cargo van. That all changed in 2010 when he hit gold.
In January of that year, the History Channel debuted the first episode of “American Pickers,” a television show created by Wolfe that drew in 5.4 million viewers each
week. As the show’s star, Wolfe suddenly lost his anonymity. Heading into its 11th season, “American Pickers” is still a hit and shows no sign of going away anytime soon.
SEPTEMBER 2021 | 13
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Charles Vernier