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The biggest game of the season, right here, right now. Start Saturday strong. It's Big News Saturday on Fox. And here we go. It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon kickoff, live with an epic pregame.
The crowd, the atmosphere, this is what makes it special. Then it's America's number one game. What a hit! The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest game. Down the sideline, touchdown!
It's Big Noon Saturday, Noon Eastern on Fox. This is our American stories, and we tell all kinds of stories here on our show, as you well know. Up next, a story from Andrea Luden from the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. That's right, the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum. At this museum, they have twenty thousand salt and pepper shaker sets and fifteen hundred pepper mills.
Here's Andrea on how something like this ever got started. The salt and pepper shaker museum started because my mother, who was an archaeologist for most of her life, was. Basically, getting bored. We had moved to the U.S. back in the 80s, and so she was no longer affiliated with any universities in the states.
So she didn't have any projects or programs to work with.
So she started looking for a pepper mill's because one broke at home, and she wanted another pepper mill. And so we were searching for pepper mills, and we would get another one, and it would eventually break. And and as she was searching for pepper mills, she started running into salt and. Pepper shakers, and as she ran into more and more salt and pepper shakers, she started to realize that you can trace our society changing over time.
So what was popular in the twenties changes by the forties, the seventies, all the way until now, and that really got her passion going because she just wanted an object that's so simple that we all take for granted, but yet every single household in the whole planet has. Is also a snapshot of our history, and that's what's so fascinating. It's not a car part. It's not photographs. It's it's something that's functional.
And the creativity behind them, and the ingenuity in a lot of them is just amazing.
So that's how the collection started. And so over the years, she just started collecting more.
Now this this was never the intent was never to create a museum. The intent was just to find the creativity, how unusual the artistry behind so many of these, and. As time went by, my mom started collecting more and more, and she would pack them up, put them underneath the house in boxes, and then one time, one Christmas. My brother got my mom a digital camera when they first came out.
Now, when they first came out, you have to understand that digital camera, the little chip card, was 16K was the biggest one that you could get.
So nowadays, that's barely a photo you could use on a website.
So she would take pictures of them. She was cataloging them all.
So my dad would bring a box. She would unwrap them, measure, describe them, and then pack them away. But in the evenings, she would leave a few out, and she would say, "Oh, look! Isn't this so cute?" And we would be like oohing and aahing, and then we would, you know, come back home from work or from school, and and we would be like, "So, what did you find this, you know, today out of you know?" the the boxes and boxes of salt and pepper shakers, and so sitting around the table like any family does, we just started kind of you know chit chatting and going like, well, wouldn't it be cool to like share this with people? And we were like, well, yeah, but where will we do that?
What should we do? And and so slowly the idea formed of creating a museum. And then the question was, where do we put a museum like this? And at the time we were living in Texas. And a friend of ours told us about Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which we had never been to before.
So we decided to do a quick trip, and so we we came to the Smokies and fell in love. And we thought, oh my goodness, this would be a perfect place to place a museum. And so in two thousand and two, we moved from Texas to here and opened the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum.
So she collected for about 35 years. It was a family activity. We would go out and start looking for pepper mills and salt and pepper shakers. Back then, you know, 30, 40 years ago, flea markets were the big thing, and they were really nice and rich.
Now flea markets are a great place to find socks, but you don't really find what you used to find. What happened is over the years, those kind of vendors moved into antique shops and antique malls, and we've been to pretty much every single state in the U.S. And whichever antique shop or antique mall we would find, we would definitely stop, and we would start looking around at all the different booths, and and it was fun. It's a scavenger hunt. A lot of people ask, you know, how how did she know what she had and what she didn't have in the condition?
And one of the things that she always said is, if you are a collector of anything, you have a an affinity with that whatever subject matter is.
So if you are a baseball collector and you have ten thousand baseball cards, you know exactly which cards you have and what condition they are, or the ones that you're missing, or if you're into comic books or anything like that, you. You know, it becomes part of you and your interest, and a hobby that you research more and start to appreciate.
So I remember I was in a little town called Abingdon, Virginia. It's actually not too far from here, and they had in the summertime they have an arts and craft show, and they also have like a vintage market. And I remember just walking, and there was like this lady that had a booth of jewelry. I'm a girl. Hey, I love anything that's sparkly and fun, and jewelry.
So I'm like looking around, and all of a sudden, behind a bracelet and behind a pendant. I see this black and white, what looks like salt and pepper shaker earrings, and I'm like, and I'm like, and I'm looking at, I like, I look at the lady really quick, and I'm, and I, you know, make you know, poker face, like, you know, well, what, ma'am, excuse me, um, what, what, what are these things over here? And and she pulls it out, and she's like, oh, these are salt and pepper shakers, oh, they're salt and pepper shakers.
Well, that's so weird, isn't that weird? And she's like, yeah, they're kind of weird. And I'm like, oh, okay, well. How much are they? And she said twenty bucks.
And I was like, twenty bucks, okay, I'll give you fifteen. And she was like, okay, I'll take it. Inside, my heart was racing because I'd always heard about these earrings that are salt and pepper shakers. Literally, they're salt. Pepper shaker earrings—they're the the screwback, you know, old fashioned.
So you know they're dated '40s, '50s. You know, and and the screwback thingy. And I'm like inside, I'm jumping in. Outside, I'm just like cool, you know, like oh, you know. I mean, I would have paid fifty bucks for these, but I just remember, and I'm like running back to my mom, like you won't believe what I found.
And so little moments like that, but there are so many. What's amazing about salt and pepper shakers is you get surprised even after so many years of collecting salt and pepper shakers. We'll still run into shakers we've never seen before and just be completely blown away.
So, like some of the favorites are Mount St. Helens.
So they actually make the Mount St. Helens volcano mountain out of the ashes of Mount St. Helens, and it shows the volcano. Volcano before it exploded and after it exploded.
So the the part that exploded, the top part, is one shaker, and then the rest of the mountain is the other shaker. And then things like I like a lot of things are interactive also.
So there is the Mona Lisa. And so the Mona Lisa lady, she is the salt. You take her out of the frame, and the frame is the pepper. I mean, just that ingenuity, just that surprise, and you just go like, "Oh my goodness, who would have thought?" And and it's so it's always a surprise. It's always always brings a smile to your face, and and something you just want to share with others.
And it was just neat because the other thing about going to antique shops and antique malls when you're when you're a younger person, you're going with somebody who are in their you know fifties or sixties or something like that because that's about the age of my parents were. Is they you'll run into like I would go with my dad and you would run into tools and. I would be like, Hey, Dad, what's this for? And then he would say, Oh, well, this would be used at a farm or on a ranch or in a factory or blah blah blah kind of a thing.
So, that's one of the fun things about going to antique shops and antique malls is it's walking down our history as a culture, as humans. Look at all these things that used to be used. All those things are part of our history and legacy, and and I think they're getting forgotten. But it's it was just part of the the extra bonus of the adventures of going in search of salt and pepper shakers is also to look back at our our history in in this planet. And you're listening to Andrea Luden, and she is talking to us from Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
The home of the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum. When we come back, more from Andrea Ludden on salt and pepper shakers here on Our American Stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years, and now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 semi-quintennial coin and medal program from the United States Mint.
It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only. This historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov/semiq. That's usmint.gov/semiq.
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And here we go. It all starts at ten Eastern with Big Noon kickoff live. With an epic pregame, the crowd, the atmosphere—this is what makes it special. Then it's America's number one game. What a hit!
The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest game. Down the sideline, touchdown! It's Big Noon Saturday, Noon Eastern on Fox. Upgrade to elite checking from America's Christian Credit Union and earn up to 3.5% APY, plus everyday perks and access to your paycheck up to two days early with Early Pay. Don't settle.
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Membership eligibility requirements. And see you uninsured. And we're back with our American stories. You've been listening to Andrea Luden from the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where they have twenty thousand salt and pepper shaker sets. And fifteen hundred pepper mills.
We left off with Andrea talking about what it was like searching for all of these salt and pepper shakers across this great country. Back to Andrea in searching for. Salt and pepper shakers. You you also get to see not only antique shops and antique malls, but you see the small towns also.
So the reason why we traveled so much is my mom, my dad, and I. Made jewelry. We would go to arts and craft shows around the country, and those shows are usually on the weekends.
So during the week, we would be going from one location to another, and it would usually be you know going from one state to another.
So from Indiana to Ohio or to Pennsylvania or Michigan, and all of this during the summertime.
So during the week, it would give us a great opportunity to look for antique shops, antique malls, and a lot of those places are found in the hearts and and in the main streets of these little towns. In the middle of nowhere in the states, so you had to get off the interstate and start searching. Also, as you look around in a map, just take, just pull out a regular map, any map. It doesn't matter what map, and start looking the little towns. And there's certain words in the town that will have a reference to salt.
And that's pretty interesting because it turns out that a lot of the roads that we use were roads used for commerce, and one of the main things that was Sold and traded was salt because without salt, humans can't live. Without salt, your food would spoil because this is before refrigeration.
So it was a very important item and mineral that you needed.
So you have like Saltville, which of course it's a pretty basic, obvious name. You have Saltville, and then you have all these other names of towns that you can see, like anything that has lick on it. L I C It has to do with a salt lick. That's because animals used to go there and they would lick the salt because they need the salt. The thing about salt and pepper shakers, it's like an onion.
So it's not only these containers for salt and pepper. You start to peel one layer of the onion and then another layer, and you get into more and more history. The Romans had a whole road. Their own interstate, it would be like Interstate Forty, kind of a thing, called the the the Salta Vía, and that was a road that. Was only having to do with commerce of salt.
There's a time when salt was more expensive than gold.
So it's really amazing when you start to go into the history of something that we all take for granted—that's salt. And then with pepper, that's also another fascinating thing, because if it wasn't for pepper, Columbus would never have gotten on a ship, and tried to cross the Atlantic to get to the Indies. Because he ended up running into what he later called the West Indies, because he was trying to find India and the Spice Islands, because he was in search of pepper as well as cinnamon and all of these other spices that we now take for granted, but is so rich and flavorful.
So it's it's just amazing what something so insignificant as a container of salt and pepper what they actually represent. The creation, the forming of salt and pepper shakers, is very American, in the sense of I mean, there's always been a container for for salt. But back in 1909, 1910, 1911, around that time, Morton, a gentleman by the name of Morton, in Chicago, and Detroit area, he came up with an additive that would help coat the little crystals of salt and allow it to pour. And that's when the Morton Salt Company became so famous with their slogan of "When it rains." It pours. He, by finding an additive, and and creating this type of salt, he created a boom for salt shakers, and and so that created a whole industry.
And so you you have all these salt and pepper shakers from the the early nineteen twenties and thirties kind of thing, but then World War Two happened. And with World War Two, there is the occupation of Japan, which is really amazing because what happened with the occupation of Japan is the American government decided that they wanted to kickstart the Japanese economy, so they sent representatives from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, from all these factories of goods like. Teacups and and kettles and dishes and and things like that. Pottery, porcelain, because Japan is very famous for its porcelain and pottery and artistry.
So they sent these representatives over there to kickstart those factories back up again for only the American market.
So they were creating items to be sold back in the United States. World War II is over now. You have all of these servicemen that are coming back home. They have been traveling all over the world, so they come back home and. Everybody's pumped up.
There's a new energy in the U.S. This is in the late '40s, early '50s. You start to get into the the tradition of the road trip. Let's get the family, everybody, on the car and let's go.
So they go Route 66. Is born going to Florida is the big tradition as well, and along the way they have to buy souvenirs. And what do they end up buying? Salt and pepper shakers, because it's also helping an economy getting boomed and and coming up as well.
So, again, there's all of this history that is surrounded in something that we all take for granted that's sitting at your table. And it's just incredible how how one thing is is connected to another through something as simple as salt and pepper. We have a lot of people that will come out of the museum and they were like, "Oh my gosh, I saw the shaker that I haven't seen since I was five years old because my great great aunt she had them." And and and it brings these memories to people. It brings these. Family connections that they hadn't thought about in so long, and then they always go like, "I wonder what happened with that set," or they have it, or you know, they'll say, "I still have it.
I can't believe I saw it here." And it's just so neat to bring that connection back to to the family because this is this is a labor of love. It's not like we're you know making riches here. We are sharing a passion and a love of of an eye. That we don't think should be taken for granted because everybody has it in their house. Not everybody has a a computer or or has a purse or whatever, but everybody has this one thing that connects us all together, and that's so cool.
My mother passed away in 2015. She passed away at the age of 80. She had a very full Life, a very rich and full life. I always said that if she had seven lifetimes in one lifetime, she would take everything to the extreme.
So, so she didn't let anything go to waste. She hated napping or or sleeping because she didn't want to miss anything. Anytime we would go on an airplane, you know, she would always be looking out the window. It's like she just loved. She had a passion for living, and a passion for this world, and a, a passion for for this planet.
So she always lived to the fullest. And so, when she passed away, she was the driving force behind all of this. And so, for me personally, it was a stumbling block because all of a sudden, it was like my motors were taken away from me. I I started drifting. I didn't know where I'm going.
Now what? But being in the museum. Definitely, she's here. This is part of her. It will always be a part of her, and just continuing to make her dream an everyday thing.
It's not that she ever wanted to become famous or be known like, oh, she's the salt lady. No, she just wanted to share with everybody what she found fascinating, you know. And she would say, "Look at this! Isn't this fascinating?" And and she would just get you. Contagious about whatever interesting thing that she found, and there's so much hiding behind salt and pepper shakers, and so so it's been really neat and an honor to be able to continue her legacy with salt and pepper shakers.
And great job as always to Faith, and a special thanks to Andrea Ludden, and also to her mom for well creating a daughter. Like she did, and teaching her about the things that matter in life, which is to have passion, for the small things and family, and my goodness, to have a daughter talk about a mother this way—it doesn't get better, folks. She had a passion for living, a passion for this world. And by the way, though she got lost for a little bit, it became clear what she was going to do with the rest of her life. And listen to Andrea's passion; it's infectious, and it makes you want to just get up and start driving around with your family across country and stop in little towns and roam around in little shops.
By the way, you can go to Gatlinburg and visit the museum again. Twenty thousand salt and pepper shaker sets. Fifteen hundred pepper mills and a whole lot of stories about this country. The Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum, its story, and in the end, Andrea Ludden and her mother's story here on our American stories. That feeling when you're trying to build your credit, and it's like over and over again.
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Member FDIC. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years, and now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 semi-quintennial coin and medal program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.
Available one year. Only this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov/semiq. That's usmint.gov/semiq. The biggest game of the season, right here, right now.
Starts Saturday strong. It's big news Saturday on Fox. And here we go. It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon kickoff, live with an epic pregame. The crowd, the atmosphere—this is what makes it special.
Then it's America's number one game. What a hit! The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest game. Now the sideline touchdown! It's Big Noon Saturday, Noon Eastern on Fox.
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