Connecting People Through Salt and Pepper Shakers

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Let's ride. This is Al 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 20,000 salt and pepper shaker sets and 1,500 pepper mills. Here's Andrea on how something like this ever got started. The Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum started because my 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 pepper mills, 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 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 20s changes by the 40s, the 70s, 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 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 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 the 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, ooh-ing and ah-ing, and then we would come back home from work or from school, and we would be like, so what did you find today out of the boxes and boxes of salt and pepper shakers? And so sitting around the table like any family does, we just started kind of chit-chatting and going like, well, wouldn't it be cool to share this with people? And we were like, well, yeah, but where would we do that?

What should we do? 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 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 2002, 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 it was fun. It's a scavenger hunt. A lot of people ask, you know, how did she know what she had and what she didn't have and the condition? And one of the things that she always said is if you are a collector of anything, you have an affinity with that, whatever subject matter is. So if you are a baseball collector and you have 10,000 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 know, it becomes part of you and your interest and a hobby that you research more and start to appreciate. 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 crafts 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 the 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 like, you know, make, you know, poker face like, you know, well, ma'am, excuse me. But 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 20 bucks. And I was like, 20 bucks. Oh, okay.

I'll give you 15. And she was like, okay, I'll take it inside. My heart was racing. Cause I'd always heard about these earrings that are salt and pepper shakers. Literally they're salt and pepper shaker earrings. They're the screwback, you know, old fashioned. So, you know, they're dated 40, fifties, 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 50 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. Helen. So they actually make the Mount St. Helen volcano mountain out of the ashes of Mount St. Helen. And it shows the 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 it's, so it's always a surprise.

It's always brings a smile to your face 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. Cause 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 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 Luden on salt and pepper shakers here on Our American Stories. Our nation's heroes. They need our help right now. And the military warrior support foundation does exactly that. They serve our nation's combat wounded heroes and gold star spouses. Right now, they need help during the holidays.

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The parts you need are just a click away at ebaymotors.com. Let's ride. 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 20,000 salt and pepper shaker sets and 1,500 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 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 in the main streets of these little towns in the middle of nowhere in these 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 that of towns that you can see like anything that has lick on it l-i-c-k 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 it 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 40 kind of a thing called the the uh the saltavia and that was a road that was only having 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 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 it's 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 uh 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 have all these salt and pepper shakers from the the early 1920s and 30s kind of thing but then world war ii happened and with world war ii 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 kick-start the japanese economy so they sent representatives from ohio pennsylvania michigan from all these factories of uh goods like teacups and and kettles and dishes 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 kick-start 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 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 this shaker that i haven't seen since i was five years old because my great great aunt she had them 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 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 item 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 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 either she just loved it she had a passion for living in a passion for this world and 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 a 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 she would just get you contagious about whatever interesting thing that she found and 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 the salt and pepper shakers and great job as always to faith and a special thanks to andrea luden 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 okay 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 20 000 salt and pepper shaker sets 1500 pepper mills and a whole lot of stories about this country the salt and pepper shaker museum its story and in the end andrea luden and her mother's story here on our american story this february xfinity flex is unlocking premium entertainment for you to try every single week no strings attached celebrate during black history month with shows like unsung the decades snuggle up during valentine's day with a lifetime movie club pick like harry and megan of royal romance or crank up the 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