How Motherhood Changed Me, My Mother Had Me At 16: She's My Superhero and Connecting Through Salt And Pepper Shakers

On this episode of Our American Stories, author Winter Prosapio shares a story from motherhood. Alan Brown shares with us how his mother became pregnant with him at 15 after a terrible assault, yet despite the circumstances, and the poverty Alan lived through for most of his childhood, his mother did everything to make sure he was raised right. Andrea Ludden, daughter of the original collector of the Salt and Pepper Shakers in the Museum, shares the story of how this amazing collection came to be a museum.

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Time Codes:

00:00 - How Motherhood Changed Me

12:30 - My Mother Had Me At 16: She's My Superhero

25:00 - Connecting Through Salt And Pepper Shakers

Support the show: https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habibe, and this is our American Stories,
and all show along. We are celebrating Mother's Day stories
from the past, stories from our listeners, stories that are beautiful,
some that are a little sad, and you're going to
hear it all and from multiple points of view, multiple generations,
and from men and women, because, my goodness, the impact

(00:32):
of a mother on sons and daughters is profound. By
the way, we want to hear your stories, your Mother's
Day stories, your mother's story. Send them to our American
Stories dot com. That's our American Stories dot Com. Up next,
we have Winter Prosapio, an author from Texas, bringing us
a story from a moment of motherhood. Winter has been

(00:55):
writing her whole life. She writes essays about life, motherhood,
and he's currently a humor columnist for her local daily.
Here is her story, entitled Curls. It takes a full
twenty minutes to comb through her curls. I sedate the

(01:16):
riot of hair with handfuls of slick conditioner and sit
just outside the tub on her yellow footstool, combing through
the long black strands that spring back into ringlets after
every poll. I never imagined I'd have patience for this
before I had children. When I think back to my
life before my daughters arrived, I can't remember doing anything

(01:39):
quite so methodical as mothering. Nothing has ever been as
demanding of skills I didn't possess. I've never faced so
many moments when I was at the end of my
rope where I was driven to shouting in another human
being at my own child, only to apologize later, much
too late, Much too little catches in the thick nest

(02:01):
of twists and turns, and I pull her hair slightly.
She rarely protests when this happens. Genetics must tie the
curly hair gene with the tough scalp one. This genetic
combination did not include the gene that extends graciousness with
curious strangers. However, her naturally curly hair draws compliments. Everywhere

(02:21):
she goes. Strangers come up to her with hands extended,
trying to touch the spirals framing her tiny face and
black eyes. Only a few get away with it. Most
times she warns them off with a staunch no touch,
her arms crisscrossing her head in a protective shield. Still
strangers reach for the curls in restaurants on sidewalks in

(02:43):
doctor's offices. I'm lucky I can touch them. Every day.
We sit in the quiet bathroom. She's focused on her
floating toys, eye un untangling, smoothing. That becomes such a
different person. Since I had Chidren, I've become quieter, more careful,
more aware of small moments. I'm acutely aware of the

(03:06):
chasm between my friends who don't have children and my
friends who do. I've leaped the canyon, never sensing the
moment my feet were in the air, only a few
closest friends jumping with us as honorary ants and uncles.
Now I understand why I never saw people once they
had their children, why they stopped calling, how they disappeared

(03:29):
into thin air. I recognize the way the strange wild
space grew between us with every step their children took
towards solids, toward school, toward adolescents, towards leaving, toward never
really being gone. Across the vast chasm, I see my
childless friends moving on quickly as I sit here. Still

(03:51):
sit here, time turning in on itself so I can
see both ends of it, beginnings and endings, all wrapping
around my fingers. I risk a higher starting point on
her head, thinking I've worked out most of the knots,
but it's no good. I'm back to the thick tangle,
prying the teeth of the comb with it. She turns,

(04:12):
looking for something. The cloth has slipped back in the tub.
I hand it to her wordlessly. She takes it without
a glance and returns to her cups that need feeling.
My father, a veteran of many wives, always said he
would never marry a woman who hadn't had children. They
are too selfish, she said. And I wondered, as a

(04:34):
single woman in those days, how selfish I was. When
he married a woman with three young daughters, my stepsisters,
I wondered if he would be able to share her
with them. I leaned back for a moment, feeling the
dull burn in my back, and clean the comb out.
The fine black hair, slick with the conditioner, but still twisting,

(04:57):
coats my fingers as I brush them off onto a
paper towel stretched out. A single curl is long enough
to reach her waist, yet it will bounce back to
her shoulder when it's dry. I've never had her haircut,
nervous that the metal will somehow break the bonds of
this miracle flowing from her crown. Before they were born,

(05:23):
I never really noticed children before Now when I meet
them as I'm out on my own in an office,
when someone brings her son in the store, when four
year olds bounds into my path, I stop purposely. I
kneel before them, look into their eyes and say hello.
They smile, usually recognizing some universal quality I've gained, or

(05:47):
maybe I just look silly, crouching like a frog. All
the tangles are out, and I take great pleasure in
running the comb through her hair again and again, separating
ends into perfect spirals. She looks up at me. Ah done, No, never, yes, baby,

(06:13):
All done. And a terrific job on the production by
Faith Buchanan, and a special thanks to Winter Prosapio for
her work and for her storytelling. And my goodness, it's
more than just work raising a child. It's a passion,

(06:34):
it's an avocation, and in the end, there's no greater
and higher expression of love. I become such a different person,
she said, since I had a child, I'm quieter, more patient,
And then she talked about that chasm between people who
have kids and people who don't. I never noticed children
before she said, now I stop purposely when I see them,

(06:58):
and she described how she kneeled and how the kids
either recognize that she recognize them or that she just
looks silly. Went to Prosapio. Her story about her daughters curls.
Our Mother's Day Special continues here on Our American Stories. Folks,

(07:31):
if you love the great American stories we tell and
love America like we do, we're asking you to become
a part of the Our American Stories family. If you
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make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and
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Go to our American Stories dot com now and go

(07:52):
to the donate button and help us keep the great
American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com and
we returned to our American Stories Mother's Day Special. All

(08:13):
show long, we're telling stories about mothers and from Mother's up.
Next to story from Alan Brown. Alan's mother had him
when she was only sixteen and they lived a hard
life despite the trauma. She's his superhero. Here's Alan with
a story. My name is Alan Scott Brown and I

(08:33):
have a hero, and this is her story. Some soldiers
get a medal, some statesmen have monuments built to them,
and some people have blots on the wall for their achievements.
And then there are some that you never hear about
that probably should have all of the above. She was

(08:55):
fifteen years old from a small town in Texas and
she was day raped. Tried to stop the guy, couldn't
do it. She was all of five foot and an
hundred pounds, and she did try to commit suicide twice
when depression hit her as she was pregnant with me,

(09:16):
and she did marry him. You might say it was
a silent shotgun wedding without the shotgun, but abuses in
the marriage or terrible. He was a violent person and
it was psychological, it was physical, and she protected me
as a baby throughout the ordeal. A divorce did happen

(09:39):
finally two years later, and there would be no child support.
So she knew it was going to be a hard life.
It was going to be rough life, and back in
those days we're talking early sixties here, that was kind
of expected. You. You just didn't get a divorce unless
it was absolutely necessary, y because she was a single

(10:02):
parent with those psychological demons, and she felt like she
was worthless. She felt like that her reputation had been ruined.
She was heavy in her faith at her church, and
she didn't want to have that mark that staying on her,
of course, and she didn't know how to deal with it.
After all. By this time, when I was born, she
was sixteen years old. But we made it through things.

(10:27):
We lived in her parents' house for a while, and
five years later she remarried and we moved all over
Texas for four years. The guy she married was really
interested in jumping from job to job to job to job.
I was sitting eleven different towns and ten different schools,
and I suffered school estically. I was at a really

(10:49):
bad school where we just didn't learn a lot. We
watched mister Rogers, you know, on television, and we did
artwork and listened to music, and that was about it.
And then I was able to get out of there,
and she was able to talk the principle in my
fourth grade year to go ahead and take me if
she got a tutor for me, a private tutor. She

(11:12):
couldn't afford that, but she did what she could. She
started getting jobs at overnight hours, so these overnight shifts,
and we got through fourth grade just barely, and then
she had to course the principle in the next school
for fifth grade in another town to take me into

(11:32):
fifth grade, even though I was way behind. So literally,
i'll just tell you I went from second grade to
fifth grade. Then that's what happened, with a private tutor
in between that really cared and really did help me.
But it was a hard, hard time. We were poor
and we had a tough life, but I didn't think

(11:54):
of us as poor at the time. I didn't think
we were having a hard life. Yeah, I knew that
at one house we lived in, I had idy growing
through my wall, but I had no idea why. I
thought it was kind of cool. And there were times
when there wouldn't be water or gas, or there wouldn't
be electricity, and I didn't understand why. But nevertheless, she

(12:15):
took these overnight positions, mainly assembly lying shifts, so that
she could be available for me in the daytime. She
was an outstanding singer. I should tell you that she
was incredible. She was like a Doris Day type vocal
and she could have done a lot of things with
her career, but she put that aside to make sure

(12:36):
that she was available for me, just being that selfless
that she kept getting rejected for loans and credit simply
because in the nineteen sixties, a divorced woman was well,
she was somewhat looked upon in a different light than
she would be today. This would be her second divorce,

(12:58):
so she had very difficult times trying to get any
kind of credit, any kind of way to get a
leg up, so to speak. And she was so independent
that she would not accept help from her own parents.
So we lived a life of poverty, and we ate
government cheese and and the churches we would go to.

(13:18):
She was even a second class citizen there because they
would call her missus Brown, it wouldn't call her by
her first name. And then she was only in her
mid twenties at the time. Again, I didn't understand that
she didn't really talk to me about those things, but
that was a way that she saw as protecting me
from keeping me from the struggles of life, and struggles

(13:41):
of life they were. There were layoffs galore from a
lot of her jobs that she took. I remember at
the time, she took in between layoffs, and between jobs,
she took an overnight shift a seven eleventh store and
again another small town in North Texas, and that summer

(14:06):
she invited me to come with her, and I did.
I had been staying alone overnight in these overnight hours
since fourth grade. So we would go in eleven o'clock
at night and stay till seven in the morning. And
that was that was quite unique to be able to
be with her, to see her interact with customers, and
to actually help her do her job. You know, I was,

(14:26):
you know, sweeping mop floors and whatever, and that felt
like warmth to me, you know, that she wanted me there,
and there were little things like that that she would do,
and little surprises that she would do. Two again made
me feel like that we had a great relationship and
to remind me. But then early puberty came and it

(14:52):
was not always easy for her. I physically resembled my
bio father, and that tour at her just sometimes looking
at me walking down the hall. It ripped her apart,
and there were hard times. She began to act out

(15:12):
in different ways, and for about two or three years
there were some abuses that happened, and eventually she beginned
to better herself. She stood on her faith. She continued
to make sure that I was in church and that
I studied the scriptures, and that we prayed together. And

(15:33):
in my endeavors, I can point back to her and
see that she was my number one fan, that she
was a cheerleader for me. She encouraged me in my
talents and the things that I wanted to try. I
took piano lessons and violin lessons, guitar lessons and vocal lessons.

(15:53):
I got a junior high football and then it was karate.
And how she ever came up with the money to
do all that, I don't know. I mean, she she
saved as much as she could, but again we were poor.
But she wanted to make sure that I was able
to do the things and use talents that I had
and to do the things that I loved, even if

(16:16):
it meant working harder, longer, making overtime hours happen. And
that's the kind of soldier that she was. And now
at seventy seven years old, she's starting to fade. Cognitive

(16:36):
struggles for happening, and I know that there's going to
be decisions that are going to have to be made soon.
She lives by herself, and she was an umbrella for
me all my life, and now it's my turn to
be her umbrella. It's an honor to be able to
serve her because she taught me servant hood and that's

(16:57):
who she is today. So with my family and knowing
what the future may or may not hold, I can
tell you this, we are her medal of honor. We
are her monuments, we are her memorials. And that's the plan.
That's what I'm sticking to. But all in all, she

(17:18):
was my mom, she was my dad all at the
same time, I was bettered as a child. I shouldn't
be here, you know, one can say that, But that
wasn't God's plan. You know, it just wasn't the plan.
She is a great a number one mother of this
injury and a great job on the production by Monty

(17:42):
Montgomery and a special thanks to Alan Brown. All show long,
we're celebrating Mother's Day here on our American Story, and

(18:08):
we continue with our American stories and with our Mother's
Day celebration all show long. Up next, we have Andrea
Ludin from the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
That's right, I said, Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum. And
again it's in Catlinburg, Tennessee. The museum was the dream

(18:29):
of Andrea's mother, and Andrea has continued her mother's legacy
through the museum. At the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum,
they have twenty thousand salt and pepper shaker sets and
fifteen hundred pepper mills. Here's Andrea with how a dream
like this got started. The Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum

(18:52):
started because my mother, who was an archaeologist for most
of her life, was basically getting bored. We had moved
to the US back in the eighties, 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

(19:15):
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

(19:36):
was popular in the twenties changes by the forties, the seventies,
all the way untill 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

(19:58):
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

(20:18):
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, but I'm
underneath the house in boxes. And then one time, one Christmas,

(20:39):
my brother got my mom a digital camera. When they
first came out, Now, when they first came out, you
have to understand a digital camera. The little chip card
was sixteen k 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 cattle logging them all. So my dad would bring

(21:01):
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 ooing
and owing. And then we would, you know, come back
home from work or from school and we would be like, so,
what did you find this, you know today out of
you know, the boxes and boxes of salt and pepper shakers,

(21:24):
And so, sitting around the table like any family does,
we just started kind of you know, chit chatting and
going like, well, I wouldn't it be cool to like
share this with people? And we were like, well, yeah,
but where would 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

(21:45):
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 two thousand and two we
moved from Texas to here and opened the Salt and

(22:07):
Pepper Shaker Museum. So she collected for about thirty five 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, thirty forty 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.

(22:30):
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 US. 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 funny. It's a

(22:50):
scavenger hunt. A lot of people ask you, 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 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

(23:13):
have in 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 in a hobby that you research more and
start to appreciate. No. I remember I was in a
little town called Abingdon, Virginia. It's actually not too far

(23:35):
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 dependant, I

(23:56):
see this black and white what looks like salt and
pepper shaker rings. 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, ma'am, excuse me, m
but what are these things over here? And uh and
she pulls it out and she's like, oh, these are

(24:16):
salt and pepper shakers. Oh there's salt 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, 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 had always heard about these ear
rings that are salt and pepper shakers. Literally, they're salt

(24:37):
and pepper shaker earrings. There are the screwback you know,
old fashioned, so you know, they're dated forty fifties, you know,
and the screwback thinking 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.

(24:57):
And so little moments like that, but there's so many
What's amazing about salt 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 Saint Helen. So they actually make the

(25:17):
Mount Saint Helen volcano mountain out of the ashes of
Mount Saint Helen and it shows the volcano before it
exploded and after it exploded. So 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,

(25:39):
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.

(26:01):
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 fifties or sixties or something like that, because
that's about the age of my parents work. 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,

(26:23):
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 looking all
these things that used to be used. All those things

(26:45):
are part of our history and legacy, 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 history in this planet. And you're listening

(27:07):
to Andrea Ludin 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, and we continue

(27:37):
with our American Stories and our Mother's Day special. We've
been listening to Andrea Ludin from the Salt and Pepper
Shaker Museum share her family story. The Salton Pepper Shaker
Museum is based in Catlinburg, Tennessee, where they have twenty
thousand salt and pepper shaker sets and fifteen hundred pepper mills.

(27:58):
We left off with Andrea talking about what it was
like searching for all of these salt and pepper shakers
across America. 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.

(28:20):
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 going from one state to another, so
from Indiana to Ohio or to Pennsylvania or Michigan and

(28:43):
all of us 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, 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,

(29:06):
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

(29:27):
that was sold and traded with 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 in mineral that you need it. So you have
like Saltville, which of course it's a pretty basic obvious name.

(29:49):
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 c K. It has to
do with a salt blo 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

(30:10):
for salt and pepper. You start to peel one layer
of the onion and 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 salta Villa, and that was

(30:31):
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

(30:54):
would never have gotten on a ship and try 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.

(31:17):
So it's just amazing. What's 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 salt. But back in nineteen o nine, nineteen ten,

(31:43):
nineteen eleven, around that time, Morton, a gentleman by the
name of Morton and 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

(32:03):
slogan of when it rains, it poores. He by finding
an additive and creating this type of salt, he created
a boom for salt shakers, and so that created a
whole industry. And so you have all these salt and
pepper shakers from the early nineteen twenties and thirties kind

(32:24):
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,

(32:47):
from all these factories of goods like teacups and kettles
and dishes and things like that, pottery, porcelain, because Japan
is very famous for its porcelain and pottery and artistry.
So they set these representatives over there to kickstart those
factories back up again for only the American market. So

(33:11):
they were creating items to be sold back in the
United States. World War two 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 US. This is in the late forties early fifties.

(33:33):
You start to get into the tradition of the road trip.
Let's get the family, everybody on the car, and let's go.
So they go. Route sixty six is born. Going to
Florida is the big tradition as well. And along the
way they have to buy souvenirs. And where do they
end up buying salt and pepper shakers because it's also

(33:56):
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 connected to another through something as simple as

(34:16):
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 him. And it brings these memories
to people. It brings these family connections that they hadn't
thought about and so long. And then they always go like,

(34:39):
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 the family because
this is a labor of love. It's not like we're,
you know, making riches here. We are sharing a passion

(34:59):
and a love of an item that we don't think
should be taken for granted. Because everybody has it in
their house, not everybody has a computer or has a
purse or whatever. But everybody has this one thing that
connects us all together. And that's so cool. My mother

(35:21):
passed away in twenty fifteen. She passed away at the
age of eighty. 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 she didn't let anything go
to waste. She hated napping or sleeping because she didn't

(35:45):
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 this planet. She always lived to the
fullest and so when she passed away, she was the

(36:05):
driving force behind all of this. And so for me personally,
it was a stumbling book because all of a sudden,
it was like my motors were taken away from me.
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.

(36:27):
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 went 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

(36:51):
whatever interesting thing that she found. And there's so much
hiding behind salt and Pepper Shakers, and so it's been
really neat and are to be able to continue her
legacy with the Salt and Pepper Shakers. And a terrific

(37:11):
job on the production by Faith Buchanan, and a special
thanks to Andrea Ludin and her terrific storytelling on how
the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum came to be. So
many Americans with these hobbies and pastimes as a pretext
to just enjoy family time and whatever yours might be,
keep going all the way. Look at what it did

(37:32):
for this family. Our Mother's Day special continues here on
Our American Stories. B