For years, the only salt and pepper shakers the late Sharon Tidwell used were Tupperware ones. The hourglass-shaped, white plastic receptacles sat dutifully on her kitchen table in Centerville, Arkansas. Sharon might have wanted finer ones, but as a woman used to pinching pennies, she couldn’t quite justify the expense.
The year Sharon turned forty, things got a little easier. She’d raised her daughter, Tammie, on her own, and Tammie was nearly grown. Sharon had fallen in love. The man she soon married built Sharon a house, and in the dining room was a fifteen-foot wall of custom shelves designed for knickknacks and baubles that didn’t serve any other purpose but to bring her joy.
Growing up, Sharon and her family had farmed the land, grown crops, raised cattle and chickens, and battled the fickle Arkansas weather. There weren’t a lot of pricy family treasures to be had; however, Sharon’s mother had given her something precious: a set of glass, cone-shaped, honey-colored salt and pepper shakers that had belonged to Sharon’s great-grandmother.
So, in Sharon’s fortieth year, she decided to start a salt and pepper shaker collection. There were, after all, empty shelves to fill.
Sharon would live another forty years, and in those decades, her collection would grow to 1,158 sets. No one knew the exact number until Sharon passed away in December 2024. With the difficult holidays finally behind them, the family photographed and cataloged the shakers. And with the cataloging, memories of Sharon grew as vivid as a sunrise.
Her granddaughter, thirty-three-year-old Rachel Whitten, helped her mother with the sorting. Sharon was the salt of the earth to Rachel and her sister, Sara Cole. She watched them a good deal while their parents worked, and they and their mom lived with Sharon while their father was deployed to Korea.
When the girls misbehaved, they were tasked with dusting the shelves of shakers. When they were better behaved, they spent hours admiring the sets. The collection changed with the seasons. Leprechauns might replace Santas. Strawberries might replace pumpkins.
Rachel says, “When we were going through her salt and pepper collection after she passed, I was saying, ‘I remember these on the kitchen table after church on Sunday.’ Some I had never seen because she didn’t have room to set them all out.”
The display was so impressive, Rachel captured video of it, posted it to social media, and was astounded by how many responses she received. “It caused so many people to talk about their own grandmas, who had collected salt and pepper shakers. So many memories.”
Sharon’s hobby was not uncommon. Today, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum houses 20,000 sets, and is a popular tourist stop.
Rachel can squeeze her eyes shut and see Sharon as she was years ago; dark, curly hair that lay in ringlets. “She was always smiling and joking. She loved to fish with her best friend. She worked hard and loved hard. She walked with the Lord.”
Sharon shared her values. “She taught me and my sister love, grace, mercy. Hers was a different love from our parents; she didn’t have the same responsibilities, because grandparents don’t. Maybe that made her a little freer. She had a major impact on our lives.”
It was in Sharon’s kitchen that Rachel learned the basics of home cooking. “She made great goulash,” Rachel says. “Pork chops, beans and cornbread, stewed tomatoes and macaroni. She made jelly.” Rachel now owns many of the cookbooks Sharon used, with favorite recipes dog-eared, and a few recipes stained by spills that happened while the two were cooking together.
Rachel remembers trips to the dollar store at Christmastime as a little girl, picking out a new set of shakers for her grandmother, eager to see Sharon’s sweet face when she opened her present.
Sharon didn’t travel widely, but her sisters did, and they sent shakers from faraway places like the Bahamas. Sharon’s stepdaughter, living in the Lonestar State, sent Texas-themed shakers. Sharon received sets from Japan and England. There is an old wooden set from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, created long ago.
There were one-of-a-kind sets, like the one Rachel’s hunter dad crafted out of the bottom part of deer antlers. “Those were her favorite,” Rachel says. “Her collection brought her so much joy. They were little, not too expensive things; she wasn’t concerned with the material aspect. But she could tell you the story behind every set, and who had given it to her. I think she looked at the shakers, and she saw her family who had given them to her. I think she saw love.”
Rachel’s mom has the bulk of the collection. Rachel picked out sixty of her grandmother’s salt and pepper shakers to keep, including the antique honey-colored set that Sharon’s mother had given her. Her sister Sara has eighty. Rachel’s five-year-old son wanted his Mawmaw’s set depicting NASA astronauts. He’s fascinated by space and planets. It’s become one of his favorite things.
The set Rachel bought her grandmother in Nashville, during her senior year in high school, has come back to her. Rachel found the shakers at the renowned Ryman Auditorium, a mecca for country music stars. On that same trip, she and her parents waited in line one whole day at the equally famous Bluebird Café, for a chance for Rachel to sing there. She made the cut, singing an original song she’d written about moving to Nashville to follow her dreams.
Turns out, Rachel’s dreams were closer to home. She’s always lived in Yell County, and Sharon lived there from the sunrise of her life until its evening shadow. There’s something to be said about small towns and simple joys. About living near the people who love you best. On both Rachel and Sara’s wedding day, the girls woke to the sound of Sharon in the kitchen. She’d made biscuits and chocolate gravy. She must have wanted them to have the perfect start to the sweetest day.
Salt and pepper shakers are simple, utilitarian objects. But what they hold is beyond price. Salt, for instance, was used as currency in ancient times, as a preservative for food, and even to heal wounds. Symbolically, salt is seen as unity and balance.
In the Bible, in the Book of Matthew, Christians are called the salt of the earth. Sharon was surely that. The spice of life. If she had a little pepper in her soul, that likely accounted for her good humor and joking nature.
Sharon Kay Tidwell arrived on the planet in 1944, and for eighty years, she united a family, practiced her faith, and found joy in the simplest things. Now, her treasures are in the hands of those who loved her most, a symbol of a life well lived.
