My grandmother, Tillie Zellers, had a very extensive collection of salt and pepper shakers, which she kept in cabinets in the middle room of her home.

They were all shapes and sizes. I recall a Dutch boy and girl— 

—but I can’t find a picture that looks like the ones she had.

Anyway, she had dozens of salt and pepper shakers in the cabinets, and I found them fascinating.

So much so that when I was perhaps nine or ten years old, I decided to form my own collection.

My grandmother helped me to get started by giving me a couple sets to build off of, but I think once I realized that you had to, you know, buy shakers to add to the collection and I didn’t really have the cash to do so, and that to get the kind of collection that my grandmother had would take years, I just lost interest. So that hobby didn’t last very long at all.

But here’s the thing about my grandmother’s collection.

She had all these wonderful cool and eccentric salt and pepper shakers sitting in her cabinets for folks to admire, but on her dinner table all she had was a plain set of salt and pepper shakers that you could get at any five and ten cent store. I don’t recall that she even brought out any of the fancy shakers for special holiday meals.

Go figure.