Gathered at the Freshwater Pearl Museum Camden, TN
The free tour of the Freshwater Pearl Museum included a short video of a CBS Evening News program circa 1987 that featured entirely too many close-ups of freshwater pearls being extracted from snotty mussel innards. It was nauseating. I don’t even like to accidently see people eat shrimp on a Red Lobster commercial.
We didn’t get to go on a tour of the pearl farm. The woman working the museum (and gift shop) gave us the rundown on the tours, the next one was in six days and she asked if we were interested in signing up. Well no m’am we weren’t planning on sleeping in the Freshwater Pearl Museum 1986 video viewing room for the next week, but thank you. You can’t fault her for being enthusiastic. Like any good tourist attraction, the tours had special names - one of them was called a “tweener” – meaning if you couldn’t afford the real deal you could be humiliated in front of your friends and family by being forced to say “we’ll just take the tweener tour.”
I think she was happy to have us in the shop because it validated her belief in the mysterious beauty and magical draw of the pearl farm and Tennessee River. “I came here on vacation and stayed here!” She said she wasn’t the only one – same thing happened to three other people in the area including the guy who runs the marina. I was beginning to think this is where people went on the lamb. Our gal at the jewelry counter looked like she was on her fifth life at thirty two.
Before we left she told us we looked like Katie Perry and that every woman wanted a Tahitian (pearl). I’ve been trying to figure out the hidden messages ever since. I’m sure they are buried somewhere in the slimy mussel meat underwater in the pearl farms of the Tennessee River.
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