A brief exchange between Weeks and myself in the Behemoth thread has caused me to wonder. See this pic? That’s Rachel and Becca doing the single salt crystal trick. This is not a phenomenon Weeks has experienced in his personal cultural framework…until now.
So…is this something like bowling with duckpins, that only occurs in the Baltimore area? Or am I right in thinking that everyone (well, not everyone) has tried this at one time or other?
Never heard of it. (I’m a foreigner). What is it?
We used to do it. Grains of salt are holding it balanced there.
I used to amaze the crowds with this trick 30 years ago. I showed it to my kids so the new generation can carry on the tradition.
Okay, but can you do the forks balanced over the edge of a glass on a toothpick thing?
Haven’t seen the fork one! But the kid on the right in the pic can stick a spoon to her nose.
Never saw or heard of it before. 'Bout all I know about Baltimore is what I saw in the movie ‘Diner’.
LOL! My grandaddy (when he was well into his 90’s ) spent about 15 minutes once at the dinner table setting this trick up. We all thought" ok, he’s finally lost it, gone over the egde, what is he doing?" Daggone if he didn’t balance the thing. It just took him a while because he was shakey. Hope I can even remember what a fork is for if I actually attain that age. 
I haven’t seen the salt shaker thing here, but you can do something similar with a can of pop (soda, for you Americans 
). If you drink the can down to just the right level, you can balance it without any salt holding it up. The torques balance out just right. Careful if you try it though. Pop can be sticky if you spill it everywhere.
A.J.
Now that you have the basic skill mastered, try it with an egg. It’s much more impressive, especially if you can sucker someone into a bet and get that salt on the egg on the sly. Try putting some in your hand before you start the trick.
I shall pass that on to my trickster offspring.
This just in.
An Alabama court today sentenced a Birmingham resident to Drowning for the crime of Witchcraft by Balancing a Saltshaker. Judge Roy Moore resided over the court, sentencing the witch personally, stating “there is no need for input from an unclean and heathen jury”. The unamed resident witch, a 16 year old student lunching at Shoney’s, could not be ungagged for comment.
What’s really fun is to watch people when you pull off the grand finale, lighting the inside end of the toothpick so it burns right up to the edge of the glass, where the glass saps away enough heat to put the smoldering toothpick out. When I was a teenager hanging out we’d do this at cafe’s and truck stops. I remember looking back once as we were paying our bill and seeing this waitress bent over the glass with her nose almost touching it, trying to figure out how those forks were staying there…