"I'm a salt seller too. "
I remember seeing a splendid documentary on TV a long time ago, which showed an enterprising ? Ethiopian
in the Rift Valley, with a rickety wagon pulled by a donkey, gathering salt from an outcrop in the suburbs of Hell, which he would then have to haul many miles before he could peddle it.
It is hard for us to imagine how much you can miss salt when you are long deprived of it. I remember an article in Scientific American long ago which attributed much of the inertia of the Dark Ages in Europe to the destruction of salt beds in France by their being uplifted geologically. Another article mentioned that a very large part of the pines on Cape Cod were cut for heat to evaporate sea water, when there was an unusual demand for salt in the 1820s. Remember Lear's daughter proving to him that her comparing him to salt was not faint praise. I still find it hard to grasp that salt could ever have been so expensive that only the bigshots had access to it at formal banquets. And let us rejoice that cretinism from lack of iodine need never afflict kids.
Lots more salt trivia out there.........