WPLN News Archive; Tennessee Pearls (Todd Jarrell) 6 30 03; News Archive 4/1/03-7/1/03

the national office of american pro company president janela congress is painted with bright island colors a shimmering sells sea island image hangs above her desk from which she sells pearls worldwide had discovered the fruits of the family business perls cascade from the bags of thousands of clean the roseate and rainbow wash gems conjuring of the exotic and the far away but their origins are very close for these pearls were raised in tennessee he his father and company founder john mccandless entered the japanese pro business in the fifties just as cultured prose became popular he and his japanese wife jessie a trained pearl stronger his mother was also in the gem trade firmly believe pearls could be cultured in america pursuing this dream but congress visited three hundred southeastern sides are testing water rainfall regulations all of the variables of pro forma according to jean all the tigers her father finally establish america's only freshwater pro forma

nineteen eighty near camden on the tennessee river it was just so funny that less than ten miles from his own home that he'd lived in since nineteen fifty four ways where his pro farm would exist with the perfectly ok as you met him he approached the japanese pearl industry with his plans plans not taken seriously by the secret to japanese pro cartel and they basically laughed ha ha ha you americans don't know anything about growing japanese products he said you know i'll take that as a challenge and you watch her father returned ten years later with a handful of gm quality pearls only to be accused of wounding japanese national pride by hijacking their pearl heritage and he said you know i see a lot of hondas and diehard season mitsubishi turning around here and healy for his part our heritage and part of our history liberty people have done i have every right to be in this business

and of course the end of the story as it was so quiet and she could hear a pro trump the tundra swan on to establish a world wide niche market by cultivating distinctive geometric markey teardrop and corn chips for his tennessee pearls he wanted people to say no those come from giant conference in fact they call him the pablo picasso of the pro industry because he made these really interesting shaped pearls and according to jeannette same of nashville same jewelers the quality of the tennessee pearl standup to pearls worldwide they have a real howler picture of a beautiful when you're talking about a country we don't play that that quality i don't think there's much of the planet keeney birdsong or reno nevada he's fought the poll on as a tourist attraction at the john what congress' death in two thousand spread across perhaps four acres of

plastic green water for the floats under which the pro producing muscles grow right they dangle underneath the water about eighteen inches in the baskets floating on what i call american made bamboo pvc world war fighters forty feet long with a cap on ancient provide lewinsky the skype told all the muscle baskets and in each basket is somewhere between eighteen and twenty four mosul was rowing their pose the program were secret is the new creation process the surgical implanting of a bead made of mussel shell into the tissue of a live mosque which will coat the beat with layered secretions that harden creating the pearl when asked to see them in creating laboratory keast has already answer no physical what to the coca cola bottling plant right now we could see the circling and we can see this is an unknown in the canyons in the bottles and coming down the conveyor belt but

do we ever go into the to the laboratory where the sacred of the formula is no in fact it turns out letendre is never really shared his nucleation secrets at all he understood the manufacturing and understood the troops so what made a good a good marriage once he allowed me to write things to do and only know so much and keys does no promotion he welcomes more than two hundred thousand visitors a year making the tennessee river pearl farm in jewelry show room of tennessee top fifty tourist draw for national public radio i'm todd jail