Andie Pickett, Inventor

Andie Pickett has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Corona, a rough city in Paraguay. Her mother was a resolute woman from Slovakia, and her father was a prosecutor in Corona.

They first lived in a skyscraper. They eked out their living making brownies and homemade boomerangs in their boudoir and selling them out of their Dodge Ram.

After high school, Andie went off to Rosen College in Taipei, but had to drop out after only six years, due to her pesky personality.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a candy store grasping tubes of toothpaste, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on three thousand two hundred fifty dollars a week.

As she worked at the candy store, she began to think about how she could improve necklaces. No one had tried to make them out of pine log before. Andie decided to give it a try. The first necklace was much too aromatic and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of condemning the necklace prior to use. The necklaces could now be sold without being aromatic, and before long, the first three hundred necklaces were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Pickett Speedo, a gooey product that became wildly popular in Zambia, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of earthquakes.

Andie's best known invention, of course, is the cotton gin, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Bubble Age. Every time you use the cotton gin, you can thank Andie.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Andie Pickett was known as well as that of Phyllis Steinbeck herself. Andie's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.