The Elephant Pretzel Holder

Back in the days before our phones became our cameras (as well as the repository of precious photos), we used to have photo albums.

They were very handy indeed. If you were organized like my mother, then you had your photos all in order chronologically through the decades, and possibly even labeled. Really old color photos from the 1950s even had the date and Kodak information printed on the back.

And family photo albums were fun to look at. As a kid, I remember that we sometimes pulled them out on a rainy day to look at, just to have something to do. The photos of Mom and Dad as young parents seemed so old. But they really weren't.

Some of the photos from the early 1950s are hopelessly discolored, with a weird yellowish hue. I was looking at some of them around Mother's Day this year, trying to find one with Mom, her mother and my Dad's mother to scan. I found one (below) that had the whole motherly lineup.

From left to right: Mom's mother, Mom (holding my sister), Dad's grandmother, and Dad's mother.

I had seen this photo (and others taken at the same time around Christmas 1954) before, and never knew for sure whose house it was. 

I color corrected the queasy yellow photo a little bit to the best of my (limited) ability.

And then I saw it, in the lower right hand corner.

It was something I had forgotten all about: a pretzel holder shaped like an elephant. It used to be high on a kitchen shelf in our house at 1604 W. 30th Street. One of my earliest memories is seeing that thing and wanting to play with it, since it looked like a toy. But it wasn't a toy, especially with the tall spike on which you were supposed to hang your pretzels.

Mom never, ever used it once she had all of us kids toddling around the house. It was simply too dangerous. So it remained on the shelf for years, before finally disappearing.

I looked online to see if there was one on eBay – or anywhere – but to no avail. But it's just as well. The Snyder's of Hanover Sourdough Nibblers that I usually buy wouldn't work with it anyway.

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Mom must have liked elephants because another thing that was up on a kitchen shelf was that Toppie Top Values Stamp lunchbox that I wrote about several times. Unfortunately, like the pretzel holder, it too disappeared over the years. But at last check it was worth more than $6,000!