The bag of "Old Tyme" pretzels pictured next to this paragraph made the 1,012-mile journey from the Snyder's plant in Hanover, PA to Kansas City and then survived the drop from the top rack of a vending machine without a single broken pretzel. I repeat, NOT A SINGLE BROKEN PRETZEL.It's a small miracle, granted, but I'll take what I can get. And any pretzel actuary worth his or her oversize salt crystals will tell you that the odds against this are huge.
That reference to salt might cause you to say, "Lee, surely some of the large tasty salt crystals must have been dislodged from their fat-free surface."
You'd have a point, but I'd be tempted to pop in some color correcting contact lenses so that I could look at you with steely blue eyes and tell you not to get between a hungry man and his miracle. An awkward, electrically charged silence would follow. Then one of us would giggle and we'd both laugh at the absurdity of it. I mean, who's ever heard of a pretzel actuary?
Footnote:
In the small print on the package, the folks at Snyder's of Hanover make it clear that they don't want you to confuse them with cross-state rival snackmakers Snyder of Berlin, PA. You have to wonder if it's about more than just the name. Are they still mad that the Berliners sold out to Birdseye, went commercial ("Snack makin's about the fans, dude, not the money"). Or maybe it all goes back to that unfortunate ruckus at the Pennsylvania Snack Producer's Softball Tournament in 1988.
If you know please leave a comment.
The fact that you are able to focus like a laser on your pretzel-eatin' experience so as to actually notice that none of them were broken disturbs me deeply.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that none of them were broken after the journey you describe makes me wonder just what sort of miracle, space-age polymers were involved in the manufacture of said pretzels.
One word...Roswell.
I'm just sayin'.