Nostalgic Salt & Pepper Shakers

This weekend I started cataloging my new inventory of vintage collectibles that I have acquired within the past few months so that I could include them in the Outasite!!Collectibles website.  In this process I found many interesting things that I had forgotten that I had.  I found some nice vintage toys, including a 1968 Effenbee doll and a retro, mid 1970s WaltDisney Goofy Doll.  However, in one box, I found some salt and pepper shakers that brought back many memories of when I was a young kid.

As a child I remember when we all piled into my Dad’s 1963 Chevy Impala and went and visited relatives on the weekends.  As most times, when we visited, we ended up sitting and visiting in the kitchen, because that’s where all the good eats were.  At my aunt’s house, I was always intrigued by the Toaster Salt and Pepper Shakers that she had sitting on the table.  It looked just like a toaster from the 1950’s with two pieces of toast sticking out.  One slice of toast held the salt, the other, darker piece of toast held the pepper.  When the button lever on the side of the toaster was pushed down, the toast would pop up allowing you to easily grasp the salt or pepper shaker out of the toaster.  Of course it wasn’t a toy and I always got in trouble for playing with it.

At my mother’s aunt’s home, an every Sunday go to church kind of woman, who could also cook up a storm, the eats were even better and the toy for me was the TV salt and pepper shaker that sat on her kitchen table.  This salt and pepper shaker looked just like a TV from the late 1950s or mid 1960’s with four long legs, and in a cubicle on top sat the salt and pepper shakers.  On the front of the TV, the channel changer knob turns to move the salt and pepper holders up so that you can easily grasp them.  It was really cool and it actually looks like a piece of dollhouse furniture, although I never played with a dollhouse or dollhouse furniture.

I am sure a lot of baby boomers like me will recall these and other salt and pepper shakers that sat on tables across America.  They came and still come in various shapes, sizes and colors and mimic everything from vintage irons to cats, dogs, cows and other animals.  I think salt and pepper shakers are nostalgic because we tend to remember the smells and sounds associated to them when we first saw them.  My aunts rice pudding with coconut and raisins; my mother’s aunt’s fried plantains and not least of all my Italian neighbor’s lasagna and ravioli cooking.  As I sat at many of these tables in my youth, I could not keep my hands off the functional yet toy looking salt and pepper shakers.