Pretzel memories

Soft pretzels are popular in southern New Jersey, just as they are in Germany. I remember eating them with grandmother and great-grandmother at the Cumberland Mall in Vineland, NJ.
There was Orange Julius there that you could buy them from. My grandmother had high blood pressure, so she had to scrape the salt off. She also had a full set of dentures, having lost all her teeth due to gingivitis or something.

There was one time, I remember, when my great-grandmother came with, and I remember them fighting about the check. My grandmother insisted insisted that she be the one who would pay. My great-grandmother, in turn, would tried to give her money, which she would refuse. They went back and forth like that, whisper-yelling at each other with almost scary levels of intensity.
The picture on the left is from 1943 or 1944, when my grandmother was about 16 years old. The picture on the right is from my fifth birthday party in 1980.

My great-grandmother died in 1988, about two months after after my second-cousin Tara was killed in a car accident. I wasn't able to go to her funeral because I was with my mother in Illinois at the time, but I still think of her whenever I eat a soft pretzel.