Elephants and Candy
5.27.2008
ORRTANNA, PA - On my way back across the vast expanse of Pennsylvaniatucky I had planned on making a few stops in order to make the experience a little less painful. The place I really wanted to see was Mister Ed’s Elephant Museum.
Just off of Route 30, my new favorite road, lies the elephant museum. The billboard that I saw was much more interested in advertising the candy than the elephants, but they don’t make any money off of the viewing the over 6,000 elephants…they make money off of the store. But more on that later.
After parking your car and wandering around the gardens, which mostly features elephants, but is also home to some giraffes and other wildlife, you enter Mr. Ed’s through a closed in porch. There are quite a few elephants hanging from the rafters, giant bags of peanuts and an old antique peanut roaster (which warns it may be hot and burn your arm off), and a shelf of misbegotten elephant donations free for the kiddies.
The elephants live mostly in 2 rooms which have display cases filled with the critters. Most are of the chachki variety, but there’s also posters, clothing, and tins that display the pachyderms in a very respectable manner. There are also a few more exotic pieces that look like they were fashioned in the far east (not just manufactured there). It’s a good time and the smiling representations of elephants defiantly leave you with a warm feeling inside.
The store sells all sorts of penny candy (there’s an entire room devoted to PEZ) and various chachkis, most of which are elephants, so you can start your own collection. The store is rather large and the elephants do range in the exotic, especially if you head into the bowels of the store past the display dedicated to Mr. Ed himself (apparently a local celebrity in his own right), to the kind the kids would live to play with. Before I left I bought me an elephant of my own, and a postcard, and a GIANT jawbreaker that will need licked before it can be sucked.
