Peanuts

 I often wonder how many of the things I love and the things I do are because of the amount of time I spent with my grandparents or maybe these things are just in my genes. No idea but I love the memories that come with some of these things.

Probably my grandparents' best friends were Mr. and Mrs. Ross. I actually don't remember their real names but everyone called him Tink and everyone, even us kids, which sounds kinda disrespectful now, called her Tomcat. I need to ask my uncle what her real name was. Well, nevermind. I just looked up Tink's obituary because I thought it had a story about his mule that lived to be really old - maybe older than 50 years. I'll have to ask my uncle about that mule too. From his obituary, I was reminded that Mrs. Ross' name was Willie Mae and his name was Allen. Reading the obituary made me cry. Tink passed away in 2018, at the age of 103 years. My dad and my uncle were pall bearers and now my dad is gone too!  :(

Anyway . . a blog post about nuts should NOT cause me to cry, right?

I love home roasted peanuts. We roast what we will eat over a few days, let them cool, eat what we want and put the others away. I never like to order them until it has gotten cooler because I don't think sitting on hot delivery trucks is good for them. Tonight our low is 44. Except for a couple of days here and there, our highs are now going to be in the 60's. Vince is watching football with the windows open and a fan going. I still had on my nightgown and was cold so I went and put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt! That means it's officially time to order peanuts.

I get the 25 pound box from nuts.com. Sometimes, in February or March, we have to order a second box! It all depends on how much peanut butter we end up making. But, by May, we're not wanting roasted peanuts much. I rarely make peanut butter & jelly sandwiches but I do love those and I love peanut butter on a banana.

I almost forgot the reason I wrote about Tink Ross. They didn't live close to my grandparents. No one had neighbors back then. We had to take the car to go visit them. Tink and his old mule . . which was an old mule when I was a kid, would plow up an area on the side of their driveway and they would plant peanuts. When he harvested them, he would hang them in his barn to dry. He had a big pole he could reach up into the rafters and cut down a bundle of peanuts. When we would go over there, he would always send us home with a bundle of peanuts. My grandma would roast them for us and I thought those were the best snack ever. So, every year when I order our peanuts, I think of Tink and Tomcat. I really think of them other times too. He also grew the best watermelons and cantaloupe. Were they really the BEST or was it because he gave us as many as we wanted? My parents didn't usually buy cantaloupe and would buy 2 or 3 watermelons every summer but Tink would give us 5 or 6 of each, then a week or so later, if we didn't go visit them, they'd come visit us and bring more.

Those were truly the best days!