Peanut Farmers

I’ve thought about physically enhancing myself ever since a student popped up in a high school hallway one day and referred to me as “old baldhead”. That was twenty years ago and I had no idea I was in fact follically (don’t bother, I made it up) challenged. I went home that very afternoon, looked into a silver backed mirror I knew would tell me the truth and discovered I was indeed, heir to the Sean Connery dynasty. What else could I do…my hair was gone. I suppose I could have had a Biden hair transplant and a little plastic surgery and while today’s innovative marketers have expanded it to mean additional stuff, I just wasn’t into enhancement. So, in an effort to stay positive with this situation, I began to watch 007’s movies, realizing he was not only able to drive really fast without having an accident but in fact spent a large amount of time with fashionable females who found him “acceptable”, so to speak, in spite of his shortcoming.

Years ago down in Statesboro, we had what we used to call peanut farmers, weather beaten old salts whose faces looked like roadmaps when they came in to drop off their peanuts at the Rushing peanut plant. The plant was a combination tobacco barn and peanut receiving plant, where farmers brought their crop in for weighing and shipping in big trucks to Virginia, who then claimed they were Virginia peanuts and sent them on to the factory in Never Never Land where they became Peter Pan peanut butter. The farmers who brought them in were an amazing bunch of Americans who had probably done more physical labor in one month than Peter Pan ever thought of but he could fly so that evens it up. Their faces reflected years in the sun and seemed to be an open book into the lives they were living to bring the peanuts to a country using peanuts for everything from brittle to fudge. They didn’t know what sunscreen was back then and plastic surgery was deemed an extreme measure used to disguise years on life’s “tractor” and taken only when the potential new wife was the daughter’s best friend. Something we would never stoop to today. But it is possible they just didn’t care that their faces looked like a hundred miles of bad road and were in fact satisfied with the woman who had born their children and been a helpmate for the years following the wedding vows. They were just not into enhancement, although a few may have tried their luck. After all, it’s like going to Vegas and rolling the dice. Will this make me look more beautiful or more intelligent or just give me more lips and fewer lines? So what you had coming into the peanut plant was the real deal…weather beaten, ornery, might drink a beer on Saturday afternoon and still make it to church on Sunday, peanut farmer. When they lined their trailers full of peanuts up on ol’ Zetterhower street you could see the look on those worn faces that seemed to be saying, “Don’t mess with me, this is my place in line and by god I’m getting these things weighed and on to Never Never Land before sundown.” The thought that Peter Pan, who, as we all know, was older than he appeared and may very well have had a plastic surgery moment, never occurred to these men of the fields. So what is it with the Bruce Jenner usetabees and Phyliss Diller neverwases that makes them want to erase a hundred years of bad road and replace it with three square inches of wax? After all, it’s the only road they’ll ever own, unless their driveway qualifies…and they may as well lay claim to the road they’ve traveled. I think it has a lot to do with how you view Peter Pan. The peanut farmer I knew was focused on one thing, getting the crop to the Peter Pan people for the peanut butter. These other folks are focused on their thing, getting the most out of a face in order to look like Peter Pan when they’re ninety. You really can’t fault either one; after all, it’s their road.