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I remember boiled peanuts

I remember boiled peanuts; I remember them from the barrier islands of Georgia. On hot Saturdays in summer, my family loaded our boat with beach chairs, coolers, canvas tote bags filled with towels, Doritos, and Mom’s chocolate chip cookies, and we motored off across the rippled brown water of tidal rivers. Crusted salt glittered on the white boat deck, and in the cooler, along with the cold beers and Cokes, there would sometimes be a bag of boiled peanuts. The peanuts, soft like fat tan peas, squirted salty juice when you opened their shells. On the islands there was salt on the boat deck, salt in the rivers, salt on my skin, and salt in the peanuts. And I love salt.

I remember boiled peanuts, and I remember where I ate them. After combing tan sand beaches for olive snail shells, after slapping mosquitoes in the palmetto scrub, live oak, palm tree forest, after trying to stand on our fabric raft in the tidal creeks, I returned to the cooler famished. I pulled out a cold Coke and the ziplock bag of peanuts, I carried them calf deep into the glassy brown creek, I planted my shiny red Coke can in the sand just above where land transitioned to water, and I sat down in the water with the bag of peanuts in my criss-cross-apple-sauce lap. I sat in the salty water in my neon pink one piece and I ate my boiled peanuts.

I remember I grabbed whole handfuls of the sodden peanuts, and I held them underwater: to season them even more. I split the shells by pinching the seam or by slitting them with my fingernail if they didn’t pop when I squeezed, and I sucked those squishy, salty, brown peas out. Sometimes, if it was a three- or four-nutter, I popped the whole thing in my mouth, shell and all, and sucked the salty juices out like sucking the sugary flavoring out of a popsicle. Then I cracked the shell between my molars and ate the soft nuts. A pile of wet shells accumulated on the sand above my Coke can, and I collected them when I finished. Leave only your footprints and all.

Eating salty boiled peanuts in Georgia’s salty tidal waters was one of my favorite childhood rituals, and I think of those marshy creeks every time I eat boiled peanuts now, landlocked in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia. Our children love boiled peanuts – we buy a large steaming styrofoam cup of them at a roadside stand every summer on our road trip to visit grandparents in Georgia and Florida – but our kids have never eaten them the way I did growing up; they’ve never eaten them butt planted in salty water at a tidal creek’s edge, a cold Coke can within arm’s reach in the sand. Our kids love boiled peanuts, and our kids love salt. And I think this summer, on our trip to Georgia, we will give them boiled peanuts on the islands, and I will show them the best place to eat them.

American Vignette Writing Challenge badge for Andrea Badgley Show Us Your State blogging event on andreareadsamerica.comI am seeking guest contributors for my Andrea Reads America site. This is my entry for the first of a series of writing challenges I will be hosting there as I attempt to collect stories from all 50 states. I hope you will consider submitting. For details on the first prompted challenge, please see American Vignette: I remember. A Writing Challenge.

 

14 thoughts on “I remember boiled peanuts”

  2. I want the beach, I want to sit butt planted in the salty waters, I want a tote bag filled with towels and Doritos. I can’t wait for summer. But my memory of boiled peanuts, cracking that shell, and piling them next to me was sitting next to my cousin, on the floor, in front of the sofa, watching all american baseball games. Thank you for helping me recall such a great memory.

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  3. I love this. I guess I never new you swished the peanuts around in the water to add more salt. We’ll be sure to have some for you when you visit this summer.

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  4. Andrea’s memories of her quite blessed childhood, and her descriptions of those experiences resonate with me beyond eloquent analogies or metaphors. Much of my favorite writings in her blog describe the experiences that stuck in her mind. The tiny details that captured the moment forever in Andrea’s very busy mind. Her Dad’s wedding ring pinging on the steering wheel of the boat, the boiled peanuts, the sand, the wind, the sounds of the water lapping on the hull of the boat, and the waves breaking on the beach, and that remarkable energy of the sun beating down …..are all on the periphery and are the players in the grand experiences of those memories. They are etched in our minds and in our soul from kiddom..our childhood..our little life with mom and dad. Simple and innocent. I write all this from lucky and unique perspective, because I was there for it all. I am Andrea’s brother and this makes me well up just putting it here you all to read. Powerful stuff for me. The smell of the marsh captivates my soul and my heart every single time I cross the last bridge after Wilmington Island. It means I am almost home, and all of the memories we share flood my heart….every single time. I Love you sis…and I Love you too..Mom and Dad. The same wedding band is still there and it still makes the same sound we adore.

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  5. We crossed over the border into Georgia once and discovered boiled peanuts. I was about 50 years old and had never heard of them before in spite of growing up in Memphis. They reminded me of black-eye peas, something I have to fix for myself from time to time.

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