This Site Brings Back Memories

by Scott
(Martin, GA)

My father ran a roadside produce stand in northeast Georgia from the late 1980's until the early 2000's. Boiled peanuts were a large part of his business. I remember working with him as a kid during the summer and on weekends at the stand. We had a large, wood fired, three compartment, stainless steel peanut boiler. Each compartment would hold a 50 pound bag of peanuts. I remember many Saturdays selling out all three compartments of the cooker. It seemed like we always had a line of people waiting to buy peanuts, especially on the weekends. Many customers told us we had the best boiled peanuts around. We made good money from those peanuts. We would build a fire under the cooker before daylight and as soon as people started seeing the smoke rise, they would be stopping to buy peanuts. We eventually converted the cooker to gas but we kept an old 55 gallon drum just to burn some wood in to generate smoke. The smoke always seemed to draw people in. I miss those days sitting around the peanut pot. I met many great people and had a lot of fun at the same time.