The Peanut Lady’s Paradise

“He was such good man,” the tiny Oriental woman said in tortured English as she handed me a bag of peanuts. A solitary tear coursed down her leathery, grieving face. “One minute we talk, next minute he fall dead.” She made change from a battered cash box, and then looked up at me with that courageous, stiff-upper-lip determination I had grown to admire in her. “I miss him much,” she sighed, staring past me at something only she could see, and turned to her next customer.

Folks raised below the Mason-Dixon line cannot drive past roadside stands selling boiled peanuts. I certainly can’t, and the peanut lady boiled the best goobers this Southern boy ever gobbled. At the time, I wasn’t pulling down anything near Bill Gates’ paycheck, and I went into sticker shock when the orthodontist said, “Son, not even a self-respecting garfish would put up with a set of teeth like your daughter’s. The braces she’ll need to make her smile as beautiful as the rest of her will run you ’bout five grand.” I would have to moonlight to pay him, so I took a weekend truck-driving job with a route running right by the peanut lady’s place of business. It was miserable … an ancient Volkswagen van parked on a concrete slab in front of an abandoned service station just off the interstate. A huge vat hung from its rear, along with a propane bottle connected to a burner beneath the vat. Rickety wooden steps allowed the short little woman to climb up to the vat’s rim and stir the boiling peanuts. Despite the steam and summer heat, she prepared them daily for a steady stream of customers. After an overseas military tour, her husband brought her back from the Far East. Other than counting the money his wife made, I never saw him turn a hand to help her. A huge bear of a guy with tattooed arms and chest, he lounged in the van all day, dressed in cut-off jeans and t-shirt, smoking cigarettes, sipping beer, and watching a rabbit-eared television. What the peanut lady saw in that meathead, I will never know. Now he was gone and she missed him, but wasn’t about to quit working. Well before dawn each day, she parked the van, fired up the burner, and toiled until sundown. Every weekend, I chatted with her, trying to brighten her spirits. One day in early July, right around the Fourth, I asked her why she didn’t return to her home country, now that her husband had died. Shaking her head vigorously, she glared at me in amazement. “Go back!” she gasped. “You crazy? In America, I free to work for myself, make money, buy things. Back there, I no work for myself, I no make money, I have nothing, not always enough to eat. Sometimes you Americans forget how wonderful this country. It … how you say? A paradise.” God bless America, my home, sweet home: the peanut lady’s paradise.