Burl and Johnny sing.
Over the last few months, there has been a flurry of tweets, articles, and posts about boiled peanuts. Bon Appetit magazine had a Q & A with Ed Helms, the dentist from The Hangover and Andy from The Office. The accompanying photo is him in a bathtub of boiled peanuts. CNN’s food blog, Eatocracy, did a quick boiled peanut post less than a month ago with an online poll, no less, and within a day of each other, both The Daily Meal and Alton Brown tweeted about boiled peanuts.
I’ve never had boiled peanuts, or as they were originally called, goober peas, despite countless road trips through the south. I was, however, subjected to a famous song about the southern treat on those same trips.
Burl Ives’ version of “Goober Peas”, a song written during the Civil War, played in heavy rotation from my parent’s 8-track player on family vacations. My brothers and I would moan from the backseat, preferring Van Halen over the snowman from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer singing, “Peas, peas, peas, peas, eating goober peas.”
When I grew up and my music taste evolved, I began to appreciate the music of Burl Ives. It transports me to the tan, vinyl seats of our gigantic Chrysler, windows rolled down, stuck on the hump of the middle of the backseat, sandwiched between my brothers’ sharp elbows as we cruised along the highway. American folk music mixing perfectly with an American road trip.
The spring always sparks wanderlust in me, and I am planning a mini-road trip to Tennessee with my two best friends. Sadly, Nashville isn’t far enough south for real boiled peanuts.
But, at least, we’ll have Burl Ives.
