NATIONAL PEANUT DAY!

    
   THURSDAY, MARCH 1ST., 2018
       NATIONAL PEANUT DAY!

     Today is truly a day to celebrate!
     I'm not sure if Congress ever officially
acknowledged this holiday by resolution or
not. But if it hasn't...it should!
     March 1st. is "National Peanut Butter
Lovers Day! And when you stop to think
about it this should be an especially big
day here in northeastern Pennsylvania!
      I mean when one thinks about
peanuts a lot of us from around here
automatically think of Planters and Mr.
Peanut who use to march around the
Public Square area in Wilkes-Barre
when the company had its big shop
downtown.
        Planters was founded by Italian
immigrant Amedeo  Obici in Wilkes-
Barre. He started his career as a bellhop
and fruit stand vendor in Scranton.
         Several of the family's homes can
still be seen as you drive through
Mountaintop.
        . Obici turned peddler within a few
years, using a horse and wagon, and calling
himself "The Peanut Specialist".
          Now to be totally honest Obici
moved to Virginia a few years after the
Planter's Company was founded and built
a major production factory there. That, of
course, is where the peanuts were.
          Mr, Peanut came along after the
move to Virginia. The character was
created by a young schoolboy, Antonio Gentile.
He won five dollars in a contest for his
drawing but Obici decided he deserved more
and paid for his, and his 4 siblings, college
tuitions!
           There is a disputed claim that Frank P.
 Krize, Sr., a Wilkes-Barre artist and head of the
Virginia plant, made the additions of the
monocle, top hat and cane on Mr. Peanut.
            Of course there's much more to
peanuts than Planters and Mr. Peanut!
             Here in America the average person
eats 1500  peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
before graduating high school. In fact there's
a lot of folks who survive on the combination!
            Peanuts are a pretty efficient food too. It takes
about 540 peanuts to make a 12-ounce jar of peanut
butter and there are enough peanuts in one acre to
make 30,000 peanut butter sandwiches.
       I can't seem to find any history on just when
Peanut Butter first met Jelly.....but they've been
stuck together ever since! (Get it? Peanut butter,
jelly, stuck together, you know.)
       So celebrate my friends. Husbands take your
wife out for a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich
this evening. That's bound to impress her.....Isn't
it?
        Hope you're not "spread too thin" and that
all your NEWS is good!