He Put Peanuts in His Coke

He Put Peanuts in His Coke



Days out of college, I got a factory job in Bensenville at a place that manufactured hydraulic pumps. I needed to earn enough money to pay for graduate school. It was miserable work, but it scared me straight: I vowed never again to work in a factory.

To pass the time, I used to bring in sonnets from Shakespeare or Milton, typed out on index cards, and memorize the poems at work, which was otherwise a mind-numbing physical exercise that didn’t require more than two or three neurons firing at any one time. I worked in the factory stock room, cataloguing inventory and distributing parts for jobs using recipes given to me by assemblers for specific jobs. More than once an assembler would come in, looking for a gauge or a valve, and he’d catch me mumbling to myself in iambic pentameter. I’m sure most of the guys I worked with – all members, like me, of the United Steel Workers Union – thought I was, as we used to say in Bensenville, a few bricks shy of a load. Still, we got along, and there were a few guys who I found kind of fascinating, if only because they lived lives way different than the white bread suburban existence I’d known up to that point.

One day I was sitting in the lunch room during one of our officially sanctioned coffee morning breaks (thank you, USW!). I was sharing a table with Ecky (guy from Ecuador), a nice man from Jamaica whose name I don’t recall, and this big guy from Mississippi, name of Cyrus Huff.

I didn’t know much about Cy, but I’d heard the word “sharecropper” come up when someone was talking about him, though I wasn’t sure if it was Cy or his dad that was sharing crops. Whoever was being discussed, Cy was definitely a guy who could handle heavy work, in a farm or factory. Cy was maybe 6 foot four, a formidable figure, and yet he had an airy kind of voice, not girly at all, but very high-pitched and almost dreamy. He’d say “yeaaaa” and really draw out the word; he called most of the younger guys punk heads – “That boy’s a ponk-haid” or “What you doing over there ponk-haid?” – but I kind of doubt he ever called me that, even behind my back, but it’s hard to say. I could not possibly fault him if he had.

Cy was very round in the middle, kind of pear-shaped. The front buttons on his oil-stained blue coveralls always seemed in motion, straining to contain his impressive belly. He walked slowly and gracefully, liked a vertical dirigible, seeming to float a few inches above the factory floor.

As I was talking to Cy on that break, the big man carefully opened a bag of Planter’s salted peanuts (it always amazes me how some very large guys have such delicacy in their hands). Then he dumped all the peanuts into his Dixie cup of Coca-Cola. As he spoke, he’d take a sip of Coke and then chew any peanuts that were into the liquid mix. I found this beverage rather amusing, and I could tell Cy was amused that I was amused.

Later, I made a Coke with peanuts for myself. The saltiness of the nuts and the sugariness of the Coke went well together, but you kind of had to drink it fast: if the peanuts stayed in the coke too long, they’d lose their salty punch and start reverting to their naturally softer legume-like state. But maybe that softer quality is what Cy was going for; perhaps it reminded him more of the moist, boiled peanuts he had as a kid down South. Whatever the reasoning, it was a weird snack.

Cy started telling us about this new-ish model Buick he’d bought, maybe 3-5 years old. The car was in good condition, but Cy thought it needed a repaint. Instead of taking it to Earl Scheib and blowing huge change ($39.95 – a big percentage of a day’s wages), he had some guy in the neighborhood paint his car. The neighborhood guy somehow messed it up real good. After a few days in the sun, the paint started bubbling up volcanic, forming little pockmarks all over the hood, considerably reducing the value of the vehicle. To fix this paint job, the car would need to be stripped, sanded, primed, and repainted…a big and expensive endeavor.

What Cy did next was a stroke of street genius: he waited for it to rain. It was a hot, almost drought-like summer, but he was patient.

Finally, with raindrops clinging to the body of the car, he drove it to a used car lot and sold it to some guy for considerably below market price, but above what it’d be worth if the guy saw through the raindrops and discovered the inept and amateurish paint job that would trash the car’s resale value.

Ecky, who had been nibbling some kind of tasty looking empanada-type thing his wife made him, piped up, “Wasn’t the guy suspicious that you were letting the car go for so cheap.”

“Ahhh,” Cy spoke slowly, more softly than usual, “he probably just thought he was dealing with another dumb n*gger.” There was sadness mixed with a kind of justice-achieved-triumph in his voice, and a world- weary acknowledgement of hard realities that it seemed you couldn’t do much about.

I wasn’t quite sure what to say, so I nodded, “Smart.” Because it was smart.

Then the bell rang, and it was time for all of us to go back to work.

I kept that factory job for about a year, earning almost enough to pay one-half of a graduate degree at the University of Chicago. Tuition was a lot less expensive in the Seventies, but I would have paid twice that cost of tuition to free myself from ever facing a future in a factory. I hated every day, from the time I clocked in until the time I clocked out. “Never again,” I said to myself more than once.

Later, maybe years later, after I’d got my advanced degree and started teaching college in Downers Grove, I heard that Cy had been fired…but not before he’d been arrested. Apparently the Bensenville police, cruising York Road late at night, had spotted Cy’s big Cadillac parked in the rear of the factory. His headlights were trained on a weedy patch just beyond the loading dock. Cy was collecting some tools that had apparently been hidden in the field earlier in the day. I never heard what happened to him after that, but I do remember the last conversation I had with him before I quit the factory forever.

After my term of factory servitude, I was leaving work for the last time on my last day, walking around the assembly floor saying my good byes to guys I mostly never wanted to see again. I ran into Cy, one of the few guys I would have liked to have seen again, and I asked him in a joking way if he still was drinking Coke with peanuts.

“Can’t,” said Cy. “Doctor says I got to stick with nekkid water.” Which is to say, water, just water, with nothing in it. I’m guessing his doctor was trying to help Cy manage his weight. When Cy said he was off the Coke and peanuts, he had a look on his face that seemed to say, in Cy’s airy, dreamy way, what-are-you-gonna-do? I almost said “C’est la vie,” but that would surely have marked me as a punk-head. I just said goodbye.



Usage note: I’ve used an asterisk to blunt the impact of what I consider one of the most hateful and hurtful words in the language. Though it felt awkward to do so, I just couldn’t bring myself to put the whole word in print because doing so might in some small way nudge the term further into common usage, which I don’t think helps.

Barbara Mandrell sang about this--no idea why I remember it, given that my country music phase was, mercifully, short. But it was an image...

I remember circlin' the drive-in, pullin' up
An' turnin' down George Jones
I remember when no one was lookin'
I was puttin' peanuts in my Coke

Evocative story David, as always. Thanks for sharing it.

Thanks for the Mandrell quote, Jen. Peanuts in Coke must be a southern thing, but the way she sings about it, it seems like a forbidden or guilty pleasure, which is kind of surprising.

David Hammond wrote:Peanuts in Coke must be a southern thing

Yes, definitely, as is its first cousin potato chips in Coke.

stevez wrote:

David Hammond wrote:Peanuts in Coke must be a southern thing

Yes, definitely, as is its first cousin potato chips in Coke.

After hearing the song, I tried the peanuts in coke too and it was "interesting"--but not bad. Potato chips in coke sounds completely vile--and I've never heard of anyone doing it. YUCK!

boudreaulicious wrote:

stevez wrote:

David Hammond wrote:Peanuts in Coke must be a southern thing

Yes, definitely, as is its first cousin potato chips in Coke.

After hearing the song, I tried the peanuts in coke too and it was "interesting"--but not bad. Potato chips in coke sounds completely vile--and I've never heard of anyone doing it. YUCK!

With you, Jen. It seems like the potato chips would instantly turn to mush, like corn flakes that have been sitting in milk. Still...I will need to try it before I discount it.

boudreaulicious wrote:
After hearing the song, I tried the peanuts in coke too and it was "interesting"--but not bad. Potato chips in coke sounds completely vile--and I've never heard of anyone doing it. YUCK!

David Hammond wrote:With you, Jen. It seems like the potato chips would instantly turn to mush, like corn flakes that have been sitting in milk. Still...I will need to try it before I discount it.

I'm just reporting what I saw. I don't condone either behavior. The chips were dipped in the coke, not left to soften. I've seen both peanuts/coke and chips/coke in Arkansas, South Carolina and Tennessee. That's not to say the combo is not prevalent elsewhere, but I've only observed it in those three places.

Great story. I spent many summers and school breaks working in factories and met some truly colorful characters.
Their habits however tended more toward tall boy cans of beer hastily chugged in the parking lot at lunch with a side of Marlboros.

Wonderful post. Only have had unwanted peanuts in Coke after drinking a shared bottle of Coke with my sister at my Grandma's house in the Sixties. Taught me to eye my Coke before drinking.

I definitely recall folks back home and in NC doing this with roasted peanuts and specifically glass bottles of Coke.

Here's a link from Coke's website on the subject. http://www.coca-colacompany.com/food/co ... ot-started

pairs4life wrote:I definitely recall folks back home and in NC doing this with roasted peanuts and specifically glass bottles of Coke.

Here's a link from Coke's website on the subject. http://www.coca-colacompany.com/food/co ... ot-started

Thanks, Ava. Looks like another southern foodway that rarely makes it north.

Thanks Dave-
for I'd listened to this song many,many times- never understanding where the hell a person'd think
about putting some nuts in her soda....
and-Now-I-Know!
Paul Thorn's a great Singer/Songwriter from Alabama -got Elvin Bishop to play/record w/ him
and has a line about
a gal who put Peanuts in her Coke, too.

https://youtu.be/GdiUYgEXwLc

About 1:55 in- "She Put's Peanuts in her Coke".....

Here's another version of his song-https://youtu.be/5fFJFf0led4 "She's Got A Crush On Me"
(about 1:03 into this live version)

GAAAAH! He put what in his coke???




Oh. Whew. Okay then.

Hombre de Acero wrote:Thanks Dave-
for I'd listened to this song many,many times- never understanding where the hell a person'd think
about putting some nuts in her soda....
and-Now-I-Know!
Paul Thorn's a great Singer/Songwriter from Alabama -got Elvin Bishop to play/record w/ him
and has a line about
a gal who put Peanuts in her Coke, too.

https://youtu.be/GdiUYgEXwLc

About 1:55 in- "She Put's Peanuts in her Coke".....

Here's another version of his song-https://youtu.be/5fFJFf0led4 "She's Got A Crush On Me"
(about 1:03 into this live version)

Very sweet tune, thanks for posting.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Robert J. Hanlon

The poor guy probably just really did think he was doing a nice thing.

Edited to add:
Whoops! Wrong thread, please ignore.
Sorry for the confusion...

Great story. Thank you for sharing it with us.

stevez wrote:I'm just reporting what I saw. I don't condone either behavior. The chips were dipped in the coke, not left to soften.

They're also good dipped in shakes, as are fries. But I don't think that's a Southern thing.