On a recent road trip, I was driving through Georgia and noticed that peaches were a big item in most roadside food stands. But there was also billions of peanuts: salted, unsalted, boiled, plain, shelled and unshelled to satisfy any taste. It was outside the Peanut Emporium in Lumpkin when I noticed a swanky peanut walking back and forth, wearing an Emporium sandwich board.

I knew Mr. Peanut back in the day when we, the kids in the ‘hood, called him ‘Pee’. We all shied away from calling him Peanut because one fellow in our gang was…well, vertically challenged. Dooley was to go on and make a nice living as a circus clown. He was a midget. It was so many years ago, many details are lost in the fog of distant memories. Pee didn’t sport a cane, a monocle, a top hat and white gloves that matched his spats. Putting it simply: he was your basic peanut. No, all those accoutrements came from me after months of grooming and then reinventing him as Mr. Peanut. I quite liked the ‘pee’. And changing his style was the least I could do for a friend and convicted felon. I’m not totally sure but I do believe he is still wanted in three states out west for alleged mail fraud. Once he was transformed into a gentle peanut, he made a fair living parading up and down Court Street in Binghamton, New York. He was responsible for selling a mountain of peanuts in the Mr. Peanut Shop. The kids of that fair city (and a number of adults) certainly got their protein from all those stained paper bags of peanuts. The fact that they also had episodes of high blood pressure from the salt, but no one really cared about those things…back in the day.

But I digress.

A little about me. I’m just a washed-up scribbler. I wrote one novel about twenty-seven years ago that sold about thirty-one copies. I last saw a copy on the remainder shelf at a small independent bookstore in Macon, Georgia. I was a bummed out failed novelist but I was never alone. I’ve been to many Starbucks and everyone except the barista’s grandmother is a failed novelist. Successful novelists eat at the Plaza Hotel. So I moved on and roamed the south.

Let’s just say that I was born a ramblin’ man.

I write pieces for the local rag, the Del Rio Times, in Texas. I only write bits about topics that interest. So, I got a call from my editor, Oscar “Twinks” Rowbottom, to drive up to Marfa and check out a lead about someone called Peanut-something who was barricaded in a bungalow. Apparently, he was surrounded by SWAT teams and refused to come out until he had his shell back. No one knew where to find a six foot peanut shell…so it looked like it was going to be a long siege. I had nothing on my plate that couldn’t wait. My bottle of Rebel Yell was empty and I needed a new ribbon for my Underwood. Besides, I could use a break and a breath of fresh air. This room at the Hi-Ho Motel can get stuffy at times. The ceiling fan broke two weeks ago and the A/C was on the blink.

I have a certain degree of power over Mr. Rowbottom ever since I informed him that I had seen his wife duck under the boardwalk in Asbury Park, New Jersey with her paddle-board instructor, a Mr. J. Farrington Tipton. “J” had a graduate degree in Particle Physics from Yale. After I became his mate he told me that his Yale degree didn’t allow him much scoring with women. The paddle-board gig, he confided, was a real chick magnet. What I was doing under the boardwalk is the stuff of another blog. Suffice it to say that I was with my new girlfriend, Dola, a carwash receptionist from Horn, Texas.

After Rowbottom heard my story, he collected a few friends and chased Tipton to the train station. He was last seen boarding the midnight train to Georgia.

So, here I am leaning against a digital parking meter in the rain. A large drop from a storm gutter high on the third floor of the Potter Savings and Loan building managed to find its way to the end of my Lucky Strike, dousing the red glow. I flicked the butt into the gutter and patted my jacket for a pack of smokes.

I heard a cop on a bull horn but failed to catch what was said because a truck passed by. I did hear a reply shouted from the surrounded house: “And, besides that, everyone is allergic to me!” I recognized Pee’s voice.

Just as my cigarette hit the pavement, I noticed the toe of a red stiletto crush out the butt. I followed the sight line from the foot, to the ankle, up the leg and finally settled on the wrinkled face of an old friend. It was Moxie Thornton, she has my job but with the competition, the Del Rio Gazette. Her once seductive size 6 figure had matured slightly into a size 12. Her dress still had a sale tag on the back collar. Moxie and I went way back. She sure was a looker back when I first met her…a real feast for the eyes. She was holding a torn gray umbrella with a smiley face, faded but still grinning. She invited me to join her under her umber-shoot. I moved next to her. I could smell the distinct scent of her favorite perfume, Sweet Addict.

“Moxie,” I said. “What a sight for tired old eyes.”

“You always say that, even to the nice girls.”

“Mox, this is a blog. You’re in my blog.”

“Cool”, she said during a yawn. “This is the first time I was ever allowed into your blogs. Gosh, I remember our first time so well. The plastic back seat of your ’59 Studebaker…”

“Let me tell you all about how to be in a blog,” I said. “But let’s do it over a drink at Sam’s Bar and Grill. It’s on me.”

I fingered my last twenty in my pocket.

“You always knew how to charm the ladies big guy.”

She slipped her arm through mine and we started to make our way, through the rain, to Sam’s.

“What about Mr. Peanut?” she asked. “You and I have deadlines.”

“I’ll decide how it all turns out with Pee,” I said. “After all, it’s my blog. And when I’m done, I won’t have any Jackassery to put up with from Rowbottom.”

In the end, it all turned out fine. The police talked Pee down and somehow located a shell for him. From where, I’ll never know. I haven’t written that part of the blog yet.

I do know that in the last scene, he was walking on the tarmac, in the fog, and left on a jet plane.