DATE: Saturday, October 11, 1997            TAG: 9710110477

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LOUIS HANSEN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   71 lines

PEANUT FEST EXPECTS TO WELCOME 200,000

Ask anybody at the Peanut Festival fairgrounds - he's irresistible!

``I don't know what it is about him,'' said Sue Jones of Suffolk, 45, clutching a pair of plush Mr. Peanut dolls in plastic bags, ``he's adorable.''

Curvaceous, albeit pot-bellied, the monacled sophisticate sporting a top hat and cane happily greeted visitors from the Planters Company table.

``This is great,'' said Jones, who paid $20 for her pair of dolls. ``It's memorabilia for Suffolk.''

It wouldn't be Peanut Fest, Hampton Road's biggest annual harvest celebration, without taking home some form of the earthy legume. The 20th annual festival began Thursday night and ends Sunday evening, with organizers expecting more than 200,000 revelers to fill the Suffolk Airport before the last peanut is cracked.

Although Suffolk school administrators have long discontinued a scheduled peanut fest holiday, Friday afternoon hosted a mixture of mothers, young children, adolescents and groups of retirees out to enjoy the 80 degree weather.

There were plenty of big attractions.

Along a row of race cars and fire trucks, five mechanical monsters from Poplar Branch, N.C., dominated their section of the midway landscape: the Grave Digger monster trucks.

``Kids love to come up and crawl in the wheel wells,'' said engine mechanic Richard Midgett, pointing to the cavernous hollows of steel and rubber. ``They have their parents take a picture of them.''

Long-acknowledged as awesome by throngs of young boys, these 11-foot-tall behemoths took customers for five minute joy-rides around an enclosed dirt track.

But if there were beasts, there were also beauties.

Tiara nestled into her blond locks, Billie-Jean Savage was snacking on - what else? - a peanut, explaining what she was doing at the fairgrounds when she should have been in calculus class.

Savage, 16, a senior at Nansemond Suffolk Academy, was crowned Miss Peanut 1997. For that, she enjoys four days of royal treatment at the festival.

Friday, she arrived mid-morning with her court of five princesses by police escort. ``I've never been able to stop traffic before.''

Plenty of folks want to stop traffic at the festival. Almost every statewide and local politician on the November ballot is scheduled to meet and greet thousands of prospective voters.

Besides political nourishment, there were food stands for all tastes.

Sundry civic organizations and vendors offered a full array of barbecue and everything imaginable fried. Don't miss the two alligator dishes: blackened or on a stick.

And peanuts. Split burlap bags filled with peanuts, free handfuls for the grabbing. The Goober Gang handed out wax cups filled with peanuts. Car dealerships kept boxes of peanuts next to new cars.

Oscar Fowler, 55, of the Whaleyville Ruritan club, tried to explain the peanut's popularity as his group sold 14 different varieties.

Thank George Washington Carver for inventing so many different processes for the peanut, he said. More than 100 years after Carver, you can snack on a cajun or boiled peanut, crush them into butter, or mix them into a soup.

Festivalgoers want to satiate their peanut cravings after this harvest celebration - sales were brisk, Fowler said.

``People want to take some home, too.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by John H. Sheally II

...children can have their pictures taken in a shark

Photos

Donna Locklear...

Kashalla Jones... KEYWORDS: SUFFOLK PEANUT FESTIVAL

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