Category: Miscellaneous

on by

I recently connected with Geoff on Linked-in believe it or not.  He posts cool stories about his time with the Beatles.

I left a comment on one of his posts, and he gave me a like on it!  Another connection between me and the Beatles!!!


on by

Submitted by Taps Coogan on the 7th of February 2018 to The Sounding Line.

As part of our ongoing series of historical video-maps we present: ‘The History of China Every Year.’ Running from 1600 BC until 2017 AD, the following video shows the geographic history of the various civilizations and dynasties that have comprised the area now known as China over the last 3,617 years. Far from the stable monolithic image of modern China, the history of China is one of numerous competing states and changing borders, punctuated by occasional periods of stability such as the Yuan and Qing dynasties.

To see other interesting historical maps check out:

The History of the Greeks
Every Year of the Roman Empire
Every Other Day of the Napoleonic Wars
Every Day of World War I
Every Day of World War II
The History of the World Every Year 
The Five Largest Cities Throughout History
Every Major Plague Epidemic in History
The Evolution of Modern Government
The Rise of Religions Throughout History
The History of Communism Since 1850
The History of Urbanization
The History of South America
How the World Got Obese
The History of North America

on by 2 Comments

Source: Old Route 1 Post Card new to the collection – Diner Hotline Weblog

Old Route 1 Post Card new to the collection

A while back I had a post that featured an image that was an old landmark to me as a small child. The image was of a photo I shot back in the late 1980’s of the Half Dollar Bar sign that was derelict and in danger of being destroyed at that point in time. This was a very big landmark from my youth as it was, as you can probably see from the shape of the left hand side of the sign that this was actually Mister Peanut of Planters Peanut fame. It was for the former Planters Peanut store that was located at this site on U.S. Rte. 1 north in Peabody, Mass.

half-dollar

I use the term landmark because I learned at a very early age what the word meant for a couple of reasons. Probably as a young child, there was a time when during a ride in the car with my family that I or one of my brothers would have asked “where are we”? My Dad might have advised us how to use a landmark to figure out where you are, especially if it was someplace we went all the time. Of course this was during the late 1950’s when Howard Johnson’s advertised as “The Landmark for Hungry Americans”.

So as a young child I was very observant and constantly used landmarks, especially on rides heading north on U.S. Rte. 1 from Saugus, Mass., which was where we entered the fabled roadway coming from Medford, our place of residence. You see Route 1 had  many landmarks as it was (and still is) a very busy business strip. That is an underlying reason for when I started actively collecting post cards, I ended up having a fairly large subcollection of Route 1 post cards.

After I started this blog (Diner Hotline has been online since October 31, 2007) I also became a regular visitor on Flickr. I started checking out a lot of Roadside Images that people from all over were shooting and posting. My fellow SCA colleague Debra Jane Seltzer, a regular contributor on Flickr posted a lot of her excellent photos from her travels. During a fairly long roadtrip Debra shot a couple of photos of the Large Mister Peanut sign that was on display at the Planters Peanut plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

I left a comment on Debra’s Flickr post that included that photo. I informed her that was in fact the former sign for the Planters Peanut Store that was located on Rte. 1 in Peabody. She responded that maybe it was not the one from Massachusetts as there must have been quite a few spread across the country. I informed her that yes, although there may have been quite a few Mister Peanut signs, (in fact I shot a photo of another one down on Rte. 6 in Southeastern Mass. not too long after I documented the Peabody one), that I recall the story of this one in particular.

Another fellow SCA colleague, Pete Phillips who was a City Planner for Gloucester, Mass. back in the late 1980’s was instrumental in saving the Mister Peanut sign from Peabody. After the Planters Peanut Store closed, it became the aforementioned Half Dollar Bar and the sign was repainted to make Mister Peanut look like a man in a tuxedo. By the late 1980’s the bar was closed and the building torn down, the only thing left was the sign which was also slated to be destroyed.

Pete contacted Planters Peanuts headquarters and informed them of the sign’s predicament. They became interested and decided to have the old Route 1 landmark shipped to their Fort Smith plant and spent some money to refurbish it. It has been on display at the plant ever since. When I was investigating this last year, I actually called the Fort Smith plant and talked with the Executive Assistant to the Plant Manager who confirmed the sign had come from the Boston Area in 1988.

In my previous post about this I ran Debra’s photo of the sign, see below…

djs-mister-peanut

To finally get back to the title of this post, since that time I have been periodically searching on ebay for a possible post card of the old Planters Peanut Store on Route 1. I wasn’t sure it existed but seeing as there were post cards of other stores like it from around the country, there was a good possibility that one might have been printed. Sure enough a couple of weeks ago one showed up on ebay and was I so psyched! I bid on it and luckily no one else wanted it. So here it is in all it’s glory. It is certainly proof that the sign in Fort Smith was the one from Peabody!

Planters-Peanut-House_Peabody

18 thoughts on “Old Route 1 Post Card new to the collection”

  1. It is good to see that Planters was in favor of salvaging a piece of their history in this case the Mister Peanut sign. Too many other companies sadly do not take as much pride.

  3. Gunnar, not quite. The Hilltop Steak House is on the southbound side of Rte. 1 in Saugus. This sign was on the northbound side in Peabody, just about a mile or so south of the Danvers line. I would say a good 5 or 6 miles apart.

  4. Larry –

    Thanks so much for this! I so want to BE IN THAT STORE! Like others, I remember this sign only in its most decrepit form…. Somewhere I have a photo that is much like yours.

    And boy, but it’s so nice to know other people who would get excited about a particular postcard on eBay. I know EXACTLY what that feels like.

    Keep up the great work!

    Ron

  5. Ron, Great to talk with you yesterday! I am certainly glad I shot it back in the 80’s. I remember when it looked like the postcard. We never stopped there but I always remember watching for “Mister Peanut” on drives north as a little kid.

  6. Larry, I grew up in Somerville. I am currently working on a book about growing up in Somerville in the late sixties to the seventies/eighties. Do you have or do you know where I can get some old pictures of Somerville back then. I remember the White Tower Restaurant at the corner of Broadway and McGrath Highway

    Any help is appreciated
    Anthony

  7. The Mr Peanut sign in Fort Smith is 100% the one from Peabody. After the bar closed several people wanted to purchase it, but it was donated to Planters

  8. We had a Planters store with an identical sign near my
    home in Raleigh, NC. Have looked for a postcard for years
    with no luck.The sign was destroyed by winds one day.
    They used to dress a man in a Mr. Peanut suit and he would wave as traffic passed. Had never seen another one before, how many stores did they have?

    • Hi John, From what I’ve been able to find out, there were at least 2 different signs that Planters used for their stores the sign located in Peabody, Mass. was one version and there was another one that had Mr. Peanut pointing with his cane. I’m not sure how many stores once existed.

  9. lol, I was just wondering what became of the old Mr. Peanut sign I used to always see as a kid and decided to Google him. It’s nice to know he is still kick’n around.

    • Hi Bob, I am not sure how many of those signs existed at one time. The Fort Smith one (the one from Peabody, Mass.) is the only one I know to be still in existance. There had been another one down near Seekonk, Mass., but that one is gone now.

  12. On my way from Florida to ohio in the 1970s was a large planter peanut man hat cane big can anyone tell me where it was I am thinking georgia or florida on i75 ?

  14. After closing, store owners moved to my neighborhood in peabody. They brought the old brass trimmed peanut roasting oven with them. The ex owner would get a sack of raw peanuts,cook them, and all the kids in the neighborhood would get some

on by

It’s a good garden year, but it brings on the issue of what to do after the neighbors get sick of taking more zucchini. I did some research and found this zucchini spaghetti maker. Awesome. It works great, and with the right seasonings, some rice and a few steak tips you are all set for dinner.

Plus you get the added bonus of snickering at the slightly pornographic leftovers.


on by

Love the way the acoustic builds up for the chorus. I was 19!

“Rocky Mountain High” is a folk rock song written by John Denver and Mike Taylor about Colorado, and is one of the two official state songs of Colorado.[1] Recorded by Denver in 1972, it went to #9 on the US Hot 100 in 1973. (The song also made #3 on the Easy Listening chart, and was played by some country music stations.) Denver told concert audiences in the mid-1970s that the song took him an unusually long nine months to write.