Opinion: It's cacahuate time in eastern New Mexico

It’s cacahuate time or, if you live in eastern New Mexico, you may call it kakawate time. It’s our local version, in Spanish, of tomato or tomahto.

The spelling of the local name for NM 202 came into question on Facebook the other night and some correctly noted the Spanish word for peanut is cacahuate but somehow the road got spelled phonetically a long time ago and is locally known as Kakawate Road.

Yes, that road has seen a few peanuts hauled across it. The road also has its own song, written and recorded by David Stone and Andy Mason. You can hear it on Youtube or get your shoes on and get over to the Peanut Valley Festival at the Roosevelt County Fairgrounds and see if Andy Mason sings it live. He’ll be on-stage there at 12:30 p.m. today.

I grew up in a peanut patch, back when we had a lot of peanuts in the area. At least it seemed like we had a lot of peanuts if you went by the long lines of peanut wagons waiting at the mill this time of year.

Those trailers didn’t hold a lot of peanuts but they sure were a test of courage for the farm wife sent to town with a couple of them in tow behind the pickup. Those same farm wives came back to the farm none too happy about the lack of a bathroom way back in that line at the mill.

I was only in that peanut patch for the first 10 or 11 years of my life but it’s still a great connection to the place I live. It’s pretty cool to be a part of bringing the Peanut Festival to Portales and handing bags of those goober peas out at the Chamber visitor center is always fun — especially when I get questions.

The Valencia peanut variety that we’re known for is sweeter, and comes in a smaller, brighter hull than the peanuts you get at a ballpark. There’s a surprise though: a good number of those hulls contain four peas to a pod.

My grandmother’s recollections tell that she got in a lot of trouble while settling an argument that peanuts really do grow underground after she pulled a few up to see.

I remember my dad running a peanut thresher all night in October and then in December hauling peanuts and sweet potatoes to Albuquerque and El Paso on a bobtail truck with a moving van box.

I remember the chewy taste of raw, green peanuts and the smell of peanuts roasting in a cake pan in our oven. Those were better than popcorn.

They say I shoved a peanut kernel up my nose when I was little. Seemed like a good thing to do, it was just the right size. My mother apparently freaked out though. She was ready to take me to the doctor until my grandmother calmly stepped in with tweezers and removed the legume from my sinus passage.

Yes, peanuts are in my blood and up my nose. Time to munch out.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: [email protected]