Peanut Country

The finest peanuts in all of America are grown along a short stretch of land in the southeast corner of Virginia.

“You just go to where they don’t speak English anymore.” My father is quoting Kingdom of Heaven as we pass through the forgotten towns east of Petersburg. “Little businesses, people trying to survive….” His voice falls away as we crawl across the towns of Disputanta, Wakefield, and Ivor.

Once a year, my father and I pile into the car and barrel down Route 460 in search of peanuts and smoked hams and interesting people. We have never been left wanting. 

“Here’s a town that time passed by.” My father is muttering to himself again. Waverly. Broken-down antique stores, dilapidated brick houses, and big, beautiful farms where peanuts and such grow. There’s still an adult book store in Waverly, and old, rotted telephone poles that no one bothers to take down. Hundreds of Trump placards line the railroad tracks and open fields that dot the landscapes stretching down to the Atlantic. I don’t think they’ll ever take them down.

Our first stop is at Adams’ Peanuts, a little country store where they sell peanuts, smoked hams, and knick-knacks from a bygone era. A vintage Washington Redskins shirt hangs in the corner. Jars of plums, apricots, apple butter, and blackberry jam line the shelves. A thin older gentleman with a mustache greets us from behind the counter. He’s been working this station for 47 years. 

“People come from all over,” he says while ringing up a can of peanuts. “Don’t eat ‘em all at once,” he warns with a grin as we make our way to the door.

In Wakefield, we grab breakfast at home of the legendary Virginia Dinner. A regional staple since the 1920s, this is what Cracker Barrel wishes it were. I order cranberry juice and my father a coffee. Four ham biscuits for the table, too. They shave the ham so thin it melts away. Warm biscuits, full of butter, stick to the roof of your mouth in the most pleasant way. We grab a small tin of peanuts on the way out. Twenty dollars for the whole thing. What a steal.

We pass through the Great Dismal Swamp, a part of the country no man can break. Muddy waters and fallen oak trees line the wicked wash. My father chain-smokes Marlboro 100s the whole way. There’s a man on the side of the road exiting a truck that reads “Boll Weevil Extraction” and dad tells me all about the small, infectious beetle that feeds on cotton and flowers. “They have to burn the fields for miles if they find them.” I’m reminded instantly of the penultimate scene in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, when locusts infect a grain farm in the Texas panhandle and hundreds of men burn through thousands of acres of wheat in one of the greatest fever dreams to ever grace the silver screen. 

There’s cotton everywhere in this part of the country—in the fields, piled into big bales ready for export. There used to be mills here, too, but that’s all long gone now. The cotton is shipped to Mexico or China, “where the spindles are,” and then sent back in the form of pants and jackets and home goods. 

To see what these towns were and what they’ve become, offloading sites for international trade, is to fully understand why so many people in our America, those who live beyond the bright lights and big cities, harbor deep resentments toward Washington and the politicians who reshaped America in the name of cheap goods. If there was ever a case to be made against the free market, it’s surely here in Peanut Country. 

There’s a group of balding men in hunting jackets stuffed inside the cold, concrete interior of R.M. Felts Packing Company in the tiny town of Ivor. This is where we come to get our salted hams. I meet a black man with dreads who speaks in a Nigerian accent. He’s driven all the way down here from New York City to buy dozens of hams for his restaurant. He asks me how I cook it. “Soak it in water for three days, then bathe it in ginger ale, water, and dot the thing with butter and cloves. Rub some mustard into it, cover the thing with foil and then straight into the oven for several hours. Simple like that.” 

A young man with a scruffy beard and deep brown eyes works the counter. When he speaks he does so in a slow, poetic drawl, the kind you might imagine if you’ve never been to this part of the country. He introduces himself as Brooks and I ask him if the hams are local. “We get all our hams from Sandusky, Ohio,” Brooks replies. “Some of these smaller hams come from right down there in Warsaw, in North Carolina. They just don’t do the volume of what they do in Sandusky.”

Brooks tells me the “R.M.” in R.M. Felts stands for Robert Marvin. On the day Robert retired in 1973, he hung his last ham in the smokehouse above the packing plant. Brooks takes me on a rickety old elevator to the top of the plant where he shines a pocket flashlight into dark wooden rows where all the hams once hung for smoking. There, in the first stall still hangs Robert’s last ham. Strung up over 50 years ago, all shriveled and encrusted with mold and time, it stands tribute to the fine art of Virginia smoked hams. People love to tell you what they know; you’ve just got to ask. 

Back in the car, my father drives a county road we’ve never taken before. It empties in the tiny town of Sedley, home of the Hubbard Peanut Company. It’s just my opinion, but of all the Virginia peanuts in this great land, Hubs is the gold standard. Not too salty and full of richness, Hubs has been producing peanuts for 70 years. 

Hanging above the counter of the Hubbard Peanut Company is a picture of Pope John Paul II receiving a gift can of Hubs. When I ask about the image, one of the daughters of founder Dot Hubbard steps out from her office and informs me that a Richmond lawyer was given a private audience with the late pontiff and chose to bring the finest Virginian delicacy he could think of—a can of peanuts from her store. He sent her a copy of the picture on the condition that she never used it for promotional materials. “And we never have,” she beamed proudly. 

The final destination on our journey is just a bit further down the road in the bustling town (for this area) of Franklin where we stop for gas before the two-hour trip back to Richmond. The little city’s paper mill is more than a century old, and the distinct smell of tar, sulfur, and resin greets all who cross its path. The mill was founded in the years after the Civil War and managed to survive the Great Depression, the Great War, and politicians of every stripe.

That was until 2009, when the financial crisis forced the company to lay off more than 1,000 workers as the market for paper suddenly dried up. Nobody knew what would become of the town of 9,000. The global recession hit only 10 years after the Blackwater River ran wild after Hurricane Floyd slammed the East Coast in September of 1999. To this day, locals still date events “before the flood” and “after the flood.”

Part of the mill eventually reopened and now employs around 300 people to produce the “fluff pulp” used to make diapers, feminine hygiene products, and baby wipes. It’s a far cry from the glory days of the mill, but you wouldn’t know it from the people we meet in town—honest, pleasant people who greet newcomers with an easy smile and ask, in their own genuine way, how the weather is in the capital. “Just fine,” I tell the clerk at a local gas station. 

As we hammer the interstate headed north to Petersburg, my father lights another cowboy-killer. Ralph Stanley is crooning on the radio, and our wagon is stacked with peanut tins, smoked hams, and fond memories. I spent way too much money. “It was worth every penny,” says my father. As the long stretch to Peanut Country fades into the rearview mirror, I can’t help but feel a deep sense of pride to be a son and a Virginian. What a day we had. What a country we call home. Our Country. Peanut Country.