Bananas Read online

  As many of the young guests spoke little or no English, the community was provided with Spanish lessons on the local radio station, in the local newspapers, and in the festival programs. In 1968 a Guatemalan student attending Murray State University taught a series of evening classes. Teachers from the Spanish Department of the Louisville, Kentucky, school system attended the festival in 1967 to practice their Spanish.28 The Fulton public school system, however, did not add Spanish to the curriculum, despite supporting editorials in the local paper.29

  One of the highlights of the festival in the 1960s was the daily performances of the twelve- to fourteen-member Guatemalan Army Marimba Band. Fulton residents have fond memories of band members playing long into the night in local restaurants and for street dances. The 1968 festival program billed the band as the “stars,” the “show stealers,” and the “music men,” and noted that “their Latin American rhythms fill the air with an irresistible beat that has come to be an integral part of each festival.”30 The band was still attending the festival in 1978. In 1976 the festival program noted that

  it is the time to enjoy the beautiful music of the marimba. The members of the Guatemalan Army Marimba Band have become honorary citizens of the twin-cities. They share the same enthusiasm in being re-united with friends.31

  One resident remembered that the band members were notorious for “missing” their plane connection in New Orleans, necessitating an overnight stay in the city of jazz.

  In addition to street dances for adults and teens, festivals might include Latin American dance demonstrations, ballet, and square dance performances. In the early years, a large, four-pole tent in Kitty League Park was the stage for Inter-American programs featuring classical guitarists, folk dancers from Latin America, the Berea College Country Dancers from Kentucky, and country and western shows with stars such as Merle Travis, jazz performer Lionel Hampton and his Band of the Presidents, as well as rock groups such as the Strawberry Alarm Clock. The Cremona Strings, a youth orchestra from “many of the Nashville public and private schools, colleges, and universities,” performed in 1970 as did the Junior Company of the Joffery Ballet–Joffrey’s II Company.32

  Festival organizers were also interested in bringing the visual arts to Fulton. Both fine arts and crafts were represented with Latin American basket weavers demonstrating hat and basket making, and a Mayan Indian from Guatemala displaying loom weaving. A Kentucky weaver also displayed her work. Paintings by South American artists were shown and the Kentucky Art Guild Train made a stop in Fulton with displays of Kentucky crafts, drawings, and paintings. The Smithsonian Institution sent an exhibition of Peruvian embroideries created by children ages six to sixteen that, according to the Eighth Festival Program, depicted scenes in a remote village in the Peruvian Andes. Funds raised from the embroideries “are helping to provide their village with books, shoes, and building funds.”33 A U.S. Marine Corps Art Exhibit featured fifty pieces of “combat art” from Vietnam, the “first time this exceptional collection of paintings has been released other than to galleries and the first showing in this area.”34

  The idea for a one-ton banana pudding originated with W. P. “Dub” Burnett, owner of the Pure Milk Company, which later became Turner Dairies. Mr. Burnett “took pride in preparing the famous 1-ton pudding each year” and for many years, the Pure Milk Company of Fulton supplied the 950 pounds of boiled custard for the pudding.35 However, around 1990, insurance officials deemed this too risky, and packaged pudding had to be substituted for fresh. The 1992 recipe called for “5,000 Dole Bananas, 250 pounds Nabisco Vanilla Wafers, and 950 pounds of Regency Banana Creme Pudding Mix” to serve about 10,000 people.36

  The pudding was constructed the day before the parade in a room in City Hall. Here volunteers, wearing rubber gloves donated by the local funeral home, peeled the bananas and pushed them through a slicer strung with a number of wires about one-half inch apart. When all the fruit was ready, the pudding was made by layering the ingredients in a large stainless steel container about the size of a bathtub. The original container was made of clear plastic or glass so that the pudding, with its layers of sliced bananas and vanilla wafers, could be seen by parade goers. When that container broke, it was replaced with a steel tub. The completed pudding was stored overnight in a refrigerated truck parked next to City Hall.

  The day of the parade, the pudding was maneuvered onto a decorated float with a fork lift. Fulton was proud of holding the record for having the world’s largest banana pudding. In 1987, Fultonians constructed a two-ton pudding to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the festival, in a container supplied by the Modern Welding Company. The two-ton pudding was “publicized nationwide, on television, and in countless newspapers and magazines.”37 Festival organizers returned to the one-ton version in later years.

  Sports events during the festival varied from year to year. At one festival, the first Inter-American soccer exhibition was held with teams from Costa Rica and Honduras competing. Sports fans also watched an exhibition match by Kentucky golfer and PGA champion Bobby Nichols at the Fulton Country Club.38 A railroad handcar race was staged another year to commemorate the history of railroading in Fulton.39 In 1976 the theme was pioneer sporting events that included tobacco spitting, frog jumping, horseshoe pitching, and sack racing.40 The festival also included the annual football game between the rival high schools of Fulton, Kentucky, and South Fulton, Tennessee.

  Each year a beauty pageant was held to select the International Banana Princess who rode on the parade float with the pudding. Miss America of 1963 and Miss America of 1964 crowned the International Banana Princess for two consecutive years, rode on a special “Miss America” float in the parade, and attended the Miss America Homefolks’ Luncheon.41 At the festival’s peak in the late 1960s, young women “from all over the United States” competed for the honor.42 The winner received a $1,000 college scholarship and a ten-day all-expense paid trip with chaperon to Central America. The four runners-up also received scholarship money. The scholarships were provided for five years by the Price Foundation of Ormond Beach, Florida.43 In 1969 the princess and her chaperon toured Ecuador for twelve days. The trip was sponsored by Ecuadoriana Air Lines, the Hotel Quito, and the International Banana Festival.44 In some years there was a Junior Banana Princess and a little Miss and Mr. Banana contest, and beauty queens such as Miss Kentucky, Miss Tennessee, Miss Ecuador, Miss Nicaragua, and the International Dairy Princess participated in the parade.45

  The festival inspired a number of cooks over the years to think of new ways to incorporate bananas into their recipes. A banana pancake breakfast was held one year, and annual banana bake-off contests were popular. Winning entries included banana cream puffs with caramel topping and custard filling, banana-buttermilk pound cake, a banana cake with cream cheese icing, banana cream pie, banana French coconut pie, banana crunch pie, and peanut butter banana pie. (There were no baked bananas with meat loaf.) The festival inspired several cookbooks including Go Bananas with eighty recipes, published in 1992 by “Alana Banana.”

  During the 1960s the citizens of Fulton went beyond the festival itself to forge links with Latin America. In April 1966 the sister city of Quito, Ecuador, received a visit from a group of thirty Fultonians who “met a range of people there that included the country’s president and banana harvesters.”46 They also toured other Central American countries meeting with students who had been guests during the festivals. In 1968 Mrs. Westpheling and Mrs. Wright organized a baby blanket collection for the Rimmer Memorial Hospital in Quito after learning that many infants were discharged wrapped in newspaper. Mrs. Westpheling and Mrs. Wright accompanied a truckload of donated blankets to New Orleans where they were met by the Ecuadorean Counsel General and Mayor Victor C. Schiro, who made the ladies honorary citizens of New Orleans, complete with a certificate. The blankets were shipped to Ecuador by banana boat.

  The festival began to decline in the 1970s. In addition to the demise of the railroad banana-freigh
t business, the festival organizers ran into problems with jealousy and local politics. A 1971 urban renewal project tore down the railroad station that had been earmarked for the Art Guild museum and replaced it with public housing. Alternative plans for a Latin-American Friendship Center were frustrated.47 An editorial written by Jo Westphaling complained that “too few people are willing to endure the hardships of making the dream come true, and too many people simply say ‘it wouldn’t do Fulton any good’ as there are still a couple of sore heads who say the Festival is a waste of time.”48 Hopes for culture for Fulton were frustrated by those who opposed male ballet dancers and preferred country and western to classical music. At the Twenty-fifth Festival, one of the featured attractions was the Chicago Knockers, an “all-girl” mud wrestling team. Festival visitors were invited to watch “eight gorgeous girls—in their repertoire of modeling, dancing, and mud wrestling.”49

  The sense of connection had begun to dwindle in the 1970s when banana trains no longer stopped in Fulton. Fears and concerns about illegal immigration and drug traffic from Latin America made it harder and harder to connect with people a thousand miles away. By 1984, suspicion of Latin Americans took the place of the AMIGO program. The students had become “too much trouble.” One of the organizers admitted that she “sold out” in frustration and traveled for ten years, rather than witness what was happening to her creation.50 She felt that the festival had become a straight carnival without the culture that the original organizers had tried so hard to provide for the citizens of Fulton. She blamed the decline of interest in the festival on younger people who no longer joined civic clubs and who took less interest in the community. Instead of getting involved in local projects, they played golf and tennis and took vacations away from Fulton.

  In 1992, very few outside visitors attended the week-long thirtieth annual festival, which included arts and crafts exhibits, a banana bake-off, a football game between the rival high schools, a banana olympics, foot races, an Academic Bowl, decorated shop windows, a carnival, banana derby, talent competition, children’s parade, BB shoot and pistol shoot sponsored by the police department, beauty pageants, and church services. The beard contest, tricycle contest, wheelchair race, and shopping-cart race, sponsored by the local hospital, were rained out. A banana-split-eating contest at the Dairy Queen in South Fulton was attended by about fifty people with fewer than a dozen adult and child contestants. Even a new event, the Banana Chip contest, did not draw much attention even though the festival program stated that “this should prove to be a very fun-filled event with much suspense.” In this contest, Miss Puddin’, a cow, was allowed to roam a numbered grid of one-foot squares “until Mother Nature pays her a visit.” Each square could be purchased for five dollars. Prize money was paid out depending upon on where the animal dropping landed.51 It is no wonder that the surviving founders of the festival were no longer interested in attending. Mary Nelle Wright wistfully remarked that the festival had become straight carnival with no culture. The dream of four or five people had blossomed for several years and then faded away. “We tried, didn’t we?” she said, “We did it for our children, for our community.”

  Banana license plate, photo taken at Thirtieth Annual International Banana Festival, Fulton, Kentucky (September 1992).

  In 1992 many residents were beginning to question how much longer the festival would continue. Paul Westpheling remarked that the festival had “just about petered out now.” He noted that “there have been too many revolutions since that time. Not many people know much about bananas in Fulton today.” Citizens of Fulton associated Central America with drugs rather than communism. One citizen remarked that “they are selling more dope than bananas now in Central America.” Another saw the heyday of the festival as “before the days of marihuana” when “bananas were the big industry down there.” Another resident remembered that “back then, there was more interest in those things. Diplomatic things were different. The Marimba Band was really popular and the music was good. The State Department used to handle international relations. There used to be more of everything, more people involved. Things have changed. Some of those countries may not even be friendly any more.”

  Fulton’s ties with the banana industry in 1992 had atrophied and energy and enthusiasm for the annual festival had run out. It was no longer possible to attract corporate sponsorship from banana companies and the thirtieth annual festival was the last. The banana business ended in Fulton in 1970 when electrically refrigerated railroad cars no longer needed ice. Much of the banana transport had been taken up by tractor-trailer trucks. The railroad no longer employed many people because diesel engines do not need as much attention as steam engines once did. At one time twenty-five passenger trains passed through Fulton a day on the five railroad lines but there is no passenger service to Fulton now. Fulton and South Fulton remain small rural agricultural towns, struggling with empty shops on Main Street and with few employment or cultural opportunities for young people. The banana festival was replaced in the mid-1990s with “Weekend at Pontotoc,” a Friday and Saturday event the third weekend in September in the new downtown park named Pontotoc. The features include music, children’s games, a barbeque cook-off, and a parade. There is no banana pudding.

  8

  MEANING OF

  BananaS

  IT’S CLEAR HOW AND WHY BANANAS became the cheapest fruit in the supermarket and the most widely consumed fruit per capita in the United States. How have bananas become deeply rooted in our culture, in our language, in our songs, jokes, and folklore as well as in our diet? Meanings vary depending on the group using the fruit. Bananas have been a food for slaves, an exotic luxury for the North American wealthy and traveled class, a middle-class luxury, and the poor man’s food, traveling a complete circle.

  Meaning in culture comes from activity, the cultural applications to which bananas have lent themselves and the uses to which they have been put.1 The more a part of the culture an item is, the more meanings it will have in different contexts and for different people. Bananas have acquired a number of meanings in the United States; they have been perceived as funny, psychedelic, medicinal, sanitary, decorative, sexual, and the peels as dangers to life and limb. They are also symbols of danger—spiders, snakes, and illegal immigrants—and of romance, of tropical adventure in the Caribbean.

  To many people, bananas are inexorably linked with breakfast. Dr. Kellogg’s efforts to promote his cereal health foods coincided with a flood of bananas on the American market. Bananas and other fruit make the stuff taste better and easier to swallow, and fruit-company marketing promoted this combination with various forms of advertising. On the packaging of most adult cereals, bowls of cereal with fruit garnishes are displayed, a daily reminder that cereal and fruit “go together.” Early advertisements pictured Puffed Wheat or Puffed Rice with bananas as a “morning treat.” In 1910 the cereal was shown spooned over a bowl of sliced bananas but soon this scenario was reversed, and bananas were sliced into bowls of cereal instead.2 In the 1990s new banana-flavored cereals such as Banana Nut Crunch and banana-flavored instant oatmeal appeared on supermarket shelves, obviating the need to slice a fresh banana.3

  For most of the nineteenth century, bananas were a luxury for the wealthy who could afford to buy the few that made their way to the ports of East Coast cities. Considering where bananas come from and what it takes to get them to the consumer, the fruit is still a luxury. However, Americans eat so much imported food that it no longer makes a difference where an item is from nor how far it has traveled. We expect to find the same selection of fresh fruit and vegetables on the grocery shelves year round. Food is considered a luxury when it is expensive, seasonal, or rare, with raspberries, blueberries, lobster, fancy chocolate, wild game, asparagus, oysters, and wild rice still among the luxurious items that appear seasonally in our supermarkets.

  When bananas became the poor man’s fruit, they disappeared from the dinner tables of the wealthy. Bananas have never been
a selection of the Fruit of the Month Club despite there being over a hundred delicious varieties.4 Almost everyone likes bananas but no one takes them seriously. They are now considered as plebeian as the hot dog or hamburger, until the 1990s seldom appearing in fancy pastries or elaborate creations unless the gathering was self-consciously “camp.” Occasional society parties and fund-raising events—such as the Carmen Miranda Party benefitting the Brooklyn Academy of Music in October 1991 to which several guests wore turbans decorated with plastic fruit—have bananas turned out as a fun theme. At another gala dinner, guests were instructed to pluck the bananas tied to the palm trees around the room and take them to the waiting chefs to be turned into Bananas Foster, a dessert of bananas flamed with rum and brown sugar.

  The link between bananas and health was made early and remains strong. The jogging craze in the 1980s brought many people to focus on nutrition in a new way. The consumption of bananas has been promoted for their potassium, fiber, and carbohydrate content. Ironman triathletes, who swim two miles, bicycle a hundred and twelve, and then run a marathon, eat almost nothing but bananas the whole way.5 In addition to athletes, many older people attribute the daily consumption of bananas to their longevity. When in 1993 the W. B. Doner & Company advertising agency looked for pitch-people for a new campaign for Chiquita Tropical Products, they scouted health clubs and office lobbies. They recruited eighty-year-old Bert Morrow who works out and eats a banana every day as well as Julie Fernando who said that her daily routine included eating a banana and climbing sixteen flights of stairs to her office.6 One man who celebrated his 105th birthday in 1992 attributed his longevity to eating a banana every day at 11 A.M. His birthday party was “bananas unlimited.”7