Features Editor

Oct. 28, 1999, 11 PM

If you like peanut butter and know how to have a good time, then Brundidge is the place you’ll want to be Saturday, Oct. 30 when the town hosts the Peanut Butter Festival.

This will be the 8th annual harvest and heritage celebration which honors the town’s proud heritage in the peanut butter industry and says thank you to the farmers for bringing in yet another fall harvest.

Peanut Festival Day starts are the crack of dawn with Grandma’s Smokehouse Breakfast at the Peanut Butter Barn on South Main Street. It’s a full buffet breakfast that’s "worth rising for." The barn door opens at 6:30 and closes when all the grub is gone."

Just across the street at Green’s Antiques runners are stretching their legs getting ready for the cowbell to ring and get the 5K Peanut Butter Run underway. Goobers give the runner a head start before rolling out on their one-mile hike. Runners may register the day of the run beginning at 6:30 a.m. Fee is $10 and includes a specially designed tee shirt. Walkers also get a "goober" shirt if they pay the fee. Run starts at 8 a.m. and winds through the downtown area which is all decked out for the Peanut Butter Festival.

The Festival get underway at 9 a.m. with non-stop entertainment, contests, games, demonstrations, arts and crafts and every kind of food under the sun.

The peanut butter recipe contest is open to all cooks and this year the contest will be filmed for showing on the popular food television network show "Extreme Cuisine." A production crew from the show will capture the true "peanut butter flavor of the South" and winning recipes will be rewarded. A making of the peanut butter recipe and a copy of the recipe should be brought to the Bass House on Main Street between 9 and 9:30 a.m. for judging. Everyone is invited to enter.

At 10:30, construction will begin on Alabama’s Largest PB&J Sandwich which is expected to reach almost 60 feet this year. The sandwich will be sliced for sampling after construction is completed.

At 1 p.m. the Nutter Butter Parade will march down Main Street with a lineup that includes some of the nuttiest things around. The parade is an event you don’t want to miss.

The afternoon is filled with entertainment and family fun that goes on until the cows come home around 4:30 p.m.

Everyone is invited to stay around town and enjoy the fine food at our local restaurants and then head on down to the Peanut Butter Barn and kick up their heels at the Peanut Butter Festival Barn Dance and Costume Party. To come, you don’t have to wear a costume but you do have to have a good time. There is a $3 charge for the dance.

However, the Peanut Butter Festival is free.

You can have a good time if you don’t have a dime in your pocket. The festival is a gift to the community from the Brundidge Historical Society, so "Y’all Come!"

You’ll be glad you did.