Mr. Peanut watches my every move

Looking down on me from the top of a bookcase in the corner of my office, Mr. Peanut watches my every move. A coin bank that stands just over 8 inches tall

A Mr. Peanut coin bank sits on Brad Fuqua's bookshelf in his office at the Philomath News. The bank belonged to Fuqua's father when he was a child and ended up in Fuqua's possession after his father passed away.

Fuqua said he finds the bank to be an odd item to keep for a lifetime, but it obviously meant something to his father.

In 1916, Planters held a contest to help the company come up with a mascot. A 14-year-old boy named Antonio Gentile won when he came up with Mr. Peanut (although, I'll add here that a commercial artist added the monocle, top hat and cane to create the final image).

Fuqua can imagine his father collecting pennies and nickels in the Mr. Peanut bank — and then retrieving them when he was allowed to have candy from the downtown drugstore in the small Nebraska town where he grew up.

A couple of years ago, Fuqua purchased a bank for his then 5-year-old son. It's not a plastic figurine but a replica of an ATM or miniature safe and he can feed it paper currency or drop in coins. The door in front resembles a vault and features a keypad where you punch in a set code to open it up.

The days of collecting pennies and nickels have been replaced with quarters and dollar bills. Heck, these days, you have savings accounts for children that are set up to receive automatic transfers each month from their parents.

(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News. He can be reached at News@PhilomathNews.com).