Floral Decoration for Bananas

Well, nuncle, this plainly won’t do.
These insolent, linear peels
And sullen, hurricane shapes
Won’t do with your eglantine.
They require something serpentine.
Blunt yellow in such a room!

You should have had plums tonight,
In an eighteenth-century dish,
And pettifogging buds,
For the women of primrose and purl,
Each one in her decent curl.
Good God! What a precious light!

But bananas hacked and hunched...
The table was set by an ogre,
His eye on an outdoor gloom
And a stiff and noxious place.
Pile the bananas on planks.
The women will be all shanks
And bangles and slatted eyes.

And deck the bananas in leaves
Plucked from the Carib trees,
Fibrous and dangling down,
Oozing cantankerous gum
Out of their purple maws,
Darting out of their purple craws
Their musky and tingling tongues.

      —Wallace Stevens









Eat The Banana

This article originally appeared in the Tampa Tribune in 1982.

Words to Live By from Al McGuire

by Tom McEwen, Tribune Sports Editor

    Now hear these declarations:
    • Ralph Sampson of Virginia will displace Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the greatest of basketball players.
    • Virginia is the best team in the country right now and should win it all.
    • The upset of Virginia by Hawaii’s Chaminade came in large part because Virginia came from Japan, against the clock, a mortal sin.
    • Recuiting violations are not so widely spread as is believed.
    • After five years, if a new contract is negotiated, the coach should have some kind of tenure.
    • There is too much college basketball on television, so much it could be ruinous.
    • Two nights a week should have no college basketball on television, to protect the high school programs
    • Rules should be uniform, and not gimmicky.
    • Don’t forget to eat the banana.
    Such were the points slam-dunked by a former national champion coach turned television commentator over lunch and afterwards noon Tuesday.
    Such were the fastbreak opinions of Al McGuire, the visible, hyper, imaginative, successful ex-coach of Marquette University, now a lead college basketball commentator for NBC.
    McGuire was the speaker the Miller Brewing Company flew in to address a press-players-coaches luncheon Tuesday at the Green jacket room in the Sun Dome, where Tuesday night the Miller High Life Classic began before a good crowd. It continues tonight.
    McGuire charmed the standing-room-only audience with his mixture of wit and wisdom, woven neatly into his brief talk. He charged the players from the four participating teams to live for the moment, to dive for the ball, and if “you do not get it, come up with a strawberry on

your forehead.”
    He told them to “eat the banana,” or, grab the moment. Go fishing when you can, for a trout or for a marlin, but go.
    Eat the banana, like he did not do once, he said.
    It was a story of his childhood when his grandmother fixed him a fried tripe sandwich and then offered him a big banana. Though he wanted it, he turned it down because he wanted to return to the beach near his home on Long Island and body surf some more. The banana might be too filling. At the beach the weather had turned windy and cold. He could not swim.
    “I should have eaten the banana,” he philosophized.
    “Eat the banana. Enjoy the moment. Make no excuses for what happens.”
    He said he discovered that in his youth.
    “I’m from New York City. If you fall down, I pick you up by your wallet.
    “Play hard. Play hard from the start. Don’t wait. A writer told Joe Louis once after he had won 16 fights in a row that he was going to lose someday.
    “ ‘Yes,’ said Joe, ‘but not tonight.’
    “Never lose tonight. Never think you will lose tonight.”
    McGuire wowed the audience.
    And now, he said, he takes time, as everyone should... to eat the banana.

Al McGuire, former head basketball coach at Marquette University.
Al McGuire




The "Fruitful Endeavors" article originally appeared in Sports Illustrated many years ago, exact date unknown. I have no idea what newspaper the old "Bunch of Bananas" photo and article originally appeared in. Judging from the picture my guess is it dates from the 1940s.

Old line drawing of children who received bananas as trophies.

FRUITFUL ENDEAVORS

    Addressing a recent conference of the Boys’ Clubs of America, Raier Marens, a sports psychology professor at the University of Illinois and director of the Office of Youth Sports in Urbana, Illinois, offered his views on the value of awards in sports programs. Given the choice, Marens asserted, children overwhelmingly prefer to play on a team that’s a loser, rather than to sit on the bench of a winner. And he fears that rewards such as excessive praise, medals, trophies and trips to faraway places can undermine this desire to participate, win or lose.
    “I’ve seen 8-year-olds at wrestling matches wearing so many medals they can barely stand up,” he said. Instead of trophies and medals, Marens suggested bananas. “If you leave a banana on the mantle three or four days, you know what happens to it. So you’re best off to eat the banana when you get it. That’s my message.”

Old 1940s photo of 4 men who started an organization called the Order of the Bananas.

“A BUNCH OF BANANAS”

    A new organization has been formed in New York called the “Order of the Bananas.” Its members comprise men of every line of endeavor and all that is necessary for membership is a sense of humor. The lodges are called “plantations” and the members are known as “The Bunch.”
    Here are officials of the new club, at the “Shrine of the Banana.” Left to right: George Clark, secty.; Frank E. Campbell, President. He is incidentally an undertaker, with a sense of humor; Henry Brenwasser, treas. and seated, Roy Sly, Sergt. at Arms. All are of New York.




The following articles are clippings from newspapers, magazines and the Internet.

Mayor Forced to Eat
12 Pounds of Bananas

Los Angeles Times
May 18, 1978

COACALCO, Mexico (UPI) — Nearly 4,000 rock-throwing citizens enraged at the police shooting of a workman stormed the town hall Monday, seized Mayor Jose Ramon del Cueto and forced him to eat 12 pounds of bananas, authorities reported.
       Cueto was then forced to sign his own resignation.
       The angry crowd also seized Commander Nicolas Campuzano of the local judicial police and Deputy Commander Manuel Rodriguez of the municipal police. Both men were stoned.
       The violence was a protest against the killing of Jose Reyes, a workman in this small town 14 miles north of Mexico City. The two policemen accused of killing him were under arrest.



Man Gets 20 Days in Toy
Banana Flashing

STAMFORD, Conn. — A former Stamford police officer has been sentenced to 20 days in jail for lewd conduct involving a toy banana. Arthur Bertana, 63, was ordered to serve a 4½ year prison term suspended after 20 days and one year of probation.
       Bertana, who had been on probation for lewd conduct in Stamford more than four years ago, was arrested in March after police said he placed a toy banana in his pants and flashed people on Greenwich Ave.
       Police said he would place a shopping bag in front of his pants, exposing a bulge to women in a sexually offensive manner.
       “It was a yellow, plush, child’s toy banana,” Sgt. Roger Petrone Jr. said at the time of Bertana’s arrest. “It had a smiley face on it.”



Beyoncé’s Sis Won’t
Give Up Her Banana

August 29, 2011

MIAMI BEACH (CBS4) — Solange Knowles is tweeting mad at the Miami Beach Police Department. According to the R&B singer, she was the victim of discrimination after an officer allegedly pulled a weapon on her for doing “nothing illegal” and now there’s an internal affairs investigation. The Miami Beach Police Department confirmed Monday that it was investigating an incident which involved Solange Knowles, the younger sister of pop-superstar Beyoncé Knowles.
       The incident, according to police, took place after Knowles was not allowed inside Club Cameo on South Beach Sunday night because she was carrying a five-foot tall inflatable banana. Police claim Knowles got angry and she claimed the reasons she wasn’t allowed in the club were racially motivated.
       In a press release, Miami Beach Police Department spokesman Juan Sanchez stated officers who worked off-duty at the club escorted Knowles across the street to “further the conversation, where Ms. Knowles claims one of the officers pulled a ‘weapon’ on her, not a firearm, and threatened to deflate the banana.”
       The younger Knowles took to Twitter to express her anger over the incident, which she claimed was the result of discrimination. “I have literally had my last leg with discriminating police! Miami police department will be notified,” she first tweeted. “A police officer just pulled a weapon on me.... I have done NOTHING illegal, against the law, or anything of the sort.”
       Department spokesman Sanchez confirms Knowles contacted the Miami Beach PD regarding the incident and the Internal Affairs Unit will be contacting her regarding her allegations.



Most Popular Item
at Walmart: Bananas

Business Week, Aug. 15, 2010

A bunch of Walmart Bananas, which Walmart sells more of than any other item.

       Walmart, which registered $405 billion in sales last year and is the largest retailer in the world, sold more bananas than any other single item in its stores.



School Suspends Teenage
‘Banana Man’ for Harmless Stunt

By Lauri Apple
gawker.com, Sep. 20, 2011

       Fourteen-year-old Brian Thompson was handcuffed, placed in a cop car, and suspended from school for 10 days, all because he ran down the sidelines at half-time during a football game while wearing a banana costume. At least he wasn’t arrested! Yes, at least Thompson—an autistic teenager with musical talent and a playful sense of humor—wasn’t incarcerated for his totally innocent prank that made people laugh. That’s where we are nowadays, America—being glad when kids avoid being arrested for doing absolutely nothing wrong at all.
       Apparently the wise officials at Colonial Forge High School, where Thompson is a student, believe that running in a banana suit is disruptive and can lead to “mayhem.” Video footage didn’t show any of the adolescent spectators in the stands declaring a revolution, taking hostages, or burning down the stadium in response to Thompson’s prank.
       Some of Thompson’s classmates tried to express solidarity by wearing “Free the Banana Man” t-shirts, but school officials took their shirts away, and now they have to attend Saturday school as punishment. Colonial Forge enforces a zero-tolerance policy against bananas.



Florida High School Suspends
Teacher for Touching Girl on
Head With Banana

DailyCaller.com, May 22, 2013

       Is a cigar sometimes just a cigar? That debate will remain unresolved, but The Daily Caller can say with confidence that a banana is definitely not always just a banana at North Marion High School near Ocala, Fla. School district officials suspended North Marion High teacher Jonathan Hampton for three days without pay after he allegedly used a banana to touch a female student on the head during class, reports Ocala.com.
       Hampton was teaching an advanced, college-level course at the time. The theme of the discussion that day was the Freudian ramifications of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. According to a May 13, 2013 discipline letter obtained by local CBS-affiliate WKMG, Hampton “rubbed a student’s head and neck area with a banana” while the topic was “cylinder objects, phalluses and/or sex symbols.”
       The unidentified student’s parents reported the incident on May 6, some three months after it happened. According to the school district, they complained because their daughter felt uncomfortable. It’s not clear what factors caused them to wait three months to lodge their grievance.
       A district representative said that Hampton was suspended because, given the totality of the circumstances, school officials had determined that he made inappropriate use of the banana. The discipline letter written by deputy superintendent Rick Lankford suggested that other students had complained that Hampton’s college-level coursework has gone beyond community norms with “excessive frequency, causing discomfort to many of your students.”
       Some parents and community members side firmly with the school district. “That is disgusting, very disgusting,” said Dale Johnson, identified by WKMG as a grandmother. “I don’t think he should be allowed to teach kids. You don’t do stuff like that and get away with it.”
       Hampton did not speak with local media but his attorney Mark Fiedelholtz did, telling a much different story. “He doesn’t recall ever touching the student with a banana, but if he did it would be to get their attention,” Fiedelholtz told WKMG. “There was nothing else to it,” he said. The attorney added that no other students had made a complaint at the time or during the three subsequent months about the alleged banana incident.

A Peeling Diet

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — A Swedish window washer says he’s finally found a diet with a peel, to say the least.
       Roland Bergman, 44, says that for over two years he’s been eating 20 to 25 bananas a day, together with three spoonfuls of oat seed and more than a quart of pure cow’s milk.
       The window cleaner in the town of Gavie, 120 miles north of Stockholm, nevertheless looks healthy.
       Bergman said he started eating vegetarian food when he was 30, but it didn’t really satisfy his hunger.
       Eventually he discovered bananas suited him, and he said he feels fine—although some doctors had warned him that his life might be shortened as a result of the diet.



European Protesters March
in G-20 Rallies

(Excerpt from a longer article)
LONDON, England — Thousands of people marched through European cities Saturday to demand jobs, economic justice and environmental accountability, kicking off six days of protest and action planned in the run-up to the G-20 summit this week in London....
....
       Not all demonstrators focused on the economic main message. Some chanted “Free, free, Palestine.” One man dressed in a banana suit waved a sign reading: “Bananas for Justice.”....



Bananas and Cucumbers:
Too Sexy for Women?

FoxNews.com, Dec. 8, 2011

       An Islamic cleric living in Europe reportedly has warned Muslim women not to get too close to bananas, cucumbers or other produce—to avoid having “sexual thoughts.” The unnamed cleric, whose directive was featured in an article in el-Senousa, a religious publication, purportedly said that if women wanted to eat these foods, a third party—preferably a male related to them, such as their father or husband—should cut the items into small pieces before serving, the Egyptian website Bikya Masr reported. Carrots and zucchini also were added to the alleged cleric’s list of forbidden foods for women.
       News of the statement quickly spread online, leaving many liberal Muslims embarrassed and angry, evoking a flurry of mockery in online forums. “Many of the commentators are Muslims themselves, who have expressed their anger against the cleric for making Islamic religious practices appear unreasonable,” The International Business Times reported.
       BikyaMasr.com said the cleric, identified only as a sheikh, was asked in the interview how to “control” women when they are shopping for groceries, and whether holding these items at the market would be bad, to which he replied that the matter was between them and God.
       Questions also arose about the validity of the original published interview. An online search for the el-Senousa article, for instance, yields only results linking to the Bikya Masr report.
       But the mere suggestion of a strict order for Muslim women handling food has been enough to send people to website forums and Twitter to air their indignation. Danish/Lebanese journalist Helen Hajjij tweeted on Wednesday: “So if Muslim women should stay away from cucumbers and bananas, should men stay away from melons?”



Ann Landers: Banana Cure
for Headaches Gains
a Lot of Appeal

       Dear Ann Landers: Recently, a reader sent in a “sure cure” for a headache. He said it worked every time. It went something like this: Take a banana, and peel it. Tape half of the banana peel to your forehead with adhesive and the rest to the back of your head. He said the headache should be gone in 20 minutes.
       I don’t get headaches often, but the day I read that column, I had a killer migraine. Although people say you shouldn’t put bananas in the refrigerator, I always do, and that is where I found my “lifesaver.” I used commercial duct tape to keep half the banana peel on my forehead and the other half on the back of my neck. Ann, in less than 30 minutes, my headache was gone.
       I called my husband, a chemistry teacher, and told him about my miraculous cure. He said, “That was no miracle. You apparently had a potassium deficiency in your system, and the banana filled it.” Mystery solved.
       —Greensboro, N.C.

       Dear Greensboro: I’m happy it worked for you. Keep reading for more:

       From Chatham, Ontario: Your “banana cure” intrigued me, so I taped it to my bathroom wall “just in case.” Yesterday, I felt a headache coming on and went into action. When I looked in the mirror and saw myself with a banana peel taped to my forehead, I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. After about ten minutes, I took a brief nap. When I woke up, the headache was gone. I don’t know if it was the banana peel, the laughter, the nap or the combination of all three, but from now on, there will always be a banana in my refrigerator.

       From Seattle, Wa.: You certainly proved your gullibility when you fell for that old banana-peel gimmick sent in by Dick Frymire of Irvington, Ky. He assured you that within 30 minutes, if you apply the banana peel and just relax, the headache will disappear. Actually, at least 85 percent of all headaches will disappear if you “just relax” because most headaches are caused by tension.

       From Sierra Madre, Calif.: You asked readers to try the banana-peel cure for headaches. Oddly enough, I felt a headache coming on just as I was reading that column. I couldn’t decide if I should take some pain medication or go for the banana cure. I went to the kitchen, peeled a banana and taped it to the front and back of my head with package tape. Within a few minutes, my headache was gone.

       From Burke, Va.: I haven’t needed the banana-peel headache cure because my husband, an Indian from South America, learned a simple cure from his mother. Apply thick slices of an unpeeled potato to the neck and forehead. Secure with a scarf. It has never failed.

       From Mexico City: We have four sloppy sons who throw everything wherever they feel like it. Last week, one of the kids threw a banana peel on the kitchen floor. My mother-in-law, who lives with us, slipped on it. Thank God she wasn’t hurt, but she was plenty mad. She said that from now on there will be no more bananas in our house. I thought this was mean of her, but my husband backed her up. Do you know of a food substitute?

       Dear Mexico City: A single banana has about 471 mg. of potassium. A medium baked potato has 844. Other sources of potassium are avocados, raisins, sardines, orange juice and apricots. Be careful with the avocado. It is more slippery than a banana peel!



Cops Say Man Used Banana
to Rob Store

MyFoxDC.com
September 18, 2014

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Police in Philadelphia say a man used a banana he swiped from a convenience store counter to simulate a gun while he robbed the place.
       Police on Wednesday posted surveillance video of the holdup reported in the East Parkside neighborhood. The footage shows a man entering the corner grocery store on Tuesday. He waits in line and then takes a banana from the counter by the cash register. The suspect then sticks the banana in a front pocket of his sweatshirt and points it toward the cashier.
       Police say the man demanded money and cigarettes, and made off with an undetermined amount of cash. The video shows him riding off on a bicycle.

Teenager Brandishes
Banana in Hold-up

NORTH CAROLINA — An ingenious North Carolina teenager allegedly brandished a banana rather than a gun while holding up a store, then tried to eat the evidence.
       John Szwalla, 17, tried to rob an Internet cafe with the fruit held beneath his t-shirt, but the staff overcame him, say police.
       Szwalla managed to eat the banana, but failed to eat the peel, which the police duly photographed and took into evidence.



Colorado Company Offers
Banana Coffins

DENVER, Colo. — Casket makers catering to natural burials have offered biodegradable coffins made of such materials as recycled newspapers or cardboard. Ecoffins USA, based in Montrose, Colo., is selling caskets made of banana sheaves. They take six months to two years to biodegrade. In natural burials, bodies aren’t embalmed and eventually decompose into the earth. Ecoffins USA is the sister company of The SAWD Partnership, which has helped fuel the “green” funeral movement in the United Kingdom.
       Marketing director Joanna Passarelli says the company sold $40,000 worth of banana-sheaf or bamboo coffins to funeral homes last year. At least 14 funeral homes around the country offer them. “We either get an, ‘Oh, my,’ or, ‘That’s very interesting,’ ” Passarelli said. “Some people think it’s a great idea. We’ve had funeral directors look at them and say, ‘I guess you can go to hell in a handbasket now.’ ”
       Sax-Tiedemann Funeral Home and Crematorium in Franklin, Ill., has sold one banana Ecoffin since it started offering Ecoffins in the last several months. Stephen Dawson, owner and president of Sax-Tiedemann, said it’s not that far removed from the woven baskets funeral homes used in the 1950s and ’60s to pick up bodies from hospitals and nursing homes.
       Passarelli contends the bamboo and banana coffins, made in Asia, are better for the environment than the cremation process. Her interest in ecofriendly coffins grew after her son’s school showed the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” in which Al Gore warns of climate change. Her son came home wondering why he should bother with homework if the world would be destroyed. “I said if everybody did one little thing it would have a snowball effect,” she said.



Banana at Large After
Attacking Gorilla in
Strongsville

By Melissa Reid,
Fox 8 Cleveland, July 7, 2011

STRONGSVILLE, Ohio — There is a banana at large in Strongsville. Police say that someone dressed up as a banana and attacked the Wireless Center’s mascot, a gorilla, last week.
       “I noticed a kid in the bushes. Then he just emerged, dressed up as a banana, and sprinted as fast as he could at our gorilla,” said Brandon Parham, the manager. “The kid just speared our gorilla.” Parham and another employee witnessed the attack. “The kid was in mid-air, flying. He just looked like a Spartan from that movie ‘300,’ except he was a banana,” added Parham.
       The Wireless Center uses the gorilla as an advertising tool on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. “After he got tackled, the gorilla just got back up and adjusted his head. He kept on waving his sign around,” said Parham. Police say the person dressed up as a banana split and headed south on Pearl Road.
       According to Parham, the person who was wearing the gorilla costume will recover. “This is just bizarre. It’s really not normal in the food chain. That’s not really how this works. The gorilla should have won,” said Parham.
       Police were unable to locate the banana. They believe it was a prank.



America is Not a
Banana Republic

By C. Brown & D. Rogers,
Politico.com, July 11, 2011

(Excerpt from a longer article)
       President Barack Obama called congressional leaders back to the White House for another round of budget talks Monday, telling them during a testy meeting Sunday that they will gather daily until a deal is reached, Democratic and Republican officials said.
       During a 75-minute session Sunday at the White House, Obama told the congressional leaders that America is not a “banana republic,” so he won’t agree to several months-long debt increases that raise fears of a default, according to two Democratic officials familiar with the meeting.



Oldest Man, New Yorker, 112,
Swears By Bananas, Anacin Tablets

By Clyde Hughes
NewsMax.com, July 26, 2013

       The world’s oldest man is a 112-year-old New Yorker, a self-taught musician born in a village in Spain, who attributes his long life to a daily banana and a daily dose of six Anacin tablets. Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez of Grand Island, N.Y., took the title of world’s oldest man when Jiroemon Kimura died June 12 at age 116, The Associated Press reported. Robert Young, senior gerontology consultant with Guinness World Records, told the Associated Press 90 percent of all supercentenarians are female and Salustiano is currently the only male born in 1901 with proof of birth.
       According to the Guinness World Records website, Sanchez-Blazquez was born June 8, 1901 in the Spanish village of El Tejado de Bejar, in the Salamanca province. He earned pocket money at village celebrations and weddings by playing the double reed instrument called the “dulzania,” the website said.
       Sanchez-Blazquez and his older brother Pedro went to Cuba at 17 to find work, eventually landing jobs in the country’s sugar cane fields. In August 1920, he came to the United States through Ellis Island and worked the coal mines in Lynch, Ky. He moved to the Niagara Falls area and married his wife, Pearl, in 1934. The couple had a son, John, 76, and a daughter, Irene, 69. Pearl died in 1988. Sanchez-Blazquez’s extended family includes seven grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and five great-great grandchildren.

Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez, a 112 year old man who eats a banana a day.
Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez



Man Arrested After Pointing
Banana at Police

CBSnews.com
November 27, 2014

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — A man is facing a felony menacing charge, because two Colorado sheriff’s deputies say they thought a banana he pointed at them was a gun. Nathan Rolf Channing, 27, was arrested Sunday, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. According to an arrest affidavit, Mesa County deputies Joshua Bunch and Donald Love said Channing pointed the fruit at them while crossing a street.
       The deputies said they feared for their lives even though they saw that the object was yellow. Bunch wrote in the affidavit that he has seen handguns in many shapes and colors. He wrote that Love was drawing his service weapon when Channing, of Fruitvale, Colo. yelled, “It’s a banana!”
       Yes, the man accused of pointing a banana at police is from Fruitvale. And yes, one of the police officers he pointed the banana at is named Bunch. And, no, we didn’t make this up.
       The deputies say Channing told them he was doing a trial run for a planned YouTube video and he thought it would “lighten the holiday spirit.”




A Real Banana Split: Bizarre Fruit Sparks Double Delight for Fun Runners

By Paul Bentley
The London Daily Mail, May 18, 2010

       We are all used to ‘buy one, get one free’ offers at the supermarket, but it seems Mother Nature sometimes comes up with her very own BOGOF deal. Organisers of a charity fun run stumbled across this remarkable double banana among a batch provided for competitors. The larger than usual fruit was spotted the day before the World Cancer Research Fund race. And when one organiser peeled back the skin she found two bananas, crammed tightly side-by-side like two fingers of a Twix.
       Even more bizarrely, the charity run in London’s Hyde Park was billed Beat the Banana!—a race in which competitors attempt to overtake an athlete dressed as a banana. Teresa Nightingale, general manager for WCRF, said: “We’ve been doing fruit giveaways as part of our Fruity Friday campaign for some years now, but no one here has ever seen anything like this before. If I had not seen it with my own eyes I would probably have thought it was a joke—I’d love to know whether anyone else has ever seen anything like this. It just seems such an amazing coincidence that we discovered our ‘double banana’ the day before our Beat the Banana! fun run. I think it’s this banana that will take some beating.”
       She is right. The find is exceptional, with experts describing the fruit as a ‘freak.’ The fruit was donated by Dole Fresh UK, which sponsored the Fruity Friday event, organised to raise awareness about the importance of eating fruit and vegetables.
       Ken Manning, a plant scientist at the University of Warwick, said he had never seen one before. He said it was likely to have been caused during the fruit’s early development. “It’s very, very unusual,” he added. A spokesman for The Caribbean Banana Exporters Association expressed his surprise, saying that they had never encountered any double bananas before.
       The find turned out to be a good value for the charity as bananas are particularly expensive at the moment. Last month, they were selling for 97p per kilo in the big four supermarkets, 35 per cent more than the same period last year.

Twin bananas contained within one banana skin.

Comments

I can just see all the women readers thinking “If only my husband was like that.” :)
       —Gareth, Merthyr, 17/5/2010 22:40

We grow bananas and often see this, nothing very unusual.... except in London apparently!
       —Sue, Bathsheba, Barbados, 17/5/2010 20:54

Dole Fresh UK shouldn’t store the bananas next to the plutonium.
       —Buddy Ebson, Bronx, USA, 17/5/2010 12:32

A banana is a herb not a fruit.
       —Tom, London, 17/5/2010 18:51

Somewhat common. We bought some of these while on vacation in Costa Rica last year. C.R. is a big banana growing country and I think these are kept in country mostly instead of exported since it is a “defect.” Took photos of ours too since we had never seen this at our stores in the U.S.
       —Sacha, Jacksonville, FL, 17/5/2010 15:33

I worked in a grocery shop as a teenager and saw this a few times. I never thought to sell the story to the papers. But then a light entertainment programme became famous for viewers’ pictures of carrots in suggestive shapes.
       —Suki, Pinner, UK, 17/5/2010 15:21

It’s not uncommon and I’ve seen “twinned bananas” before too. It happens when the fruit doesn’t “split” properly into two individual bananas. I’ve seen twinned strawberries, twinned mushrooms, twinned... almost any kind of organism that divides itself as part of the process of multiplying. Obviously, something has “gone wrong” here. Is it due to flaws in genetics? Or environmental factors? The bigger question to ask is, it is safe to eat them?
       —Ammy, Singapore, 17/5/2010 13:15

Well, it’s “Buy one, get one free!”
       —Graham Russell, London, 17/5/2010 13:14

Twins!!
       —Kitty, Over the Rainbow, 17/5/2010 12:50

Banana Split!!
       —Silky the Fairy, The Faraway Tree, 17/5/2010 12:09




Haiti men dressed as bananas supporting presidential candidate Jovenel Moise.

Men dressed as bananas show their support for banana farmer and presidential candidate Jovenel Moise in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 2015. The protesters wanted elections to be reinstated after an electoral council canceled the vote when earlier first-round voting was marred by widespread fraud. (Unfortunately, Moise was assassinated in 2021.)

Jewish men with a box of bananas at the Belz yeshiva on Tu Bishvat day, the Jewish arbor day.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men pass a box of bananas as they take part in a feast at the Belz yeshiva in Jerusalem, on the Jewish arbor day, called 'Tu Bishvat' in Hebrew, Feb. 8, 2012. Tu Bishvat is also known as the New Year for Trees, and it is customary to eat fruit and plant trees on this day.











The Banana Festival in Fulton, Kentucky
& South Fulton, Tennessee


Roadside billboard advertising the 1981 International Banana Festival.

The small towns of Fulton, Kentucky, and South Fulton, Tennessee, right on the border of Kentucky/Tennessee, have a big (for a small town) Banana Festival every year. Why Fulton, you ask? Because a long time ago before everything went by air or trucks on the Interstates, Fulton was a major crossroads where trains came through loading, unloading, and transfering the majority of bananas that came into the U.S., bound for the breakfast tables and lunch sacks of hungry Americans all over the country.

The festival is a typically great small-town event with a parade and a Banana Festival Queen, art exhibits, amusement park rides, and the centerpiece of the parade and the whole festival, a gigantic clear plastic container holding a one-ton banana pudding. The parade ends in a city park and the pudding is served to long lines of people. At past festivals, representatives from both Chiquita and Dole handed out thousands of bananas on the streets for free, everyone in sight was either eating a banana or had one in their hand, and a good time was had by all. The festival was an annual event for thirty years but, like a lot of small-town America, faded away in 1992. After a 20-year absence, the festival came back in all it’s glory in 2011, and is an annual event once again, usually in September.

For pictures of past Banana Festivals, click the little magic bananas:
1981:          2012:          2013:          2014:          2023:











The National Banana Pudding Festival
in Centerville, Tennessee


Logo picture for the National Banana Pudding Festival in Centerville, Tennessee.

Centerville, Tennessee (about 50 miles southwest of Nashville) hosts the National Banana Pudding Festival annually. The national banana pudding cook-off at the festival determines the official winner of the best banana pudding in the United States. For $5.00 you can also sample ten different kinds of banana pudding. And of course, no banana pudding festival would be complete without a banana pudding eating contest....

For pictures of the 2014 Festival, click the little magic banana:









This picture and text about San Francisco’s famous Anna Banana originally appeared in Esquire magazine sometime between 1973-1975, if I recall correctly. Your humble correspondent and webmaster of 101Bananas was awarded a Master’s Degree in Bananology from her in 1975.

Anna Banana from San Francisco in the 1970s appearing in Esquire magazine.

Anna Banana fancies herself a bananologist, one who practices the art of being bananas. Send her a dollar and she will happily issue you a master’s in bananology. Other fruits are okay with Anna, except for the fact that oranges, guavas and the rest don’t rhyme so nicely with her name. So it’s bananas all the way. Anna has had a somewhat slippery past: her résumé notes she has had experience as a baby-sitter, consumer, clerk, berry picker, errand girl, track star, wife, typist, and registered voter.



Cartoon drawing of a monkey thinking that Life Is Like A Banana. Cartoon drawing of an ape in a hospital bed receiving a banana transfusion.

THE FAR SIDE       by Gary Larson
Cartoon drawing of apes sitting around discussing how much they love bananas.
"You know, Sid, I really like bananas... I mean,
I know that's not profound or nothin'... Heck!
We ALL do... But for me, I think it goes much
more beyond that."

Cartoon drawing of a child complaining to her mother that her banana has no sticker on it.
"Mine doesn't have a sticker on it."


Man dressed as banana vows to avenge bananas hanging in a supermarket: I Will Avenge You My Brothers!


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