Banana Miscellanea

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

This article originally appeared in Sports
Illustrated many years ago, exact date unknown.

Banana 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.”

I have no idea what newspaper this old photo and article originally
appeared in. Judging from the picture my guess is it dates from the 1940s.

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 saved over many years, original dates and publications unknown.

Mayor Forced to Eat
12 Pounds of Bananas

COACALCO, Mexico — 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.

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.

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.

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 4 ½ 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.”

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.”....

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.

The International Banana Festival in Fulton, Kentucky

International Banana Festival

The small town of Fulton, in western Kentucky right on the southern border of Kentucky and the northern border of Tennessee, used to have a big (for a small town) International 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 was a typically great small-town event with a parade and a Festival Princess, 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 ended in a city park and the pudding was served to long lines of people. 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 sadly eventually went the way of a lot of small-town America and faded away, the last event being held in 1992.

For a page full of pictures taken at the 1981 festival, click the little magic banana:

A Short History of Bananas

(Coming Soon)

Old Banana Postcards

(Coming Soon)

Banana Recipes

(Coming Soon)

Bibliography

(Coming Soon)

Life is like a banana.

THE FAR SIDE by Gary Larson
Apes 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."

No sticker
"Mine doesn't have a sticker on it."

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