It was kind of one of those things that you had to experience to really understand how it all worked.
It worked because of who was there to receive it, who was there to make it, where it was, so that it could be put together, and the end result that the people got just more than they wanted when it started and when it ended.
Always one to figure out where the next dollar would come from, somewhere other than the social security, he started a cottage industry of the golden confection
He managed to find a recipe, that said if he followed it, would mean that he would make the best peanut brittle available on the market, and give him that edge of income he needed to keep going.
He fiddled and played till he got the right pans, and cookie sheets, and would make his candy in the garage on a second hand stove.
He would turn on the electric stove, maybe two burners at a time, bring in forty pounds of sugar, a fifty pound sack of goobers; fresh out of the fields at Binger or Erick, that had been spun from their roots, flipped upside down by the tractors, and allowed to dry in the hot sun for five days, and then washed and bagged in the white bags and set for sale.
The kitchen would heat up like his pans, the bubbling pot of sugar and water would turn to syrup, and his brow would take a sweat as he stirred and stirred and stirred. Picking up one handle, stirring the boiling liquid, and raising his wooden spoon up and through it, leaving the little golden hairs of sugar, locking up in their race back for the pan.
He had his measured stock of peanuts, mixed them in the pan, and then turned it all out onto the greased bottom sheet, and smoothed it in to one layer. Setting that sheet aside, he would grab for another pan, start the hot painful process again, and wash that cooker he had just used, making it ready for the next batch.
When it was cool, and he had no more batches to make, he would pickup those sheet pans, wrinkle the bottom until splits would appear in the brittle, and they would break, and pop loose from the pan.
There were several bags set for ready, and he would place about a pound (as best as he could measure) in each bag, tie it up and start another bag. One day could have meant ten bags, or twenty or fifty as time and his ingredients would allow. Then the bags were placed in boxes, ready for him to get them to his customers.
He was a farmer, carpenter, equipment operater, a policeman, a store owner, a grain elevator operator and he was Santa Claus at Christmas for the kids in Kingfisher.
Fred was a survivor of WWII. He was in General McArthurs “Flying Column” that rescued a large group of civilians from Santo Tomas University in Manila, who were destined to die at the enemies hand. Two years of his life was dedicated to the military without coming home.
“I never had a job that was high paying job but each one provided what the family needed. Still we had plenty to eat because I lived on the farm that provided the food that we needed.”
He would sell those bags of peanut brittle, to customers, to people he knew around Kingfisher, to other farmers, to most anyone that he knew or didn’t know, to make his profit and know that he had it to do another year.
He taught this little trick, of keeping the peanuts dry and ready, preheated to help the cooking process. Gathering the ingredients from places that he knew, and working in that little bit of magic to make it so good.
A story of one who made it, made it big, started to commercialize it and lived with the money would be great.
Fred Schemmer was just a man, doing the best he could, when times were tough, and making being a father, all it was meant to be.
June 23, 1920 - August 8, 2016
Ralph Peck
Photograph by Roy Peck
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