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} | ened Town of Penetanguishene's 34th annual Friday. The three-day event is the oldest Winterama...as it was in 1949 winter carnival of its kind in the province. Winterama rolls into high gear this coming This picture, taken in 1949 at Winterama, shows Doug Hunter, mayor of the town at the time on the left, along with MP William Robinson, right during a log-sawing contest. Robinson was MP for Simcoe East. Mir. Peanut becomes an aristocrat Shirley Whittington Yesterday 'I met a friend in the super- market who told me she couldn't decide whether to buy peanut or Alaska King crab legs. I thought she was making a merry jest until I checked the price of peanut butter. It is now about as expensive as fine wine. I'm told there has been a peanut crop failure and there are some who try to link the disaster to Jimmy Carter's recent defeat. Since the new president is known to dote on jelly beans, the possibility of jelly bean butter comes to mind. (A jellybean butter and jelly sandwich? Nope -- too redundant.) At any rate, peanuts are about to become scarcer than cashews in a cheap can of mixed nuts and millions of underprivileged north American kids who make do with black and white televisions and no telephones in their bedrooms will now have to face a new and more dreadful deprivation -- no peanut butter to put with their bread and jelly, mayonnaise, bananas, honey and lettuce. Most young people are more or less per- manently connected to the peanut butter jar. At least one of ours ate nothing but peanut butter and toothpaste for three years. In one sense this constant parade of peanut butter sandwich making is useful. When the burglars break in for the silverware, they won't get any knives. The knives are all in the sink. with peanut butter on their ends. There is something intrinsically funny, folksy and non-threatening about peanut butter. It is more than something to spread on your mashed potatoes. It is part of our heritage. Now with the formerly humble spread going for more almost five dollars a kilo, we're going to see the stuff popping up in odd places, in strange guises. In class restaurants, new items will appear on the menu -- arachide hearts instead of artichoke ones, and canapeanuts instead of canapes. Already French chefs, who invented the art of elevating the commonplace, suggest that peanut butter be eaten as follows: "in sand- wiches or on pieces of toast accompanied by lettuce leaves, garden cream, chervil, and tarragon. Or on gingerbread with jam and jelly." It wouldn't surprise me to find peanut butter being treated like wine: Question: Every time we have company, I'm_ embarrassed because my husband doesn't know how to serve the peanut butter. What is the correct etiquette? - Upset in Niagara Falls. Answer: Dear Upset: Bring the jar (never, never a plastic container, dear heart) up from the cellar 48 hours before the meal and stand it upside down in a corner of the room away from direct heat or draughts. Serve at 69 F. Traditionalists serve white bread with crunchy peanut butter; cracked wheat with smooth. However this is really a matter of personal preference. Watch for the recherche nature of the spread to influence all areas of our culture. Next spring Paris will key its new collections to a new colour -- peanut butter brown. A peanut butter cookie will be enshrined in the Smithsonian. A man who works for peanuts will be a millionaire. To call someone a peanut brain will be a compliment. Kids will have to get used to crab meat and caviar sandwiches in their school lunches. Meanwhile, our family has bigger problems to face. For years we have been baiting the mousetraps in our bush cabin with peanut butter. Now we will have to make do with a lower priced substitute...assorted bits of cheese. This will undoubtedly be a big hit with the mice -- especially those who are cheeses freaks. Girls' names can drive you batty Bill Smiley For some reason, and I've no idea-what it is, this column is going to be about girls' names. There are several possible reasons, any of which might be the right one. First, it might be just an unconscious reaction to the worst cold spell I can remember. The names of girls, exotic or otherwise, seem to help fight those Jan./ Feb. winter blues or blahs. Secondly, I might simply be getting senile. This was my wife's suggestion when I told her my subject. Who knows? A couple of years from now I might be turning up at playgrounds with nothing on but a raincoat. And thirdly, the more I thought about it, the more I thought about it. I don't know whether this happens to you, but every so often I get some silly old song in my head, and I whistle and sing it, inaudibly, of course, because I don't want to be put away. for perhaps fifteen hours. It could be Colonel Bogey, and I play it, with' variations, through my head all day. No other tune interferes. Just a few days ago, I got one into my skull that must date back to the Twenties, and it went on all day, through teaching, conversation, eating, shaving. It was: You can bring Rose, with the turned-up nose, You can bring Kate with the partial plate, But don't bring Lula. Some old-timers might remember it. I'm sure it goes back to the days of vaudeville, or the gramophone, as we used to call it. But I've no idea where it came from, where I heard it, why I remembered the tune, or what was wrong with Lula. Anyway, I began to contemplate the names of girls, and whence they derived. We chose the name Kim for our daughter, because we didn't know whether she was going to be a daughter or another son, and the name fitted either sex. There wasn't a Kim on the horizon then. Now you can find one on every street corner. In my home form, I have two Kims, two Karens and a Carol, and until I knew which was which, I'd ask a question and start sounding like the old song, "K-k-k-Katie."' Girls' names seem to go in cycles. One year I had five Debbies in one class. Hardly ever hear a Debbie anymore. Aside from the fads, when every third gal has the same name, there seem to be some basic roots from which beleaguered mothers and fathers label their offspring. (I've known a Robin Bird and a Pete Moss, but those were exceptions). Some girls are named after jewels, but there aren't many Pearls, Rubies, Opals, Sapphires and such around these days. They're as old-fashioned as Elmer and Gordon for boys. Strangely, I've never heard a girl called Diamond, though I've met a few hard enough to live up to such a sobriquet. Girls are named after some months, but not others. We can label a girl May, April or June, but you don't hear too many Februaries or Novembers floating around. I think Febbie would be kinda cute for a short girl born in that short month. Then there is the practice of naming girls after flowers. We have Iris and Ivy and Pansy and Daisy and Marigold and Rose, and even, on the occasional farout encounter, Tulip or Virginia (if her last name happens to be Creeper). But they, too, have pretty well gone by the board. I don't know why. A girl is just as pretty as a flower, and often smells even nicer. Why don't we go back to that and call girls Petunia, Begonia, Phlox, Crocus, Daffodil? Think of the sweet little abbreviations they'd acquire. Pet, Beggie, Flocky, Crockey and Daffy. Once in a while there is a flare-up of old- fashioned or foreign names. Then we have a rash of Samanthas, Marthas, Ingrids, Fleurs, Leslies. The trouble is, with our fondness for nicknames, even these august names become Sam, Marty, Ingy the dingy, Flour and Les. Thank goodness there is a solid element of parents in our society who stick with the good old Biblical and fundamentally Anglo-Saxon :tags: Ruth, Mary, Rebecca, Margaret, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Susan, Jane, Sophia and such. Not for them the exotic and subtly suggestive stuff like Sylvia, Sonya, Roberta, Giselle, Juanita. Those are the sort of names that can get a girl into trouble. How about Carlotta? or Vivien? Trouble, trouble. " Personally, if I had six daughters, Lord forbid, I'd try to get one into each category, Emeralda for jewellery. September for a month. How does September Smiley sound? Sweet- pea for flowers. Sweet-pea Smiley? Ursula for an old-timer. Once had a slight fling with a girl by that name. Mary for the solid virtues and the religious connotations. And Diana, goddess of love. for the dangerous group. If I suddenly and unexpectedly had a seventh, I'd name her for one of the great women in myth or literature. Perhaps Circe, or Cordelia. Everybody happy with those? Thank goodness my daughter has two boys, one Nikov, after a character in a Russian novel. the other Balind, a name she made up. She'd drive us crazy if she had a batch of girls. Wednesday, February 18, 1981, Page 5