Dan Sebring first discovered roasted peanuts when he was a child attending the Bloomsburg Fair.

The young lad turned to his father and said, “When I grow up I am going to get a peanut roaster and sell peanuts at the West End Fair.”

He fulfilled his pledge and bought an antique roaster in 1981. In 1982 he opened his peanut stand on Farm Machinery Road at the fair and has been in that very spot ever since.

This year Sebring’s Peanuts is coming to the Palmerton Community Festival.

Dan Sebring has retired and moved to Florida. His nephew Kyle has taken over the business, but Dan returns every summer to help at the stand for the fair. The stand also sets up at the Blue Mountain Antique Gas and Steam Engine Show at Jacktown, and Dan Sebring returns for that.

He’ll be at the Palmerton festival this weekend, feeding 25 pounds of raw peanuts at a time into the antique roaster to be roasted to a golden brown and packaged in simple paper bags for sale.

The first load of the day takes about 50 minutes, but after the roaster warms up, a batch can be done in 30 to 35 minutes.

He opens the roaster and pulls out a shelled peanut and breaks it open. “You know they are done by the color,” Dan Sebring explains. “The raw ones are white, and when they are done they turn caramel brown.”

This batch needed a bit more time.

At the West End Fair the stand goes through about 1,000 pounds of peanuts.

The Royal roaster, made in Corning, New York, sometime between 1909 to 1925, is powered by propane, with the flames showing beneath the round metal drum.

When peanuts were first roasted on street corners city gas hookups were used.

Sebring said the company that made the roaster started out with roasted coffee but along the way someone discovered roasters could be made bigger and used for peanuts.

His roaster has a Mr. Peanut insignia on the front, a local tie to history. It’s reminiscent of the Planters Peanut Company, which began in 1906 with Italian immigrant Amedeo Obici and his partner Mario Peruzzi in Wilkes-Barre. Obici, inspired by his experience with peanuts, established the company and later moved its operations to Suffolk, Virginia, to be closer to peanut farms. The brand introduced its famous Mr. Peanut character in 1916 after a contest to create a company logo.

Peanuts remain a popular treat through Northeastern Pennsylvania. Kyle Sebring, who works at Harry’s U Pull It in Hazleton, said he was surprised at how excited his co-workers were about peanuts.

Kyle said he had “no choice” in taking over the family business. His dad was a partner and he grew up in the stand, as his children do now.

“I’ll keep it the same,” he said. “If it’s not broke, we won’t fix it.”

Really, the stand is more of a family hobby. Sales are enough to keep them going. Kyle Sebring says, “It’s worth it.”

They love the interaction with customers.

Kyle’s grandfather, Forrest Sebring, was sheriff of Monroe County for 27 years.

“He came out and did politicking between peanut sales,” Kyle said.

It was as much chatting as selling peanuts those days. A few giveaways were not uncommon.

They know a lot of people and make a lot of friends.

“Kids and their friends and their parents hang out behind the trailer,” Kyle said.

But the trailer remains a hobby and they won’t be expanding too much.

While some stands diversify, they have mostly stayed true to their mission: selling peanuts and bottled water.

However, they are adding kettle corn for the Palmerton Community Festival. If the aroma of roasted peanuts isn’t enough to draw you in, wait until you get a whiff of the salt, sugar and popcorn cooking.