What happens
Jim Anderson returns home from an auction sale with five hundred pounds of peanuts, bought for five dollars, and announces the purchase proudly to his wife Margaret and their children, Betty, Bud and Kathy. Father Knows Best is a comedy series starring Robert Young as Jim, and this episode first aired on October 22, 1953. The family is far from pleased, since the sacks crowd the back porch and the playroom that Betty wants for her new reading club. Jim insists the bargain is a fine one and proposes ways of selling or using the nuts, while the household grows increasingly frustrated with him.
The Anderson family home on Maple Street in Springfield, including the kitchen, back porch, playroom and living room, with an auction sale at a commercial warehouse earlier in the day.
Characters: Jim Anderson, Margaret Anderson, Betty Anderson, Bud Anderson, Kathy Anderson, Ed Davis, Mr. Michaels, Jerry Marshall
Listen for: Jim's repeated insistence that the peanuts are a bargain, and the family's growing exasperation over where to store them.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.