Watermelon Man

The Old Man loves watermelon. I grew up on watermelon. In my little town most everyone had a garden of some sort. This was a holdover from the Victory Garden program during World War II. As well, late in August, there were watermelon feasts all over town. The Lions had one, the Masons had one, the JCs had one and anyone else who felt called had one. Throw in all of the folks who lived outside of town on "real" farms who came into town and peddled their melons door to door, and we were pretty much covered up in watermelons. We relied on local produce very heavily. During the late '40s and early '50s, we didn't get Kumquats from Chile or Kiwi fruit from Pango Pango.

My buddy Kenny and I were avid "spend the night sleeping out doors" kind of kids. At 8-9 years old, nighttime is adventure time. We'd alternate between his house and mine which were about a city block apart. Back then we didn't know about "blocks". Kenny lived down the street within hollering distance so Mom could still call me home for supper.

We had kept an eye on a neighbor's small watermelon patch. When I say "small" I mean he probably had 10 hills of watermelon. But to Kenny and me, it might just as well have been 10 acres. We spent most of June and July spying on the target. Finally about the first of August, we determined the planets had all lined up and the time for D-Day was at hand.

Since the neighbor lived closer to Kenny, his backyard became our bivouac for the attack. We gathered our weapons, salt shaker and kitchen knife, and settled down until H-Hour. When it was full dark the two commandos crept toward the watermelon patch. In our planning, these two village idiots had overlooked the two houses that were between Kenny's and the beachhead. All was well until we were on our way back, crawling and rolling two watermelons each out ahead of us. At that point, both houses opened their doors and a couple of major dogs came out to tend to their business. In a cacophony of chaos; kids running, dropping watermelons, and dogs braying and howling, lights coming on all over the area, we felt that any minute search lights would find us and we would be gunned down like Bonnie and Clyde. Somehow, we managed to get back to our fort, all settled down and we claimed our prize. We did manage to hang on to one small melon. It was totally unripe and warm from a day in the August sun, but we ate it anyway.

Two days later when the diarrhea had abated, we swore to give up our life of crime and simply wait until we heard the magic phrase, "Watermelon feast".

That's been 58 years ago, Kenny's gone now and I miss him greatly, but everytime I bite into a sweet, ripe watermelon, I think of that night.....and him.