The Time Capsule: September, the month of watermelon theft
“The hay’s in the barn, boys, let’s go hunting.”
For the friends of my youth, September was the time to hunt. What we sought leaves me still with a nagging conscience, one I hope to appease by giving some deserving reader a choice Ali Baba; a 20-pounder and nicely shaped. You could be the recipient.
By September, the long summer had passed, days in the stifling hayloft were over. The beans were walked and the corn was what it was and we were back in school. A golden interlude was September, no longer summer and not yet winter, and time for boys to go hunting.
Our watermelons of more recent years have been legally obtained. We grow the old reliable Dixie Queen, saving seeds, and have a strain that does well. There are, though, more than 200 varieties available. I try a new one each year and hope to live long enough to test them all. This year’s experiment was Ali Baba.
Seed dealers claim the Baba was imported from Iraq, and some say they’re the best tasting of all. I’m not sure of that—seed purveyors give the same superlatives to everything they sell—but Ali Baba is a good one. Oblong, with a pale green rind, at 15-30 pounds a size I like, and the taste is excellent. If you’re accustomed to the hybrid seedless bowling balls imported from Mexico, you might appreciate a vine-ripened Ali Baba.
The pick of this year’s crop, which is thumping pretty good, will be given to a deserving reader—perhaps the victim of a long-ago raid. I cannot make things right with all of them, but I’ll do what I can.
The use of the word “raid” is a thoughtful choice. Those who participated in those forays, at least the ones I knew, did not at the time consider themselves to be what they were. In deluded minds we were Robin Hood; taking from the rich (anyone who had a patch), and giving to the poor (us). We were Sioux warriors, braving danger to count coup on encroaching white gardens. We were daring pirates, raiders of the lost ark, Zorro, the Masked Avenger. We fought global hunger, and had to start somewhere. We were dedicated liberals engaged in the redistribution of wealth.
In reality, though, our watermelon thievery was reprehensible. I never met a melon-mugger who couldn’t have grown his own. Dashing through patches at night tore up gardens, trampled tomatoes and flowers, laid waste to okra and green beans.
I saw the light the second time I was shot at. Later would come military service and years as a sworn officer with the Department of Public Safety, yet the only two times I came under hostile fire were on those September nights of my youth.
While we’ve given away a lot of legal melons, I’ve never explored the background of recipients. My wife has presented them to neighbors and members of her club, fine people, I’m sure, but they may have had September nights of their own. I‘ve even given a few to ministers, and we all know what ministers were like as youngsters.
This year I want to award a choice melon to a genuinely deserving reader. If you think you’re the right one, perhaps confined and unable to grow your own, the one-time victim of a melon thief, a care center interested in lots of small portions or for any other reason you think worthy, send me an email at the address below.
Ali Baba is ready to go, and my conscience feels better already.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.