The summer of 1977 when I graduated from high school, I had some friends that had planted a field of watermelons and were looking for people to work in the field. Growing up, summertime had always been a time for young men in our community to work the summer in watermelons and cantelopes. This was some of their preparation for the coming year in football as I'm not quite sure they had much of a weight room to work out in back then. This particular summer, most had already found a job, so there weren't a lot of extra workers around. My friend's husband with the help of another friend had planted a watermelon field, and my friend and I decided we would help them out since the fruit was getting ripe and they were getting on the desperate side of finding labor. The day I told my parents I was going to work in the field loading melons, Mama didn't have much to say about it, but Daddy thought I had lost my mind. He said, "Becky, you are crazy...girls don't do that, you won't last a week out there". I can be stubborn about certain things, but one thing for sure, I don't like for someone to tell me I can't do something. It makes me want to prove all the more that I can do it. And so early that first Saturday morning during the summer of 77, I went out to the field...the wet and muddy field. You don't hear much of people planting this type any more, but this was the days of Crimson Sweet melons. A little bigger than a basketball, averaging somewhere around 15 pounds or so. I thought I would die at the first toss....both the catching and the tossing, but I believe my friend and I surprised the guys out there as we were able to stay right up with them. We had our little "assembly line" and proceeded to load the field trucks, then they'd have to be transferred to the semi for packing. Each melon was money to the farmer, so we'd try to be very careful not to drop any, but once in a while one would drop and we'd dive into it like vultures....dirty hands and all. I learned to like a good hot melon as it helped to quench our thirst out in the heat. I lasted as long as they loaded melons that summer out in that field, but it wasn't based so much on the fact that I enjoyed it, but I just wanted to prove to my Daddy that I could do it. That was my first and last summer of working in watermelons...he was right, girls aren't made to do stuff like that.
Since then, I can't count the many times the box of salt or a butcher knife in the house would go missing, and sure enough, Daddy was the guilty party. Between that and opening up the garage freezer and seeing a big ole dirty (hot) melon sitting on the shelf would cause my mother to get so upset thinking he was thawing out her vegetables that she had worked so hard to put up....but it was just to get the melon a little cool for him to eat it. This time of the year he had a lot of his customers come by and give him several from their fields to last him during the week, and he'd eat at least one a day. I'd see him many a time pick one up and take it out in back of the office (along with the salt & knife) and then a few minutes later he'd
ask us if we wanted some, but I'd turn down a lot of those invites just so I didn't have to roll my chair with sticky hands, then go back in the office and get it all over my computer keyboard. A few weeks before my Daddy died, a good friend had been down at B&G's loading point and brought him one of Freddie's melons. We had to cut it up for him since a walk outside to eat it was quiet a chore, but he managed to get a few bites down. I miss my Daddy so much these days and with every watermelon I see or taste, he comes to mind.Proverbs 4:1 says...My child, listen to your father's teaching, pay attention so you will understand.
