People in Fancy Farm like watermelon. It seems they can’t wait until they show up in the stores or in make-shift stands on the side of the road. Jimmy tells of his dad taking a trailer over to Missouri and bringing back a trailer-load of watermelon. In fact when we are over in Missouri he seems to always go by the old watermelon patch and show me where they used to grow them. Sometimes he’ll plant a row or two of watermelon and mush melons (cantaloupe) along the tobacco patch border. It makes good sense, the ground is already fertilized and ready, so might as well use it.
This reminds me of a story my dad used to tell us from when he was growing up. Daddy was raised in the west-end of Louisville, a community known as Portland. This was a working class neighborhood. Most people didn’t have a whole lot. In fact, Daddy used to laugh that they would move every time the rent would come due. Knowing how he was raised, that doesn’t surprise me. He was born during the depression and a lot of people weren’t back on their feet.
And as most kids who live in the city have done through the years the streets of Portland were their playground. They ran the roads. In fact Daddy used to call us street-runners. If there was something going on, even in our neighborhood, we were all out in the streets checking it out.
Daddy had a group of boys that he hung with. There wasn’t really a lot to do so they had to make up their own fun. I remember playing games in my grandparent’s back yard, the yard that didn’t have any grass, just a lot of dirt. We played “Red Light, Green Light”; “Mother May I”; and “Red Rover”;games such as those. I’m sure if I asked my children if they even knew how to play those games they would look at me like I was half crazy. We played those when I was real little and then never played them again. I’m sure Daddy and his friends played these games too. But I also know, if he was to be believed, that they played other games as well. I do know that when we were growing up he had stories to tell. I think he liked to use them as “don’t do as I did, learn from my mistakes.” I used to get so mad at him for that attitude. Just because he did something and it turned out wrong didn’t mean that what I did was going to turn out wrong.
Anyway, he hung with this group of boys. They ran the roads. One of the things they would do in the summer-time was go down to the Ohio River and hang out down there. Daddy said that he had swum across the river once. He was probably 14 or 15 years old. Anyway, on the way down to the river they had to go around a toll booth that collected a toll for anyone who wanted to go over the bridge into Indiana. They would climb over the viaduct where the cars would go under to pay the toll. Once they got to the other side they would run down the hill to the river bank. Lots of people did this. They were fishing or swimming. It was just an easy way to get to the river.
Sometimes the traffic was backed up to pay the toll. I’m sure it wasn’t backed up like we think of today. There wasn’t as much traffic back in those days. Not everybody had a car then. Those that did had one car to a family, not 3 or 4. There were some men who hauled watermelons from the farms south of Louisville in Mack trucks over into southern Indiana. They might be hauling 80 or 100 watermelons at a time. A lot of times they were the ones who were backed up waiting to pay the toll.
The boys knew these were watermelon trucks. They had slats in the sides of the bed to keep air circulating to the watermelons so they wouldn’t spoil. The boys could see those watermelons. And usually when they were heading to the river it was because it was so hot. Nothing was hotter than Louisville in the heat of the summer back in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Not too many people had air conditioning. Many didn’t even have fans. Everyone was outside because it was so hot, and humid. A watermelon can cool you off pretty quick, even if it wasn’t on ice. Many times they went by and decided that they really needed to have one of those watermelons.
They came up with a plan. One of the boys would climb up onto the viaduct and jump down into the truck. They would then throw watermelons down to the boys on the ground and then jump out of the truck before the driver even knew anything was going on.
There were flaws with this plan. First, you never knew how long that truck was going to sit waiting to pay the toll. Some days the tolls took a long time, other days not very long at all. So you had to plan it just right. At best you would still be in the truck when it moved up. The worst was that the truck would move right at the time you were jumping. That was a risk.
Also, the boys couldn’t do this if there was any traffic behind the truck. Back then if a kid acted up or did something wrong every adult took it as their responsibility to discipline that child. It wasn’t anything for an adult to ball you out or even whip you into shape. But the worst was that they would take you home and tell your dad what you had done. Dad always emphasized that part of the story. He said that it never happened to him but he knew a couple of kids it had happened to. If the stranger hadn’t whipped him you can be sure that his dad gave him a good licking when the stranger left. That was the way things were then. It was understood to be pretty much the same at my house. We didn’t have strangers discipline us but my mom and dad had so many friends if they saw you doing something wrong they made sure you knew that they knew and that they didn’t like it. Shoot, I think that would still go on today with that same set of friends. It was the same if we got in trouble at school. We used to pray that we would get disciplined in school because if the teachers let Mom or Dad know, we knew we were in for twice as bad. Of course, the worst was if we got disciplined in school and then at home too. I was too scared to ever do anything that would get me in trouble like that. I wasn’t particularly afraid of being whipped, unless it was with the hairbrush or Daddy’s belt. I learned early to avoid those at all times. But I would rather be beat to a pulp than to disappoint Mom or Daddy. If they said they were disappointed, oh, that hurt more than anything. And if Mama cried . . .
Anyway, back to the story. Those were the two biggest risks with their plan. But if the timing was right and they didn’t get caught they had a whole watermelon each. They could take it down on the bank of the river and eat the whole thing. Or if they were leaving the river and they got to take it home with them, they knew that they wouldn’t be asked where it had come from. It would just be a treat for everybody at the house.
So the boys used to take turns jumping into the truck and throwing the watermelons down to their friends. Everybody except this one boy. He was always in the thick of anything they did. He just never volunteered to get up on the viaduct and throw the melons down. At first nobody noticed but one day it was just 4 of them coming back from the river. Somebody hollered at him to stay up on the viaduct and jump into the watermelon truck that was coming up the road. He acted like he hadn’t heard them. Two of the boys made him turn around and go back up on top of the viaduct. He got into position right about the time the truck stopped. The truck was half-way underneath the viaduct. The boys down on the road hollered up at their friend to jump into the truck. He acted like he didn’t hear them. They hollered again. Finally one of the boys went up there to give him some “encouragement”. He told his friend that he was getting ready to jump, not to rush him. Between the boy up there and the boys down on the ground hollering at him he finally jumped.
Right then the truck moved up.
Daddy laughed and laughed and laughed at that story. I always felt sorry for that guy.