Stealing Watermelons

My Mom told me she craved watermelons when she was carrying me. I always loved them and they were a regular late summer and fall treat growing up.

My favorite aunt, “Aunt Shorty”s dad…Daddy Jack…made regular trips to the valley and sold produce in Haskell. He would look at my 6-7 year old self and say “boy, I believe there is a melon on my truck that belongs to you, go see if you can figure out which one it is.” I would and of course I was always right.

Melons sold by the pound in the range of 1 to 3 cents per pound, so a good size watermelon might cost $ .50. Not being a thief I had never stolen anything until that fateful night in Roby in the fall of “61”.

Fisher county fall was in full swing. Rodeo completed and football season well underway I found myself “on the drag” one night just after dark. The drag was the act of slowly driving from out past the truck stops…east to the square…making a u-turn…then back out…and doing it over and over and over. By doing this you would meet the other cars doing the same thing and this was something very social and became the starting point for almost all stories. I still make the drag when I go home.

This night a pickup that I didn’t recognize, but the bed loaded with high school kids, flashes his lights and pulls me over. “We are going for watermelons…get in.” So I immediately make the right decision. I get in the bed, not knowing where we are going or even who is driving. Heading west out of town we meet up with another pickup with another half dozen aspiring delinquents.

About 3 miles out after a right turn onto a dirt road and another mile we started to slow and finally stopped with the headlights now turned off. The driver gets out of the truck and gives these instructions…

There is a field up here on the left…when I stop, get out and find a couple of melons each and come back to the road. I’m gonna go down the road to the turn-row and come back here to pick you up.

That sounded like a perfect plan to my 15 year old mind. Here is how it played out.

Probably a 50 acre field with 3 or 4 acres of watermelon planted in the middle and cotton filling the rest. The group was laughing and trying to be quite and find the ripest melons…thumping and laughing. When all of a sudden pickup lights came on. There were many, many sets of lights ringing the field. Seemed like dozens but probably 6 or 8. Shotguns going off and men screaming to the top of their lungs.

Panic was the only word that comes to mind. We were basically running toward the road, dropping melons and running into each other. For some reason I remember Bonnie Nail (I think) was running like a hurdler taking two rows of cotton and the 4 rows in between in every stride. It must have been a lot of fun to watch…and watch they did.

Back in town with zero watermelons to show for our efforts we started to figure out we were the object of a sort of initiation or a version of a west Texas snipe hunt. I think every Stuart, Moore and Terry male between the ages of 20 and 30 years old was involved in it. My heart slowed down and instead of being angry about the whole thing I started to think ahead to a day I would be the one sitting in the truck in the dark.

So I guess that night did not make me a watermelon thief since I actually did not leave the field with a watermelon. But there were other nights.

Over the next few years there were many nights where the lure of a warm watermelon was more than we could resist. It was usually easy to find others (boys and girls) who could be recruited. My role after my accident changed from being in the field to being the look-out and getaway driver. I guess I owe apologies to folks like Heck Robinson, Sam Bryant and a bunch of Terrys, Stuarts and Moores. But then I was just carrying on the tradition.