Watermelons

I kid you not! Some of the most embarrassing moments in my life have happened when I was in possession of a watermelon.

I am reluctant to be in proximity with watermelons because I know that my track record proves that I will pay dearly.

I have repeatedly told Cheryl that I do not want to pick out a melon from the produce stand when she sends me to the store on my own. I have no clue how to pick a good watermelon from the pile.

One day I stood in front of a mountainous pile of melons with a few other customers. They all looked the same (the melons, not the customers). I turned to an older woman, who I felt should know something about melon picking.

“How do you pick a watermelon?” I asked.

“The best way,” she answered, “is to hold the melon tight to your chest. Then rap it with your knuckles. It should be heavy, and the sound should be tight as opposed to punky.”

Okay. I looked through the pile, found one of appropriate diameter and picked it up. Instead of holding it to my chest, I held it to my stomach. Rapping it on the side, I turned to one of the guys standing next to me and, looking for a laugh, said, “This is what I call waking the baby.”

I already have a notebook of things never to say again, and watermelon pregnancy jokes is written in there now.

Cheryl and I were driving to Seattle for a picnic with my daughter’s family. We were bringing the watermelon, which is an important piece of information since I was in direct proximity to it, in my back seat.

Driving down the old Highway 99, I spotted a coffee stand coming up on the right.

“Mocha?” I asked Cheryl.

“Sure,” she answered.

Pulling in next to the stand, I rolled my window down and dug into my side pouch for my wallet.

“Hi there honey. My name is Bev. What can I get for you today?”

Finding my credit card, I turned to look at the barista.

“Hi Bev, we will have two . . . mam . . . I mean . . . mochas.”

We had driven into one of the notorious Highway 99 bikini barista stands. Bev wore a little less than a bikini.

Cheryl looked up to see why I was stuttering.

“Drive!” she ordered.

Unable to get my attention. She followed that with a Karate, brick busting, left elbow shot to my right shoulder.

“Drive!”

I blame it on the watermelon in the back seat.

When my siblings and I were young, we were invited to ride in a motorboat to Clark Island with the Luke family. This was one of the San Juan Islands in Washington state. I had one job . . . overseeing the watermelon.

When we reached the island, the tide was low and the open-topped boat was beached on the sand. We all climbed out and removed the picnic food.

“Find someplace to cool the watermelon, Marty,” Mrs. Luke told me.

Clark Island at the time was a small, uninhabited island with no buildings. The only residents were sea lions and seagulls. In my small 5th graders mind, the perfect place to cool a watermelon was in the cool waters of the San Juans. I packed the heavy melon down the beach until the shoreline became rocky and I had to climb higher on the land. Walking around the point of the island, I came to an area of tide pools in the rocks filled with cool water. Further out in the water there were two sea lions sunning themselves on a rock. Climbing down to a tide pool, I set the watermelon in the sea water.

After a few hours the tide began rising and Mr. Luke had to pull the boat up higher on shore and tie it to a tree. We kids explored the trails around the island. At noon, a fire was started, and Mrs. Luke made lunch.

“Go get the watermelon, Marty,” she yelled.

I ran down what was left of the beach to where the waves were splashing up on the rocks. Then I climbed higher up on land and followed the perimeter of the island to the cove of tide pools.

“Well, that’s strange. I’m sure it was right here,” I thought.

Alas, the tide came in and carried the watermelon out to sea, into the jaws of the two hungry sea lions.

Who knew that watermelons could float?

I had a friend named Spike Edwards when I was eight. Spike lived on the side of Bellingham called Alabama Hill. On the backside of the top of the hill lay Lake Whatcom, a ten mile long, 350-foot-deep reservoir.  Back in the early days of Bellingham, the hill was crisscrossed with railroad tracks which brought lumber and coal from mills and a mine on the shores of the lake.

Running in a straight line from the top of the hill to the bottom was a road called Alabama Street. Residents who lived on the hill would drive straight up or straight down Alabama Street to reach their intersecting cross street. Spike’s cross street was close to the top of the hill.

In the 1950s and 60s there was a warehouse called Snow’s Produce, off Railroad Avenue in Bellingham. This warehouse had a covered loading dock next to a railroad spur. Throughout the year, produce would come into town in boxcars to be unloaded at Snow’s. Once unloaded, local grocers would stop by to pick up supplies for their stores.

Snow’s had a policy: when the watermelons came into town, if the rinds were cracked, they were given away for free.

It was on one of my sleepovers at Spike’s that he announced, “Word is on the street that Snow’s is getting in a box car with watermelons today. Let’s go bring one home.”

“Is your mom going to drive?” I asked. “It’s about two miles to Snow’s. How are we going to carry one home?”

“My bike,” Spike said, like he’d done this before. “I have a rack on the back. We’ll use the wheelbarrow. You sit on the rack and face backwards. You’ll put your feet on the bolts of the back axle, and you will hold the handles of the wheelbarrow and pull it like we are towing a trailer.”

It seemed like a reasonable idea.

We got the wheelbarrow out of the garage. Spike got his bike. I backed up and sat on the back rack. The balancing part was a bit tricky with my feet on the axle bolts and my hands holding the wheelbarrow handles. I realize now that eight-year-olds have little-to-no core strength, but we got the wobbles straightened out as we drove down his cross street to Alabama. And then he turned down Alabama Street . . . 500 feet . . . straight down.

It took three seconds for our screams to catch up with us at the bottom of the hill, which is proof again that the speed of light is greater than the speed of sound. We stopped in a black cloud of burning brake pads. The rest of the ride to Snow’s was uneventful.

Sure enough, a box car had arrived that day. It was filled with watermelons. The warehouse workers were already unloading them and setting aside the melons with cracked rinds in a box called freebies.

The nice thing about a melon with a cracked rind is that it is ripe and sweet. Spike and I picked out a nice one to take home and we placed it in the wheelbarrow for the ride. Even though the road was smooth and flat on the way back, the melon still rolled around in the confines of the wheelbarrow. And then we came to the base of Alabama Hill.

Spike shifted his three-speed into first gear and started up the 500-foot street. I have to give him credit for trying. He was peddling the bike uphill with two riders and a wheelbarrow with a watermelon in tow. With each rotation of the peddles I heard him say, “I think I can, I think I can,” but at the 300-foot mark, he couldn’t.

The bike stopped and jumped backwards a foot as he dropped his feet to the ground. The sudden reverse motion caused me to lose my balance, raising the wheelbarrow handles high into the air. The watermelon rolled out and started rolling down Alabama Street.

“It’s getting away!” I yelled. Jumping off the bike rack, I ran down the hill pushing the wheelbarrow in close pursuit of the melon which was picking up speed. Spike, in the meantime, had spun the bike around and was also in high-speed pursuit as the cucurbit made its break for freedom.

“Charge!” Spike screamed as he shot past me to head off the melon which was now hopping into the air with each pothole it hit. I threw a tennis shoe and was now running downhill pushing the wheelbarrow with a wobble, like a car with badly out-of-balanced tires.

Nearing the bottom, Spike was free falling, avoiding the brakes to keep up with the melon. Using maximum aerodynamics, he lay on the seat like Superman on a bicycle, but the blasted watermelon beat him to the bottom. It then took a little hop to the right shoulder and obliterated three garbage cans like a ball hitting the three, six, and nine pins at the bowling alley.

Garbage was puked all over Alabama Street. The melon had disintegrated.

“Fall back, fall back!” Spike screamed. “Retreat!”

Once again, he pedaled his bike up the hill. I found that stopping a wheelbarrow at terminal velocity was impossible as I shot past the homeowner who was staring at his smashed garbage cans and the mess in the street.

You see, it is not just coincidence — me and watermelons — I have a proven history. I also have quite a track record with Kiwis, but that’s another story.

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