Baker’s Dozen – Satan fruit returns

Tis the season for Satan Fruit, or as you probably call it, watermelon.

In case that was not clear, I’ll be blunt. I detest watermelon. Cannot stand them.

This deep-seated hatred comes from spending spring and summer working fields of watermelon that stretched as far as I wanted to see. It began with planting season.

Dad switched between transplanting and direct seed planting. Direct seed planting was OK because that was just driving the tractor to plant. Dad took care of that because that planting was done while I was busy avoiding work by pretending to pay attention to my teachers in school.

Dad also had this idea that the rows should be straight. Mine looked like a Department of Transportation road map of Atlanta with all the detours.

Transplanting required someone on the tractor and someone on the transplanter, sometimes two people. Transplanting went from daylight to dark. As soon as I got in from school, time to set watermelons.

Then the irritation, or as you may call it, irrigation. Growing hundreds of acres of watermelons often meant running the irritation – scuse me, irrigation – around the clock. This meant irrita– bah, you know what I mean – pipes. Miles and miles of pipes. Most of which were regularly moved.

Imagine carrying 30 feet of 6-inch diameter aluminum pipe. Now imagine doing a semi load of such pipe twice a day.

The South is famous for evening thunderstorms. These storms can drop anywhere from just enough to be annoying to a good soaking. I remember watching the rains come and STOP! at the fence. The watermelon field got nothing while the field across the road was at least wet.

This raised the humidity level from “muggy” to “fish swimming past.”

Once the Satan Fruit vines reached a certain size, we had to turn the vines. This means walking down the driving rows with a long stick and flipping the vines out of the drive row. This had to be done several times because, like teenagers, satan fruit vines grow rapidly and like to go to places where they should not be. And, just like teenagers, the vines can be knocked into place with a long stick.

When it came time to harvest, the real work began. One summer we shipped out more than 2 million pounds. We shipped out more than 1 million pounds every year.

One year Dad hired a contract crew made up of weightlifters from a nearby college. For reasons he never explained, he stuck me with that crew. I was about 12. They thought it was funny to hit me in the back with a watermelon when I turned away.

That afternoon when temperatures hit triple digits, two of the “in shape” weightlifters got bear caught. Bear caught is our word for heat prostration. It can be fatal.

As the rest of the college students panted and watched, I loaded the two bear caught men on a trailer and took them to shade. Shortly after that, the weightlifter crew chief fired several of his crew. They never hit me with another watermelon.