WATERMELONS

I remember we took a load of watermelons from the farm in Dilley to Encinal and we put them under the big tree next to the house. My Grandfather said, “This is for you to make some money.  You can sell the watermelons.”  I said, “How much do I sell them for?”  “Well,” he says, “let’s look at them.  We have approximately three different sizes. There are these little ones here, then there’s medium ones and then bigger ones.  Bigger ones, you can sell them for fifty cents.  The smaller ones, thirty five cents, and the smallest ones, 25 cents.  Look thru them and get a crayon and on the bottom of the watermelon where it has that yellow whitish area, mark the price.  And when people come and ask how much they are, you say, they have the price down there.”  So I had fun going through the whole pile of watermelons to mark the price. 

There were probably about a 100 watermelons.  It was a big pile.  So I would sit under the tree on a little chair and just sit there.  I’d be sitting there, reading.  At that point I was reading comic books and magazines.  I don’t think I had started reading the muscle magazines yet.  

 The people would come by, “Are you selling those watermelons?”   “Yeah.” 
“How much?”  “They have different prices on them, 25 cents, 35 cents and 50 cents for the big ones.”  “Okay, I’ll look at them.”  Some people would slap them, some would knock on them.  “I’m going to take these two right here.”  They usually had the correct change. 

I’d run inside, my grandmother was usually on the phone, the old style phone.  I’d say, “I sold two watermelons, I got 85 cents.”  “Okay, very good.”  I’d say, “Do you want to keep it.”   She would put it in a jar.  “This is the watermelon money.” I’d run back out and sit and read comic books.  Sitting there waiting to sell the watermelons. 

Later someone else would come by to look at the watermelons.  They would ask “Where are those watermelons from?”  I said, “They’re from our farm over in Dilley.”  “Oh from your own farm?”  “Yeah, my grandfather planted them.  They’re ours, we grew them ourselves.  We didn’t’ get them from anybody else.”  They’d say, “Oh, in Dilley, that’s good watermelon country over there.”  They sold pretty quickly, the pile got smaller and smaller.  There would only be 3 or 4 watermelons left.  My grandfather said, “Make sure you keep at least two of them for us.”  That was the watermelon fun I had there, selling watermelons. 

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