Watermelon II

Baby Kaba kisses the miracle melon

Richard writes:

We’d been struggling to grow a real watermelon here at Rancho D for a few years—little grapefruit size balls, skimpy out of the clay soil, is what we’ve we gotten. So much clay you can dig it up and refine it…you can actually make pots—hard fired in a kiln. I’ve done  it. So much clay in spots.  Also it’s often foggy and cold, so the fruit doesn’t set on the blossom. Specially at night when fruit is supposed to set.

So we tore out the crumbly stone retaining wall built 20-some years ago; built it out of the tailings from a road excavation. Poor choice on my part. “You can’t build a thing with that shit rock,” I was told when I was gathering up piles of the stuff. Sometimes you just can’t abide good advice. (Take note!).

So all that shit rock was torn out and replaced with something (more?) proper. I think It’ll last the duration—our durations anyway. It’s a wall anchored by 10 foot 4×6 posts anchored 4 feet into the ground set in concrete. 10 foot 2×12’s stacked make the wall. It’ll hold and now that bed is south facing for the heat and light. For years we relied on our horse tenants for a steady supply of composted manure; full of worms and all sorts of crawly wigglers. They, the horses, are gone from our lives now, so long story short, we filled behind the wall with compost from our local composter, West Marin Compost. We think the movie The Graduate needs an update: “One Word…Compost.”

Last year was OK with a medium and a large melon. But this year they are so abundant they are trailing down our new wall. Good soil plus the wall retains daytime heat to make for plentiful yield of flowers and fruit. All this to grow a watermelon?

Well, did grow ’em. This year, they are on a drip line so its not all that much water use. We celebrated with a watermelon party! For our neighborhood!!! Had a weight guessing contest and everything. It’s been lock-down-COVID-cloudy for over a year and this was a ray of light…longed for and arrived. 

Best watermelon! Best? I mean, the flavor takes up all the space…your whole head becomes a watermelon. Drippy-sweet. You get flowers! Perfume and flowers and that fresh crunch of sugar. Man, this melon is from outer space!!—which if fact it is, all the way from the furnace of the sun. Are we lucky or what?

Richard’s guesstimate

Neighbor Jim, the winner of our weight guessing contest with Rudi, astonished at the unusual prize.
Pretty sure they did not have one of these:

Manatee mom and baby refrigerator magnet.

Team Tamal Road

Richard writes:

Back in the day, and it was back back, probably ’63, when I was the holder of a newly minted Illinois driver’s license. You couldn’t beat that for a sense of freedom. I was working for my Pop doing deliveries for his auto-parts store in Kankakee, Illinois. Summer job. I’m driving the oldest truck, the panel truck. This is the days before the Econoline. I had mastered the clutch after a bout with the hurk-hurk-Jack-in-the-box hilarity, of the neophyte at the transmission. It was like driving with your feet, the clutch and all, so it felt very broad shouldered to drive a stick. That stout stick that comes on a bent rod out of the floor boards. You are In command. The starter was a nubbin of rubber next to the clutch peddle—close to the motive power of the thing. And, you could watch the pavement rush by underfoot through the rusted out floorboards. Alienation via reification & detachment from reality was not possible in this truck, right, Uncle Karl? Trucks these days are more like luxury sedans.

I pulled ‘round the back of John Panazzo’s Wholesale Fruit Stand out on Highway 54, north of town, across from the cemetery. Off the highway, crunching on the gravel. There’s  Mr. Panazzo very glad to see me…to greet his Salvatore delivering a carburetor kit for his flat-bed, idled by a bad needle and seat. Riffing on the Ma Bell ubiquitous ad of the day, “If you can’t come, call”. (touting the convenience of phoning ahead,) Mr. Panazzo, says, “Hey Kid, did you hear they’re putting dimes in rubbers now-a-days?,  “If you can’t come call” Haw haw haw. Mr. Panazzo had handed me a diploma (of sorts) into a world of grown men. I liked it.

The flat bed was piled with a full load of stripy watermelons baking in the sun.

“Glad to get these parts, these melons won’t be fit to sell sitting out here…they need to be in Chicago…today!  Here, lemme show you how Leon (my dad) and I ate watermelons.” Both sons of recent arrivals to America, friends as boys. He hefts a striped beauty out of the pile, slices it open lengthwise with a pocket knife, and pulls it apart so he can carve the two centers into two big red seedless smiles. That was my first taste of real watermelon…the proof of the pudding…etc…

August 14, 2021August 14, 2021 by jaselby 2 Comments