On A Kick

Watermelon.  Thoughts about summer inevitably get around to watermelon, and watermelon makes me think of my dad.  He thought the melons here in California were puny compared to those in Texas, and to prove his point, once made a trip back to his home state and bought back two watermelons that completely filled the trunk of his car.  He told tales of going into the fields when he was young, breaking melons open and eating just the hearts.  My parents divorced after close to forty years of marriage, and they visited my family separately after that.  Dad would bring a grocery bag full of candy for the Kids, until I had to ask him to stop...that much candy wasn't good for them.  "Well, what can I bring them then?"  Fruit.  Fruit would be good.  So then the grocery bags would be filled with a variety of fruit, and always a watermelon under his arm, the biggest he could find, in the summer.  Coconuts were a substitute in the winter.  This was fine for the occasional visit, but sometimes Dad would come frequently, loaded every time with fruit.  It got so I was hiding fruit in the bread drawer, in cupboards, in the oven...we couldn't keep up with the influx of fruit, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings.  One has to plan when to give little Kids watermelon.  Never after dinner unless you want to change the sheets every night.  Not at the table unless you want to mop the floor every day.  And sometimes there is too much of a good thing.

My Aunt Hilda made watermelon rind pickles that I loved when I was a kid.  Having a surfeit of watermelon, I tried to make those pickles, but never was able to find the slake lime required, and they won't get crisp without it.

There's a fun thing to do when you grow melons or pumpkins.  When the grandkids were little, I would scratch their name or a design in a very small pumpkin, just breaking through the tender skin and writing small.  Scar tissue forms and grows as the pumpkin grows, and Sabrina thought it was magic when I told her that there was a special melon or pumpkin out in the garden that already had her name on it.  It was better than an Easter egg hunt!