Everybody Loves A Good Watermelon

by Michael Allender

EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD WATERMELON

  by

  Michael Allender

  Copyright 2014 Michael Allender

  (The sixth in a series of fourteen stories)

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  Everybody Loves a Good Watermelon

  (Story # 6)

  In east Texas during the early fifties, watermelons were a way of life, a summer ritual, and usually in greater supply than there was demand. And a surplus of anything always got my brother to thinking and scheming. Ben Joules was a wheeler and a dealer.

  All the families along our little Peach Creek, which is just southeast of College Station, liked to get together from time to time to talk about the weather, discuss mutual problems, and air grievances. As a close-knit country community, they would sometimes curse local politicians and brag on children, or sometimes, vise-versa. But as more families moved in, there arose a need for a larger meeting place to accommodate the growing number of kids and dogs that often accompanied the mothers and dads.

  There were several honest attempts made to get things started. Mr. Moore (another dairy farmer), donated a plot of ground close to the road about a mile upstream of us. It was centrally located, cleared and flat, and the price was right. Unfortunately that's where the thought stayed parked for several months, with nobody able to agree on a plan to raise money for the structure. That's not very surprising, as most farmers are independent by necessity, and as they get older they develop a brand of stubborn frugality that shows in the patches applied to everything they own.

  Ben's cloth was cut from the same bolt, and woven through the warp of that cloth ran a thread of determination for which he was famous. "Tell y'all what," he piped up during a meeting held in our home. "Let me have a go at it." He was referring to the building. "I can raise the money." The other farmers couldn't be too blunt in phoo-phooing his sixteen-year old eagerness because they had their mouths full of Mom's hot rhubarb and peach cobbler. Dad didn't want to embarrass him either, but he did offer a word of caution.

  "Now Ben," he said quietly, "keep a mind to what you say. You know what happens to balloons that get too big."

  "Well, we could do it, Dad. I got an idea, and me and Abbie, we could do it." That was the first time I'd heard about it, but such was vintage Ben. He always had an extra idea or two parked by the curb, waiting for their moment, and often as not they included me.

  I think Ben surprised Dad, though, at just how well he'd thought the whole thing through. "Jack Brewcamp's dad is going to burn down an old barn so he can build a metal one," Ben explained. "He ways we can have the wood for knocking the thing down and cleaning up."

  "There's more than just wood," a long split rail of a man said. It was Mr. Moore, a rather severe man with sallow cheeks and a hawkish nose. He always wore an old felt hat with the front of the brim pulled down, leaving his eyes in shadowed mystery. He had a reputation for being hard and stern, not a man you'd choose to badger without a clear line of retreat. Though he had donated the land, he was also one of the farmers who had slowed things down before. He wanted it done right or not at all. "Wiring, hardware, windows--them all cost money. Tables and chairs, too. Don't want to sit on the dirt like an Indian." Ben acknowledged there would be much to buy, but then he reminded everyone he still had that idea. "Which is?" Mr. More asked. He was a spare man, thrifty in all areas.

  "Watermelons," Ben said, and grinned like a kid who had just been served the dead heart of the sweetest melon in the patch. "We can hold a watermelon raffle."

  "You want to sell melons," Dad said, amid the hushed whispers and smiles of the gathering. It was not even a question, for though an iced-down watermelon on a hot August day was considered a Southern rite, they weren't exactly scarce, and the price was well within most people's reach.

  "Who in tarnation is going to buy a raffle ticket for a blamed watermelon?" Mr. Cleever asked. He wore the aroma of hogs like an earthy cologne.

  ""First we get a bunch of 'em," Ben explained patiently. "Several hundred, maybe." That cocked a few eyebrows and served up a number of knowing looks and smiles. "And there's the important part: We core one out, see, and make a plug for it so you can't tell, then we put something special in it."

  "Such as?" came the collective question.

  "I don't know, something people want. Like jewelry or money. We could put a fifty-dollar bill, or just a piece of paper saying, 'You've won fifty dollars'. Then we put the plug back in and sell them for a buck each. See, that way everybody gets something for their money, and maybe fifty bucks. It would work."

  "Hold on, Son," Dad said, and I saw him wink at the others. "Everybody loves a good watermelon and all, but you'd have to sell a whole heap of them to do any good. There's no way we'll have near enough."

  But Ben had done his homework. Price Walker lived about four miles or so down the creek from us and watermelons seemed to grow like dandelions for him on a sandy patch of flat ground above the Navasota River. I don't think he sold many of them, and my Dad asked him once why he planted so many. "Cause they do special well there," he said.

  "Mr. Walker says he'll donate half his watermelon crop for a few brood catfish. And he wants a pond dug. We can supply the catfish, and Hale Etheridge told me He'd use his backhoe to dig the pond, if he can get a yearling beef. He wants it cut and wrapped for his locker." The chain continued. Billy Morrison, a rancher who Ben knew from the coop mill, where he worked part time, would donate the beef in exchange for some veterinary work. The local veterinarian, Dr. Gerald Tuffer, was willing to give some time for the cause if he could get a dozen fresh eggs and a gallon of whole cream milk delivered every week for several months. Easy enough out of a room full of farmers. The circle seemed closed. After a little more back and forth discussion the whole group agreed to help pull down the barn and dress the lumber to get things rolling, and several dairy farmers would rotate on the milk and eggs for Doc Tuffer. Like I said, Ben was a wheeler and dealer. Most of the farmers seemed impressed and were very enthusiastic over the idea, but Dad seemed ready to call Ben's bluff. He knew Ben well, and he suspected there was a card not yet played.

  "Impressive, Ben," he said, after things quieted down. "That's a lot of work you've done. Now why are you so all fired eager to build this thing? It's not like you need a meeting hall. Do you?"

  "Well no, not exactly," Ben said. "But some room would be good though."

  "Some room? What for?"

  A sheepish look crossed Ben's face, like he'd just caught his wool on a barbed wire fence and couldn't get loose. "It'd work out fine, Dad, really. Remember, Mr. Moore said we'd need a table and some chairs, right? Well, I heard Mr. Carlson talking down at the drugstore just last week. Said he had a real nice table he was going to sell. He's moving to Houston, you know."

  "You're not making sense, Ben. What's Mick Carlson's table got to do with anything?"

  "Well, for meetings, like this one here. You could sit around it and talk. Could even eat on it, 'cause we could make a cover for it."

  I was intrigued, but I could see Dad was growing impatient.

  "Horace," one of the wives said to Dad. "I rather think Ben is talking about Mick's pool table. Aren't you Ben?"

  Mr. Moor, who had removed his hat, arched a bushy eyebrow in a tigh
t V, and locked his steel gray eyes on Ben.

  "A pool table?" Dad said. He looked like he was about to cough up a fur ball.

  "Well, yeah, it's a pool table. I mean, there's Ronson, Billy, Lydel, even Abbie. And I guess the Tower sisters, too. And me. We'd all like to shoot a little pool. Give us something to do."

  "Something to do?" Dad said, his voice rising. "We live on a farm, for God's sake! And Billy Bogsome and Lydel Bigornea? They live in Navasota, Ben not on Peach Creek. You can't turn our meeting hall into a--a pool hall--for half the Navasota crowd. Besides, just where do you think you're going to find the time to fritter away on billiards? We live on a farm!"

  Ben was unfazed at the rebuke. 'Our meeting hall', Dad had called it. The thing was as good as built, and the pool table would be as much a part of it as the roof that covered it. For without the table, Ben was out. And without Ben and his energy and connections, there was only the flat piece of ground--where they could all sit in the dirt, like Indians. I listened as several others asked questions, and I noticed that Mr. Moore just tipped his chair back on two