The calendar is officially fall but you may not be ready for pumpkin spice just yet. Thanks to modern appliances, summer standouts can still be enjoyed for months to come. That was the inspiration of this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
fruit
Watermelon Season
It’s June. Watermelon season. All my life, June has meant watermelon season and I don’t mean it’s just the time of year to eat them. As a kid, it also meant a time to work, and work hard, from can’t-see-in-the-morning to can’t-see-at-night, for no more than a little over a dollar an hour to get the melons out of the fields. So every June, I can’t help but drive by the fields and nostalgically marvel at the stamina we once enjoyed. Now in our sixties, my friends from those days often hypothetically wonder how long we think we could last in those fields today. The general belief is about thirty minutes… providing the ambulance got there on time.
In my little town, as was true for many ag towns across Texas, we thought of watermelons as our fourth sport. The fall started with football and then we had basketball and baseball, and then, watermelons. We thought we should have been able to letter in watermelons. For those who played football, pitching melons half the summer was ideal conditioning. There were three kinds – grays, stripes and black diamonds. The grays were kind of like footballs – a little heavier of course. The stripes were enormous – and averaged 35 pounds or more. The black diamonds were the most despised because they were heavy and round like a medicine ball. Hard to pitch and hard to catch. The best thing about watermelon season was being able, when tired, to cut open a beautiful melon in the field and to eat just the cool, sweet heart of it, and move on. Nature’s Gatorade.
There was a hierarchy in the fields. You’d start out as a pitcher, making a dollar, twenty-five an hour, at least that was the going rate in the late 1960s. You would work with a crew of four or five and take a large trailer, generally pulled by a tractor, out into the fields to load with melons. The crew would fan out and then, like a bucket brigade, toss the cut melons in their path to the next guy in line and he’d pitch it to the next guy who’d throw it up to the man in the trailer. You didn’t want to be the man working by the trailer because you had to handle every melon and lift it up over your head for the guy in the trailer to set it down with reasonable care so as not to break it open. The best job was to be either the man in the trailer or the outside man who handled the least number of melons, only those in his path. Yet it didn’t matter which job was yours, it was still brutal work. You worked in the giant sauna of the Texas summer, often in 100 degrees with no wind and stifling humidity. But it was about the only work you could get at 13 or 14, so you gladly did it and when you got your 80 dollars at the end of the week, you felt rich if not sunburnt and tired. And you longed for the day you could move up to cutter or stacker. Being a cutter was a good job because you didn’t pitch anymore. You went down the rows and identified, by sight, the melons that were ripe and ready to harvest and the proper weight for the store wanting them (H-E-B for instance – grays 18-to-24 pounds). You would cut them from the vine and stand on them on end for the pitchers to come along later and get them. The only downside was you were the first to come upon the rare rattler hidden in the vines. For this job you made $3.00 an hour. Double the pay. Knowledge is power.
The final and best job in the field was stacker. You might get to be stacker by your third or fourth season, when you are 17 or so. You’d work inside the big 18-wheeler trailers and stack the melons “to ride.” The little trailers, or pickup trucks would come in from the fields and the line would form to pitch the melons to you inside the trailer. Stacking was an art form. Taking into account the weight and shape of the melons you’d stack them into tiers about 8 or 9 rows high, nice and tight, so they wouldn’t shift and break on the long ride north.
The best stackers would start the season in the Rio Grande Valley and follow harvest north all the way up into the Panhandle where there would be a late summer and fall harvest. They’d make 25 dollars per 18 wheeler. Serious money, then.
The greatest thing about those years and that work, at least for many men (and some women) who worked in those fields, is that they say it taught them a work ethic that has never deserted them.
Texas Standard: March 8, 2021
Let’s set the table: we got a lot of food on the show today. From restaurants to citrus to food for thought. In the food for thought category we start with some little known side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccine. We also imagine what if would be like to be homeless from the book “You Are My Brother”. And we imagine the political cost of the pandemic and freeze. Then we visit restaurants still open and remember those that have closed during the pandemic. Those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: October 28, 2019
Houston: for sale to the highest bidder? Allegations against the incumbent mayor rocking the race in Texas’ biggest city. We’ll have a closer look. Also, why a major Texas city appears to be an outlier amid good news in the fight against the spread of HIV. And the large building some east Texas developers would rather you not go into when checking out the subdivision. Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:
The Thieves of Delight
The last crops of the season are being plucked from gardens across Texas — at least if human gardeners can get to them before the other creatures! That’s the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
Texas Standard: July 26, 2018
Deadline day on the Texas Mexico border: a federal judge orders immigrant family reunifications completed by today. Will it happen? We’ll have the latest. Also, Texas has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the U.S., but a decision in the most liberal district in the US is taking gun rights much further, finding a constitutional right to openly carry firearms. We’ll explore the implications. And what is the fastest growing segment of the workforce? If you’re thinking millennials, think again. The rush for jobs among people 75 and older. Plus the centuries old book about an expedition to Florida that may be the most important book about early Texas: now, a new chapter for 21st century readers. Those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:
Ode To The Perfect Summer Watermelon
The watermelon: for many, it’s the fruit that best symbolizes the long days of summer. And it was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
Texas Peaches
In the Texas Hill Country, stands are set up on the sides of roads hawking “Fredricksburg peaches” by the pound. That was the inspiration for this week’s Typewriter Rodeo poem by Kari Anne Roy.