Family, neighbors, friends, and Watermelon

By Bobby Neal Winters

On many days during my stay in Paraguay, I walk to the Superseis that is on Avenida Argentina, just south of the intersection with De Las Palmeras.  At the intersection, there is a fruit stand.  They will bring fruit to drivers in their cars as they wait for the light to change.

I see that they have watermelons.

They call a watermelon by the name sandia in Paraguay.  I pay attention because I love watermelon.  I love watermelon on many levels.  It is sweet, it is filling, and it has few calories per unit volume.

I also love them because of memory.  They open a door back to a world that is almost forgotten to me.   They remind me of my Grampa Sam.

Summer days were long in the cross-timbers of Oklahoma, not just in the measure of hours of daylight, but in the measure of perceived time.  A summer day would sometimes last an entire year in the mind of a 5-year-old.

The sun was bright: it bleached my hair; it tanned my skin.  My bare feet were made hard by walking through grass and gravel.

On some days, when the season for watermelons came, my Grandpa Sam would mysteriously obtain one or our neighbor Buck Crabtree would bring one by.  Neither mentioned ever buying one.  Sam and Buck were men who had friends, and often the friends would give them things.  Those were the way things were in that time and place; at least that is the way I remember them.

There was a ritual. One would obtain a watermelon, but more needed to be done.  Watermelon is a dish best served cold, as they say.  The watermelon would be immersed in cold water or--even better--water that had a big block of ice floating in it. It would be chilled in this manner for as much of the day as possible.

Then, after a few months of the day had passed, as the sun sank low in the west, we would gather around with family and neighbors and eat the watermelon.  And it was always the whole family and neighbors, because all of the watermelon had to be consumed at one sitting.  The idea of cutting up a melon and putting it into the refrigerator for later consumption had not yet entered our culture.

No, we gathered around this offering and shared with our neighbors.  We shared melon; we shared news; we shared triumph and tragedy.  

We shared ourselves.

But now individuality has crept so into our society it even affects our consumption of watermelon. I can buy a watermelon now; cut it up; put it in the fridge; and breakfast on it for a week.  That is, I can get a week’s worth of breakfast out if others who come through my household--they know who they are--don’t steal it from me.

That last sentence is a measure of how deeply the disease of individuality has taken root.  I seek to gather to myself what was once an occasion of sharing.  Indeed, I resent sharing.  But in my defense, I might not resent sharing my melon as much if I got to share lives at the same time.

I talk to my students in Paraguay.  What are their plans for the weekend?

For many the answer is that they go to their grandparents--their abuelos--for asado--barbecue. Large families, sharing food, sharing lives.  One would imagine them gathering after having shared the eucharist.

I bought half a watermelon from the fruit stand on the weekend.  They are aggressive; they wanted to sell me a whole one.  I protested that I would have to carry it very far.  The young lady rubbed my shoulder with her hand and told me that I was strong.

Oh, please.  Give me a break.

But I did buy half a melon and only worried later about the perils of buying melon cut by people who were so ruthless in their sales technique.

I am alone; I am in journalist mode, whether I’ve a right to that state or not.  I am an atomic human observing a sea of molecular humanity.  I’ve not seen the likes of this since I was a boy.

A boy in Oklahoma on an infinite summer day having watermelon with my family, my neighbors, and my friends.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.