Williamson: Nothing like watermelon on a hot day

Watermelon is a favorite food at our house. Though we live in a time when fairly passable watermelons are available year-round, when I was growing up these cool, crisp, refreshing gourds were a summer-time-only treat and one which was highly anticipated.

Betty Williamson

A bit of good news

After my grandparents came to eastern New Mexico in 1915, watermelons were one of the crops they struggled to raise and sell over a series of lean years. The sand hill soil in south Roosevelt County grew good enough melons — seeds from a favorite variety were cherished and passed on from year to year within the family. But, as with all commodities, if you had a good crop, your neighbors likely did, too, and the market suffered.

In spite of that, watermelons became an important summer ritual in our family. My aunt Katie has been gone nearly 20 years now, but as a girl growing up close to where I live today, her September 2 birthday was only considered well-celebrated if her parents could crack open the first ripe watermelon of the season in her honor.

My family hosted Fourth of July picnics in those same sand hills for forty-something years. Part of that tradition was carefully nestling a couple of watermelons into the chest freezer in the garage before we headed out for the afternoon and evening. After filling our stomachs with steaks, relining our shoes with sand, and singeing our fingers on an amateur fireworks display, we would pile into pickups to return to the house. We gathered by the porch where my father — using an enormous old butcher knife — carved off smile-shaped wedges of icy-cold watermelon to be consumed standing up, juice dripping from our elbows.

Periodically throughout the summers of my youth, watermelons would appear, most often if we had visiting cousins or house guests. Usually those watermelons were simply split into halves, and set on the grass in our yard. Few things, by the way, make a more satisfying sound than a perfectly-ripe watermelon as it splits open. If that first cut also happened to reveal a yellow-meated watermelon, that was worthy of a cheer.

Spoons were distributed all around, but before we young ruffians attacked, we received strict instruction to not take more than our fair share of the “heart,” the seedless sugar-sweet center of the watermelon that was surely what inspired Mark Twain, in his book “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” to write that “when one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat.”

Summers — especially exceedingly hot, dry summers — can parch our souls here on the High Plains. But at least they can be relieved, even if only for a few minutes, by the thirst-quenching goodness of watermelons.

Betty Williamson thinks Mark Twain was right, as usual. You may reach her at [email protected]