Watermelon

We buy watermelon frequently during the summer, and think nothing of it. After all, we have a nice variety to choose from - seedless, little ones, big ones, pre-cut ones.

But they don't taste quite like I remember those watermelons from my childhood.

Once upon a time, having watermelon was a big deal. It was a wait-for-it big deal.

Daddy would bring home a watermelon and slip it down into the spring house in the water, leaving it to cool. He would have bought it off the back of some truck some place. I don't think many of them came from a grocery store, anyway.

We knew that watermelon was down there. We knew that in a day or so we'd have watermelon to eat, and seeds to spit at one another. My brother and I would talk about it, thinking about that watermelon as it grew colder by the minute.

Maybe there'd be company, too. Having watermelon often meant we were having a picnic or a meal of some kind. Maybe Grandma and Grandpa and my uncles would be visiting.

Whatever was going on, there was anticipation. Anticipation for what was to come.

Watermelon then tasted so scrumptiously sweet you'd almost think it was candy. And it came with seeds that you could send flying between the hole where you'd lost your front tooth a few weeks before.

What could be better?

After we ate the watermelon, hot dogs and whatever else there was to go with whatever we were celebrating - surely we were celebrating something, and not simply eating watermelon - we'd take the rinds down to the creek and float them.

The watermelon turned into a fleet of ships, crashing into each other until we tired of that play. Then we sent them sailing on down Rocky Branch to the sea, or so we imagined. Sometimes we'd follow the rinds as far as we could, watching them until they floated out of sight.

Today? Today watermelon is simply something else to eat, a little treat after dinner, maybe. They are too easy to obtain, too tasteless to be remarkable.

Does anticipation disappear with age? Or did it disappear with availability and change, as watermelons became seedless, tasteless, and part of a healthy diet?

I don't know. But I do remember those days when watermelons grinned at you when you split them open, those seeds looking like black teeth. Watermelons don't do that anymore.

I remember the taste, too, and that anticipation. I remember cheering when Daddy brought the melon up from the springhouse, because it would be good and cold. Delicious.

Oh, for those days.