Rub-a Dub-Dub, Carmel Valley, Fall 2006

These are probably the last watermelons of the season. It is amazing what a tub of watermelon can remind you of. A picture is worth a thousand words, all that jazz.

When we were kids, eating watermelon was sort of a ceremony. No one in the family liked watermelon except for my dad, my brother and me. The rest of the family hated eating watermelon because of the seeds. But for us, that was part of the fun. My dad was the master at removing watermelon seeds. He had this whole technique down. It was like everything else he had established as a technique; he had a well thought out process, often based on experimentation and experience. There was a reason for every step. For instance, he could coil up a heavy extension cord and tie it off in the middle so that it looked like a perfect 8 that hung straight and clean from its hook in the garage. When you uncoiled it, all you had to do was pull and the cord followed with no knots, no troubles, no risk of breaking the tiny wires on the inside.

I would use one of his cords and then stand there for 30 minutes trying to re-coil it. "Don't worry about it," he'd say, "I'll do it later." But I didn't think it was fair to use his stuff and not try to put it back properly. So I'd work at it. My hands were too small to hold all the coils and I'd struggle. He would watch, giving me pointers. "Just let the cord fall into place on its own." "Leave a longer piece at the end so you can tie it off." I would do a fair job and he would smile, take and hang it awkwardly on its hook. But I knew that when I wasn't looking, he would recoil it himself. I have since mastered this technique pretty well, I am proud to report. And each time I coil my extension cord, I get a sense of satisfaction. Silly what we take our pleasure from. But that's life.

I digress. Back to the watermelons. My grandfather had a little patch of watermelons on his property. Dad would choose one or two. Then, he sliced one into quarters from the longest angle so that you had four long pieces. We were small, so usually we shared a quarter. Then, you put it on a dinner plate with a fork and took it to the back patio so the sticky mess could be hosed down later. We, my borother and I, made quite a mess!

The technique was to eat the fleshy top part that was your share of the heart. That was best and sweetest part or grandpa's watermelon. Then, you got down to the seeds. The seeds were in two rows just under the heart. So you had to use your fork like a rake along the rows of seeds, allowing the juice to wash them out onto the plate. My dad could take out a row of seeds and eat the melon so clean down to the rind that there wasn't anything left but a thin strip of green.

My brother and I would practice trying to do the same thing. But we were not as well coordinated, experienced, and or as patient as dad. My mother had us convinced that if we swallowed seeds, watermelons would grow in our tummies. So, to avoid a fate worse than death, we would spit the seeds at each other. We would dribble juice the down the corners of our mouths letting it drip from our chins, "Hey, look, I'm Frankenstein eating watermelon!" Calvin and Hobbes had nothing on us! We were every bit as messy and silly. The whole time, my dad would patiently remove his seeds and appraise the quality of the melon he had chosen. Later, when we were finished, he would eat the watermelon we hadn't finished and clean up. The down side to this little tradition was that you'd have to get up 5 times during the night to use the bathroom!

The whole thing was timeless. It was 1982, but it could have been 1922 for that matter. That is how it felt, safe, innocent, and pleasurable. Often, when I returned home to see my family, dad would say, "hey, I have a watermelon in the fridge. Want some!" And I would. But it wasn't the same without my brother there to spit seeds at.

Now they have seedless watermelons, small watermelons the size and shape of cantaloupes, watermelon anytime of year. But when I get a good, plain-jane watermelon, chalked full of seeds, I appreciate the small ceremony of slicing it and using my fork like a rake, letting the juice carry the seeds away.