THESE WATERMELONS MEAN BUSINESS

By Greg Ritchie

Messenger Reporter

GRAPELAND  Summer means a lot to East Texas, from picnics and bike rides, to cook outs and swimming. It seems all of those go better with a fresh watermelon. It’s almost a cliche, but most cannot imagine summer without the juicy fruits, seed spitting, or if you are so inclined, the seedless varieties.

On a hot day on Market Street in downtown Grapeland you will see the truck and the trailer filled to the brim with melons of all shapes, sizes, and kinds. People stop and take from one to a dozen for parties, cook outs, for friends and family.

And helping you to make a good choice and load them into your car is Keegan Harrison. Keegan graduated from Grapeland High School in May and will soon be going off to cosmetology school. It’s her first year selling watermelons, but she’s always been a melon aficionado.

“All the guys I grew up with in high school they all worked at the shed, so we all knew about our great local watermelons. I always loved to eat watermelons, it’s a Grapeland thing,” Harrison said.

The economy this year and its instability have caused watermelon sales to be different from years past. Ross Pennington from Pennington Farms noticed a subtle but important difference in their sales with inflation and gas affecting people’s spending.

“Sales are up in supermarkets, but down in restaurants. People are saying we still want a watermelon, but we’ll buy it at the store, and not go out to eat,” Pennington noted.

Some people will pick a melon at random, some will ask for advice, but some have taken it to a new level. The real experts know a good watermelon from afar, and have developed their own techniques for picking the perfect one. From feeling to thumping, checking stem length and color – everyone has their tried and proven way of picking “their” melon.

“People will come and grab hay out of the trailer and they’ll lay it over the top of the melon and if it wiggles they say it’s ready to eat,” Harrison explained.

Even in this year’s unusually hot and dry climate, all the greatest melon hits are still available.

“We have red diamond seedless, regular seeded red melons, we have what we call our yellow meats, and then orange meats in the middle, and our cantaloupes,” Harrison explained.

Pennington Farms has struggled this year with the weather. The heat has caused layoffs when some of the crop dried up, and as they finish the season, Pennington admits it has been a tough year.

“Hopefully this last hundred acres of watermelon we are in, will pull us through financially. We are going into a rough winter,” he said.

Harrison enjoys selling such a popular product from her hometown, and although she will be going away for a while to study, she says it’s bittersweet.

“You hear people say, ‘I want to get out of this small town,’ but honestly, now that I’ve graduated, I don’t want to go,” Harrison said.

Watermelons have always played an important part to the local economy, and young people have always gone off to see the big world, only to return home at some point.

No matter how far our crops and young people go out in the world, they will always be a part of us; and we a part of them.

Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected].

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