The only time our family ate watermelon was if someone else brought it. I never saw my father eat any watermelon. The women in the family would wolf watermelon slices and politely pull out the seeds.

The Culp family up the road on the hill had a family farm. They grew corn for the critters, vegetables to feed the hungry hoard, strawberries for Mrs. Culp and watermelon for the local farm boys. Mrs. Culp was cooking, yakking on the party line phone or working Dallas (father of ten kids) on her steel framed bed covered with a horsehide mattress. Dallas didn't have a chance, she was a red head. So was her daughter. So was her granddaughter.

I didn't have a chance. The granddaughter was being guarded by relatives, against guys like me. Mrs. Culp had such a large spread of children that two sons were in the same age group as the red headed granddaughter I was after. I was one of the, "river boys." We lived down the hill in the rivers flood plain. The soil was rich, we weren't. If we left our marbles out in the yard, they would take root and a marble tree would start life. During the summer we stayed wet, we were river dogs. During the winter we stayed cold, hockey and skating by moonlight reflected from the snowy banks.

I built and floated my first boat before I was a teenager. But, I wasn't good out of the water. I had graduated school and was flopping around with three part time jobs. I still hadn't cracked the redhead up the road. This was in the old days when women wore some type of medieval torture contraption made of rubber. I managed to get my hand down in the prime moist area but the girdle won, my hand got trapped and went asleep. My hand became a limp sleeping loser. I didn't wash it for a week.

One full moon night I decided to sneak into her room. She had the window oiled and unlocked. I approached via a devious path that took me through two properties, over a tree across a creek, through a field dodging horse shit, past the barn and supporting sheds. No one saw me. No dogs warmed up a howl to greet me. I was standing at the edge of the house. I heard some heavy breathing that wasn't mine, coming from the watermelon patch across the driveway that separated the houses. I moved slow, back to the corner of her house.

Dallas stood up behind his house next door and said. "I hear you out there. You got thirty seconds to put the plug back and get down the hill. This twelve gauge got two barrels and salt for everybody's ass. Twenty five and counting."

I saw movement and heard low voices in the watermelon patch. Dallas was moving for a closer shot. "Twenty and counting."

I had spent a lot of time in both yards I figured he wouldn't shoot until he was clear of the clothes line. His red headed wife was about six inches taller then him and a lot meaner.

I watched Dallas take enough steps to clear the clothesline on the right. He didn't raise the gun. He let it finish the count from his waist.

"Booooommm"

Dallas fired a salvo at the moon. You could have heard the salt crystals hitting. If you had been listening. I was more interested in becoming as one with the wall. I peeked around the corner.

Dallas had the twelve gauge pointed in my general direction and was close enough that the barrels looked like the "Dora" railroad gun of World War 11 fame.

Dallas said, "Step out; I saved a barrel for you. I want to see who is going to be walking tomorrow with no ass."

I said, "Hi Dallas, that shot was so loud I thought you got off both rounds in one pull."

"You're wrong. You got thirty seconds to tell me why you're sneaking around my watermelons."

"I'm not interested in your watermelons; I'm interested in your granddaughter."

"I'll make you a deal, gimme over your pocketknife and I'll let you go."

I said, "What pocketknife, I don't have one." I wasn't doing too good with my answers, the double barreled shotgun was now pointing at me.

I said, "I see why you shoot from the hip," The shotgun had a homemade stock out of steel angle welded at the corners.

Dallas smiled, "Yeah, it's a hip shooter, the right level to turn a sinner's ass into salt."

Dallas said, "I guess you're telling the truth. I had to ask about the knife to see if you had been in the melons. Your dad and his brother were regulars in my melons in their youth. I probably shot them both in the ass about twenty times. I was sure glad when your dad met your mom and went off to war."

I said, "I already took the test at the recruiter's and I'm leaving in a month. So you don't need to worry about me."

"Now, I'm worried about my granddaughter," I was kind of hoping you had a pocketknife."

"I haven't done anything; I don't even know what to do. When I marry her we will need to call you to ask what the pocketknife is for.

Dallas said, "You really are dumb. Admit to chasing my granddaughter, and don't know what to do with a pocket knife. I never met a kid that didn't have a pocketknife."

"I keep losing them as fast as I buy them."

"Stop up tomorrow and I'll sell you a good knife, cheap. I've got a collection of them I found in the watermelon patch. One of them is probably your dad's."

Dallas was having a private belly laugh with himself. If you walked up behind him he appeared normal, but on the short side. When he turned he had an extruded stomach, must have been from eating because he didn't drink. He should have been wearing suspenders but he wasn't. His belt was clinched down low and only seen from the back.

Dallas said, "Come on over let me show you what I'm talking about." We crossed the driveway to the watermelon patch. I could see the entry path for the heavy breathing intruders; it was from the barn area. Dallas stopped and picked up a small cone shaped piece of melon. "This should heal ok; it sure is nothing to brag about."

Dallas looked the melon cone over, flicked off several pieces of debris and gently shoved it back in the tapered hole in one end of a large watermelon. It fit perfect.

"That will be healed tomorrow; all you will see is a small circle scar. We call them ladies melons. Women always buy them. They believe that eating a ladies melon will keep you from getting wrinkles, because its protein enriched."

I noticed the next nesting area had three watermelons in a triangle pattern. The large melon at the apex and two round melons several feet away about a foot apart.

I said, "That looks like Barb Hill."

"That is Barb Hill to those river boys down the road."

I noticed that it had a circle cut at the end away from the 44DD melons, the cone plug had been returned to its violated home.

"These boys were regulars; notice how they didn't break any of the vines. Did you see that Barb Hill has been visited before? Every full moon it's the same thing."

"That's my problem; the damn full moon did me in."

"Watch your cussing son, don't bother with it until you can do it right."

I said, "I want to learn."

Dallas said, "Learn what? You're so dumb I don't know where to start. Do you want to learn to shoot this shotgun? To cuss? To romance a watermelon? To make me a great-grandfather?"

I said, "I'll be up tomorrow to pick out a pocketknife."

Dallas smiled and started raising the shotgun real slow. "Run for it. I'm still counting."

I made a move that might get me behind the outhouse. I yelled over my shoulder, "Where's the count?"

"Five and counting."

"Four--Three--Two--One"—BOOM—SALT.