How To Read a Watermelon

by David Feela of Dolores, CO

It’s guilt or shame, or maybe just plain ignorance, because I’ve never talked about my problem with produce. Like most men, I don’t eat enough roughage. Of course, now that it’s out of the bag, so to speak – discussed loudly and openly in a local grocer aisle – I feel I can finally talk about fiber and maybe achieve some kind of closure.

For decades when the summer melons rolled into the produce aisles, my mouth would water and I’d buy the biggest one. Watermelon in summer, as much as the 4th of July stands for patriotism and independence. Unfortunately, not every watermelon is endowed with the same inalienable perfection, and I have carted home quite a few duds over the course of my adult life. That is until I met Margaret in the produce aisle.

If this sounds too much like a soap opera, it’s because I had humongous twin melons strapped in the child seat of my grocery cart and I was making my last run past the frozen foods. The watermelons outweighed my few incidentals by a ration of twenty to one. That’s when I saw Margaret coming from the opposite direction. We slowed our carts, paused, and exchanged warm greetings. She had a single watermelon only about the size of a soccer ball in her cart, a dark and glossy green one that reminds me of unripe fruit. I didn’t want to say anything that would cause Margaret to have second thoughts about her melon; I prepared to roll.

“Are you going to buy both of those?” Margaret asked me.

“And eat them too” I replied, flashing her a wide watermelon grin. “I hope they’re as good as they look.”

“Um… well, really, David, they don’t look all that good.” Margaret said.

I was shocked. Normally people who work at the library are quiet people who respect other people’s choices and try to help out when their advice is sought. Margaret had been this and more during the 20 years I had known her, but I’d never tried to talk with her over the business end of a watermelon.

Then I remembered who I was talking to: It was Margaret – kind, sweet Margaret – the lady who helped me though graduate school by locating the stacks of resources I had to read, the Margaret who always says something nice about my latest column, the Margaret who has worked since the library in Alexandria was burned by the Romans. That Margaret. I could trust Margaret.

“Honestly… I’ll admit it…” I stammered, “I don’t have a clue about choosing a good watermelon.”

Margaret looked at me with those sympathetic but all-knowing reference librarian eyes, picked up the melon from her cart, and held it like a puppy. Then she plainly instructed me in the art of reading watermelons.

First, look for the sugar spot on the bottom, a light, yellowish or white area where the belly of the melon rested on the ground. The sugar spot says it will be sweet.

Second, look for the coloring to be a glossy green, not pale or sickly yellow.

Finally, hold the melon up and thump it quickly like a drum; the vibration should radiate through the entire melon.

I stared at the pathetic twins in my cart and sighed: no sugar spots, both of them pale and resonating like bricks. Heavy as bricks, I might add. Margaret sensed a a dark shadow of realization cross my face.

“Don’t worry, David, it’s very easy – try again.” Then she waved and moved on down the aisle.

I should have thrown myself in front of her cart. I wanted to ask her about cantaloupes, bananas, sweet corn, apples, tomatoes, and avocados. I was willing to take notes, to read books, to sit at this garden goddess’ feet and pick fruit from her tree of knowledge. But I was stuck in the frozen food aisle and she vanished behind a mound of iceberg lettuce.

To be literate and educated is never enough. The watermelons I loved were suddenly new. I rushed toward the pallet at the front of the store where they were confined in bins, waiting to be handled, to be chosen. The seedy and the seedless. The mealy and the meaty. One of them – just one – would be perfect, and waiting for me.

Of course, Margaret must have known what she’d done. Her eyes twinkled as she walked away, as if to say a seed has been planted. And planting seeds is so much easier than juggling watermelons.