Monday, February 02, 2009

Poor Pitiful Us

I am hip-deep in old photos at the moment. It's been a nice diversion since my mind has been lately fogged from sinus, cedar fever and cold aftermath. I have been pulling photo albums out of the backs of closets and loose photos out of storage boxes. I have a dozen file folders strung across the desk that I am using in an attempt to sort this mountain of pictures.

I have a lot of scanning ahead of me. And certain kinfolks should start preparing to fork over big wads of cash to keep some embarrassing shots hidden from view.

Here's a picture of little brother and myself that always makes me think of starving children in third world countries. Little brother had the skinniest legs around until he was almost grown.


This was taken in the side yard of my grandparents' house and the watermelon was one grown by my grandfather. Every summer there would be a huge pile of watermelons under the shade tree just a few steps from the front door. All of us got spoiled for having a luscious ripe watermelon any time we wanted it. We would eat the juicy heart and then pitch the remainder over the fence to the hogs and go for the next one.

It gives all of my grandfather's descendants acute gas to pay $2.99 for a "personal sized" watermelon that has no taste, let alone the price of a full sized melon.

We didn't know how good we had it.

I take that back. I think we did know how good we had it. It was one of the joys of my childhood.

LSW

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Well, in that picture I look like I'm barely hanging in there...bet I was happy though. Anybody with watermelon juice dripping off their elbows is having a good time.

Anonymous said...

David is smaller than the watermelon. I was that way too. Not anymore. I went to buy a suit tonight for the father-daughter banquet at church and, after trying on pants, decided I need to stop messing around and shed a few pounds- like fifty.

Anonymous said...

Everytime Mother looks at watermelons at the store and sees the prices on them it sends her into telling about how the melons they sell in the store these days are just "hog melons". She can't beleive that most of the melons they fed to the hogs looked better than what makes it to the stores.

Anonymous said...

Yep. I've got an old yellow-handled pocket knife that belonged to our grandfather. Mom says he used to cut watermelons with it. She said the same thing, if a melon wasn't sweet enough, they'd toss it and grab another one. It's hard to beat a good watermelon on a hot summer day.