Watermelon raids we have known

[TexasJerseyMilker]

I thought it would be fun to start a discussion about childhood (and adult) watermelon thefts, orchard raids and suchlike.

OK. One summer when I was 13 I got to go back to Texas and spend time with my cousins. There was a guy down the road from grandma's house who had a truck patch. There was one really huge watermelon out in the middle you could see it from the road. My cousins and some of their friends and I decided to take it. There was about 5 kids. At dark we all crawled under the mesh fence and went on our hands and knees through the vines, closer and closer. The huge watermelon was shining in the moonlight. Suddenly dogs barking, the porch light came on, a man's voice yelling and a shotgun blast. We ran like a turned over bucket of mice but on the way out someone got a smaller melon. It was still warm from the sun and really sweet.

When I was a kid the people next door had a pet sheep. We used to tease this sheep from the top of the wooden fence. If you fell in there that sheep was really mean and would ram you. We all had an irrational hatred of that sheep. We would pick green grapes to throw and imbed them into the sheeps wool. It looked like the sheep was covered with green ticks. Later that summer I was out messing around at night, climbed into Mrs Heinrick's vegetable garden and operated on her ripe tomatos. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to cut holes and put some of my mom's saccharin pills inside each tomato.

Mrs Heinricks did not like us kids. There was a big tree right on the fenceline. The wood fence divided the property and also the tree. We would climb up in the tree and tease her son and she would come out screaming. So she painted the limbs of the tree with tar. We got buckets of sand and covered the tar and climbed up anyway.

Another time in Texas, my cousin Mike and I got some firecrackers around 4th of July. This was a classic old southern small hick one street town. The main street had stores with overhanging porches and black folks would sit in chairs in front of the stores. We climbed up on the roofs and tossed fire crackers down there and yelling Snake! You can imagine the commotion. So we got bored and left. We thought it would be fun to climb up in a tree, go out on a limb and drop firecrackers on a big nest of red ants on the ground below. Suddenly we were stinging and burning all over. It was horrible. The only way to get down was through the mass of red ants that covered the trunk and branch we were on so we dropped out of the tree into the nest This stuff may not seem very funny but it sure was to a kid (later).

When I was a 6 or 7 year old kid we lived near an artichoke field. Mom would send us out with sacks to get artichokes. She always told me to look out for snakes and not to mess with them. So of course I looked for snakes and messed with them.

 

[chaded]

I thought it would be fun to start a discussion about childhood (and adult) watermelon thefts, orchard raids and suchlike.

OK. One summer when I was 13 I got to go back to Texas and spend time with my cousins. There was a guy down the road from grandma's house who had a truck patch. There was one really huge watermelon out in the middle you could see it from the road. My cousins and some of their friends and I decided to take it. There was about 5 kids. At dark we all crawled under the mesh fence and went on our hands and knees through the vines, closer and closer. The huge watermelon was shining in the moonlight. Suddenly dogs barking, the porch light came on, a man's voice yelling and a shotgun blast. We ran like a turned over bucket of mice but on the way out someone got a smaller melon. It was still warm from the sun and really sweet.

When I was a kid the people next door had a pet sheep. We used to tease this sheep from the top of the wooden fence. If you fell in there that sheep was really mean and would ram you. We all had an irrational hatred of that sheep. We would pick green grapes to throw and imbed them into the sheeps wool. It looked like the sheep was covered with green ticks. Later that summer I was out messing around at night, climbed into Mrs Heinrick's vegetable garden and operated on her ripe tomatos. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to cut holes and put some of my mom's saccharin pills inside each tomato.

Mrs Heinricks did not like us kids. There was a big tree right on the fenceline. The wood fence divided the property and also the tree. We would climb up in the tree and tease her son and she would come out screaming. So she painted the limbs of the tree with tar. We got buckets of sand and covered the tar and climbed up anyway.

Another time in Texas, my cousin Mike and I got some firecrackers around 4th of July. This was a classic old southern small hick one street town. The main street had stores with overhanging porches and black folks would sit in chairs in front of the stores. We climbed up on the roofs and tossed fire crackers down there and yelling Snake! You can imagine the commotion. So we got bored and left. We thought it would be fun to climb up in a tree, go out on a limb and drop firecrackers on a big nest of red ants on the ground below. Suddenly we were stinging and burning all over. It was horrible. The only way to get down was through the mass of red ants that covered the trunk and branch we were on so we dropped out of the tree into the nest This stuff may not seem very funny but it sure was to a kid (later).

When I was a 6 or 7 year old kid we lived near an artichoke field. Mom would send us out with sacks to get artichokes. She always told me to look out for snakes and not to mess with them. So of course I looked for snakes and messed with them.

I wonder why?

 

[Lucky]

Funny stories. How long ago was this?

 

[MurraysMutts]

Ohhh. Those poor artichokes...


Never stole a watermelon. We liked to trespass on the neighboring farm to the old 'hood..

There was great bike trails down by the creek. Lots of jumps and ramps and what not. It was heavily used but the rumor was that the old man had a shotgun loaded with salt and he would not hesitate to shoot trespassing kids.

Never seen nor heard of it actually happening. Lots of us would spend hours n hours down there.

Alright.
So one time we taking our bikes off some sweet jumps. One of my friends had an old crummy pos bike. His seat and handlebars were always coming loose. Well... u guessed it. He took a big jump and that damned seat flopped pointed end up. When he came down it was not good. Poor kid had to have stitches in an undesirable place.
He never did go back down there and ride around.


For a while, we had friends stealing cigarettes from the local quick shop. The ol gal running it got wise to us. The others finally convinced the gal that I was 18. Was 14 at the time.

I think she got tired of smokes coming up missing and figured it was better to sell em than end up with a bunch of damn theiving kids stealing them. Looking back on it... she knew every one of us!
That, or it was her bright blond hair!

 

[Travlr]

We had a tobacco field next to the new house. We'd sneak in to the field at night and cut leaves, and dry them on the roof. I had a corncob pipe and that was some nasty stuff.

My sister and I discover a nest full of over ripe goose eggs. We were throwing them at trees and buildings on the farm and the stench was awesome. So bad it made us retch if we got too close. We were down to the last egg and decided to do something special because we wanted to see what was in the egg if it wasn't smashed. We cracked it lightly against the cement kitchen step... and suddenly it EXPLODED! Gray, thick, chunky goo went all over us. In our mouths. The worst part was that my sister had broken her collar bone and she had a cast on that looked like a short T-shirt. My mother filled a washtub with suds and stripped us down to bathe outside. But my sister reeked for a couple of weeks. We got used to it and hardly noticed but when we went into town we got some pretty odd looks.

There were signs everywhere we went that said "white only" or "colored". They were over bathroom doors or water fountains. We had a young, black woman that would come a couple of times a week to clean the house and iron laundry. One day my mother was going to be gone and told me the maid would have my lunch money. I held out my hand so she could drop the money into my palm... and she held the money out so I had to take it from her hand. I could tell she was looking at me to see how I'd react to touching her. It was right around the time the three social workers were murdered and buried in an earthen dam.

I started gentling horses for a guy when I was 14. One night he brought a high dollar yearling filly over without calling us first and we had to clean out a stall for her. He tied her to the front porch of the stable and as we carried a feed bunk out of the stall it scraped against something and made a loud grinding noise and the filly spooked. The uprights on the porch were tied together with net fencing and when she pulled the first one out the fencing was attached to the others so every time one came loose the next one followed... and by the time she was finished the entire porch roof had collapsed. She turned out to be one of the more bullet proof horses I worked with, very trusting, but he took her to a trainer for cutter racing on snow and after that she was hyped up bad and hard to handle.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

The watermelon raid and firecracker bombs were 55 years ago. Nocturnal surgery on Mrs. Heinrick's tomatoes must have been 58 years ago. Artichoke field snake hunts 62 years ago. Why do kids do any of the things they do?

The rotten goose eggs- Something similar happened but I was an adult woman. Some rich people had a lake with swans. I found a swan nest and braved the powerful angry male swan to get a swan egg. Getting hit on the shins by a swan wing bone is like being hit with a 2x4. I had a big chicken hen that had gone broody so I thought I would take the egg home and let her hatch it. I was glad when the grumpy,, pecky old biddy accepted the big egg and straddled it. I looked in a book and found out the swan incubation period is 36 days. All those hot summer nights I would go out with a flashlight and candle the egg to monitor it's development. With increasing excitement I went out at the end of 5 weeks and shined the light into the egg. But I could only make out some vague messed up patterns. I held it up to my ear to listen for peeping, heard nothing so I gave it a little shake. It exploded. The overpowering odor hit me with a tidal wave of nausea. I remember vomiting and retching, stripping off and rinsing my head with a hose. I never could get that rotten egg stench out of my hair. I cut it really short and still smelled it for the rest of the summer.

 

[wbvs58]

I thought it would be fun to start a discussion about childhood (and adult) watermelon thefts, orchard raids and suchlike.

OK. One summer when I was 13 I got to go back to Texas and spend time with my cousins. There was a guy down the road from grandma's house who had a truck patch. There was one really huge watermelon out in the middle you could see it from the road. My cousins and some of their friends and I decided to take it. There was about 5 kids. At dark we all crawled under the mesh fence and went on our hands and knees through the vines, closer and closer. The huge watermelon was shining in the moonlight. Suddenly dogs barking, the porch light came on, a man's voice yelling and a shotgun blast. We ran like a turned over bucket of mice but on the way out someone got a smaller melon. It was still warm from the sun and really sweet.

When I was a kid the people next door had a pet sheep. We used to tease this sheep from the top of the wooden fence. If you fell in there that sheep was really mean and would ram you. We all had an irrational hatred of that sheep. We would pick green grapes to throw and imbed them into the sheeps wool. It looked like the sheep was covered with green ticks. Later that summer I was out messing around at night, climbed into Mrs Heinrick's vegetable garden and operated on her ripe tomatos. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to cut holes and put some of my mom's saccharin pills inside each tomato.

Mrs Heinricks did not like us kids. There was a big tree right on the fenceline. The wood fence divided the property and also the tree. We would climb up in the tree and tease her son and she would come out screaming. So she painted the limbs of the tree with tar. We got buckets of sand and covered the tar and climbed up anyway.

Another time in Texas, my cousin Mike and I got some firecrackers around 4th of July. This was a classic old southern small hick one street town. The main street had stores with overhanging porches and black folks would sit in chairs in front of the stores. We climbed up on the roofs and tossed fire crackers down there and yelling Snake! You can imagine the commotion. So we got bored and left. We thought it would be fun to climb up in a tree, go out on a limb and drop firecrackers on a big nest of red ants on the ground below. Suddenly we were stinging and burning all over. It was horrible. The only way to get down was through the mass of red ants that covered the trunk and branch we were on so we dropped out of the tree into the nest This stuff may not seem very funny but it sure was to a kid (later).

When I was a 6 or 7 year old kid we lived near an artichoke field. Mom would send us out with sacks to get artichokes. She always told me to look out for snakes and not to mess with them. So of course I looked for snakes and messed with them.

Well, Texasmilker, I don't know whether you are a fit and proper person to be on CT, have you changed your ways?

Ken

 

[sstterry]

Once, when I was very young, my dad caught some boys (students of his from his Ag classes) in our watermelon patch down by the creek. We went down and blocked the boys in and my dad told them that he had been missing a Chain Saw and would hate to think that those boys might be accused of stealing it and getting the Sherriff involved. It scared the boys pretty badly and they never came back.

On the way back to the house, I asked Dad about the Chain Saw because I was not aware one was missing. He told me that the saw went missing 15 years before that, and that he must have forgotten to mention that to the boys

That is what the experience of being a teacher showed me. He knew just what strings to tug to get the behavior he wanted from them, and they thought he was a saint for not getting them in trouble.

 

[greybeard]

Mrs Heinricks did not like us kids.

I can't imagine why that would be...

 

[Dave]

There was a slight draw on the down hill side of the road. A bunch of us would wait in that draw with snow balls. We were out of sight from the road. A car would come by and we would plaster it with snow balls. Jump on our sled and make a quick exit down the hill. There was a chicken house at the bottom of the hill to hide behind. One time we plastered a Deputies car (we couldn't see the car just head lights coming down the road). The car stopped. After a bit Mr Price appeared at the top of the hill yelling for his boys. Mr Price was a retired Air Force officer who spent 2 years as a POW in Germany during WWII. He was rather stern. The rest of us fled for our lives. I never did hear what punishment Bill and Earl got.

 

[greybeard]

I suppose Snowballs DO throw better than Twinkies...

 

[Hereford2]

I thought it would be fun to start a discussion about childhood (and adult) watermelon thefts, orchard raids and suchlike.

OK. One summer when I was 13 I got to go back to Texas and spend time with my cousins. There was a guy down the road from grandma's house who had a truck patch. There was one really huge watermelon out in the middle you could see it from the road. My cousins and some of their friends and I decided to take it. There was about 5 kids. At dark we all crawled under the mesh fence and went on our hands and knees through the vines, closer and closer. The huge watermelon was shining in the moonlight. Suddenly dogs barking, the porch light came on, a man's voice yelling and a shotgun blast. We ran like a turned over bucket of mice but on the way out someone got a smaller melon. It was still warm from the sun and really sweet.

When I was a kid the people next door had a pet sheep. We used to tease this sheep from the top of the wooden fence. If you fell in there that sheep was really mean and would ram you. We all had an irrational hatred of that sheep. We would pick green grapes to throw and imbed them into the sheeps wool. It looked like the sheep was covered with green ticks. Later that summer I was out messing around at night, climbed into Mrs Heinrick's vegetable garden and operated on her ripe tomatos. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to cut holes and put some of my mom's saccharin pills inside each tomato.

Mrs Heinricks did not like us kids. There was a big tree right on the fenceline. The wood fence divided the property and also the tree. We would climb up in the tree and tease her son and she would come out screaming. So she painted the limbs of the tree with tar. We got buckets of sand and covered the tar and climbed up anyway.

Another time in Texas, my cousin Mike and I got some firecrackers around 4th of July. This was a classic old southern small hick one street town. The main street had stores with overhanging porches and black folks would sit in chairs in front of the stores. We climbed up on the roofs and tossed fire crackers down there and yelling Snake! You can imagine the commotion. So we got bored and left. We thought it would be fun to climb up in a tree, go out on a limb and drop firecrackers on a big nest of red ants on the ground below. Suddenly we were stinging and burning all over. It was horrible. The only way to get down was through the mass of red ants that covered the trunk and branch we were on so we dropped out of the tree into the nest This stuff may not seem very funny but it sure was to a kid (later).

When I was a 6 or 7 year old kid we lived near an artichoke field. Mom would send us out with sacks to get artichokes. She always told me to look out for snakes and not to mess with them. So of course I looked for snakes and messed with them.

I wouldn't have been able to sit down for a week if I'd done any One of those things lol. But then again I grew up with respect for other people and never went beyond thinking about treating other people and their animals that way. My grandparents (who I spent a lot of time with) were old school Catholic's and they taught me respect for other people and boundaries....

 

[Ky hills]

I reckon the funniest thing we did, as younins was while at a campground, amongst a few notorious practical jokers, myself and a couple other boys got in on it after being accused as being part of something my uncle pulled. He put a for sale by owner sign in front of his buddy's camper. I happened to be with him and had no idea what he was up to until he did it. People next to them told the guy that a big fellow wearing a red cap and a kid did it so, it was on after that.
Me and a couple friends picked some ragweed it and let dry then switched it for his bag of pipe tobacco. Things escalated from there to just a level of silliness, and I'm more of a serious person even at that age, so I just stopped. All of the folks involved have laughed about all that stuff over the years.
I've never really been a fan of doing destructive or mean things, was raised to be respectful so I never wanted to cross any serious lines with nonsense. Things can get out of hand and people could get hurt if things go too far, especially with kids that don't see the potential for danger.

 

[greybeard]

I cheated once in a limbo contest.
It was the lowest thing I ever did...

 

[Ouachita]

The Castleberry's moved here in 1969 from somewhere up north. At the time, they were my grandparents closest neighbors. They were friendly with each other, but never friends, probably because they weren't from here.

Fred and Edna were mean and everyone knew it. They had a perpetual angry face and negativity was the norm.

Fred planted a peach orchard and by the time we moved onto the place between them and my grandparents in 1983, it was a pay to pick, by the bushel.

I'd go with mom and help her pick the peaches. Edna insisted we use her 1/4 bushel baskets; just bring 'em back for the next pickin'. This went on for a couple seasons until dad observed that the basket was less than a 1/4" bushel.

One night my best friend and I raided the orchard and took free peaches to all the blue haired ladies in the neighborhood that had been short changed. Somebody told on us and we had to mow Fred and Edna's yard for the rest of the summer. Edna was a bitty, and Fred was just an angry old man.

Although it wasn't planned, that fall same friend and I were hunting and took a shortcut across the backside of Castleberry's place. We stole two mallard duck decoys from his pond.

Fast forward. I grew up and bought the land between Castleberry and forest service in 1996. About year 2005 Edna died. Then, January 2010 we had a severe cold spell.

Me and my kids went to check on old man Castleberry. Helped him get firewood up and cleaned the carburetor on his generator. This was the beginning of a new relationship that would last until he died about 5 years ago.

Turns out he was one of the kindest men I've known. I still had the duck decoys, so I took them over to him and apologized for taking them in an act of defiance. Don't think I've seen another man laugh and cry like that.

I still have the ducks.

Partly related to this; they had a peach orchard, but Edna always brought a persimmon pie to the RVFD pie/cake auction. They were great and brought the best money, but nothing ever made her smile.

 

[Ouachita]

I cheated once in a limbo contest.
It was the lowest thing I ever did...

You must've been an angel.

Still got your wings?

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

I never got caught and course I don't do things like this anymore. I was a kid.

Another confession involving produce- When I was in high school it was Halloween night and my friends and I went roaming around at dusk packed in a tiny Karman Gia car. We saw a HUGE jackolantern on a front porch. Darcy, the smallest kid, got out to take the pumpkin. He crouched down, put his arms around it. It was so heavy Darcy could not pick it up. Darcy! we hissed, Come on, come on! He managed to pick it up and tried to run. A really fat man wearing only tighty whiteys came out yelling Hey You Kids! Darcy staggered across the lawn with it, fell into the open car door crushing the other miscreants. We drove off. Darcy dragging leg lost a shoe. What are we going to do with it now? I had an idea. I carved F_ _ _ YOU on the back, put a strong flashlight inside. We left it in the shadows in front of the police station.

 

[Ouachita]

Speaking of spanking. Dad would grab my left wrist and swat my butt with his belt or a switch that he made me cut.

I'd run at breakneck speed to get away from the thrashing. I figure dad only stopped after he got dizzy.

Never knew another man that could remove his belt that fast. Dad was a champion.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Another produce prank. When I was a kid my sister and I would climb out our bedroom window at night, go down the street, toss pebbles at another girl's window, and take apples and on a hike to upland pastures in order to catch, make rope bridles and ride other people's horses in the hills. Then at the glimmer of dawn would return and climb back in the window above the flower bed. Dad would ask Why is this rose bush always broken?

 

[farmerjan]

I cannot imagine doing any of those things. My father worked 2-3 jobs to make ends meet and I never thought about taking or destroying someone else's garden produce. We grew alot of vegs for our family and I helped put them up every year. I worked on a laying hen farm at 14 for enough money to buy my first horse, besides the babysitting....and paid for all the feed and hay she ate......

Never would have occurred to me to play "practical jokes" as I sure would not have wanted someone to do it to me or my stuff... Guess I wasn't much fun as a kid...