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Deep South Tales Both Actual and True
THE HISTORIC BIG SANDY CREEK WATERMELON SEED SKIRMISH
Uncle Sam’s big shiny-toothed smile is directed at me one scorching summer afternoon. He stands waist-deep in icy water, waiting for me to take my next deep breath.
It’s the longest deep breath I’ve ever held.
I’m standing barefoot and swimming-suited atop a time-smoothed boulder on the banks of Big Sandy Creek near Tuscaloosa, just a few years after the end of World War II.
My life hangs in the balance as I try to make an important decision.
I must decide whether and when to jump into the coldest cold water in my known universe. Big Sandy is always chilling to the senses, way colder than any other creek or stream anywhere around, making it difficult for most of us kids and relatives to tolerate it for long. Will I enter or will I retreat?
I take one more look around me, looking for a sign, but all I see is cousins and aunts and uncles and parents. They are all preoccupied with the duties of summer—-skimming pebbles across running waters, spreading blankets on the red clay ground, opening picnic baskets and spreading snacks and goodies about, shooing flies and gnats away from body and edibles, playing tag among the pines, hiking up swimming trunks that are soggy and descending, heaving a large watermelon from the water, sunning themselves on grass and stone.
I can’t hold my breath any longer. My toes are twitching, curling in anticipation of slamming into barely tolerable temperatures. My hesitancy hordes a secret, and that secret is the fact that I do not know how to swim and that I would rather Uncle Sam did not learn this fact. He’s been known to toss kids into water just to see whether they know how to swim or whether they are skilled at sinking like stones.
There has got to be a way to avoid becoming one of Uncle Sam’s experiments.
Splat!
That’s the sudden sound of a small dark missile bouncing off my right temple. I snap a sideways glance just in time to spy Cousin Jerry squeezing a watermelon seed between thumb and finger, aiming a second volley at my head.
All my attention is diverted. I jump off the boulder onto the bank and run toward the watermelon slices that Mother has just laid out for us. Jerry is chasing me with his cocked and loaded seed, and I am in survival mode, grabbing a slice for myself, munching into the red sweetness in order to retrieve two seeds.
I turn to Jerry, whose seedy bullet has just missed me, giving me the two seconds I need to spurt a seed at him. A nicely aimed hit to his shoulder. The Big Sandy Creek Watermelon Seed Skirmish begins!
Soon, several of us kids and adults are ducking and shooting seeds and generally laughing ourselves silly.
This is my kind of war. Nobody wins, nobody loses. We just have a good time jumping headlong out of our hot summer day routines. The rewards are immense—-we eat some really good watermelon, we run ourselves ragged, we express our happiness and camaraderie in a harmless and memorable manner, and some of us even venture into Big Sandy Creek.
Those of us who can’t swim keep Uncle Sam at a distance. Those who know how to swim have a great time with uncles and aunts and kin.
The day is a happy one, and Big Sandy Creek remains fresh in memory to this day, though I never returned to the scene of the battle. I don’t know what happened to the big smooth boulder. I don’t even know whether Big Sandy waters remain to this day the coldest in the universe.
I do know this. To this day, I do not know how to swim. To this day, seedless watermelons seem not quite normal. To this day, I would give much to enjoy just one more golden afternoon cavorting with loved and lovely family members during a harmless war, the kind of war I wish everybody knew how to wage
© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed