One year, when I was age 10 or 12, Wally Smith planted 100 cantaloupe seedlings with the hope of a bountiful and profitable crop to sell from our drive in fruit stand.
The plants grew and the vines spread out. The first problem was the weeds. The second problem was getting his son to pull them, for he would rather have been playing in Park Rill which was a short distance away, for the weed patch was boring.
That summer was a hot one and the cantaloupe prospered in those conditions. They became large and sweet with the combination of good soil, fertilizer, water, and sun. Once we learned how to pick them, which was to easily remove the stem end from the fruit, we could enjoy the succulence of the orange flesh. The crop began to ripen, slowly at first then without any warning we were inundated with 40 ripe cantaloupe a day which filled five apple boxes.We sold them at 25 cents each at first then dropped the price to 10 cents each just so we wouldn’t have to throw them out. We even gave some away in combination with other fruit purchases. I ate as many as I could each day, might have been only three or four whole ones, don’t remember for sure. Eventually all the fruit ripened and the hot summer gave way to the cooler fall days. Wally learned a lesson that year for the following year we planted only ten seedlings. It was that summer that I gained a life long appreciation for the goodness of cantaloupe.
Written by Laird Smith