National Watermelon Day

It's certainly a fine day for watermelon!

This one came out of the Wrong Box, and I'm very glad it did or I wouldn't have had a watermelon bow for today...or at least not one that y'all haven't seen.  That would've been unacceptable since I'm fond of watermelon, especially the little ones with the dark rind, the so-called "black diamonds."  One year some bright yellow ones grew at Grandpa's farm, and those were what we had.  And I mean they were yellow!  On the outside they were normally colored, but once Daddy cut them open they were a lovely golden yellow inside.  That was one of the best watermelons I ever tasted, and the only one that I ever ate straight from the rind.  Y'all know how in cartoons and books people are usually depicted as eating watermelon from the rind?  We didn't usually do that.  Mama would cut the rind open, chunk up the interior, and serve it to us that way.  The local colony of alley cats got the rind, which they surprisingly loved.  I've learned since then that one can pickle watermelon rind just like one can cucumbers, but I digress.  All four of us ate our yellow melon straight from the rind, and my dad took plenty of pictures!  I wish I knew where those pictures were now, of us eating that lovely yellow watermelon.  Not to brag, but the pictures came out pretty darn cute.  I always will wonder though, why watermelon is so commonly depicted as being pink?  I've seen that beautiful yellow, and the classic red, and a nice shade of orange like cantaloupe, but never pink.

Oh well, no biggie.  It's still a cute bow.

Did y'all know that some folks once believed that watermelon caused malaria?  In Little House on the Prairie, when Laura Ingalls Wilder was a small child and living in Kansas, malaria was called "fever 'n' ague," and at one point the whole Ingalls family came crashing down with it!  It's possible that they could have died had they not been discovered by a travelling doctor who worked with the local Native Americans.  But with the help of said doctor and a neighbor the family recovered, and after Pa got well again he brought home a watermelon.  Pa hadn't had a decent watermelon "since Hector was a pup," and fever 'n' ague was caused by "breathing the night air."  Ma argued that the watermelon was GROWN in the night air, and she refused to eat it or let the children near it.  Pa did eat the melon, and the next day he had a bit of a relapse...but so did Ma, who hadn't touched the watermelon.  Of course it was eventually learned that malaria was carried and spread by mosquitoes, and since the Ingalls family lived near a creek full of blackberry bushes, the mosquitoes were plenty.  The whole chapter on the battle with malaria can be found HERE.

Thank goodness watermelon DOESN'T carry malaria, and thank goodness people learned that, or I might never have gotten to eat it!

Happy National Watermelon Day,
RagingMoon1987