MTFCA Forum

Here’s a photo from the Waco, Texas centennial celebration (1849-1949) of a misidentified Model T. The caption says it’s a 1913 but it’s a 17 -19 Touring I think and looks to be about used up! Anyway you can tell if you can get past the watermelons! The melons came from just north of Waco from Gholson. It’s about 10 miles from Waco and had several watermelon growers and among them was my Grandfather. I thought it was interesting.
The watermelons are what’s called black diamonds and can grow to 75-100 lbs so the caption says. I can’t remember my Grandfathers being that big but they were around 75 as I remember being told.

Those are some BIG watermelons! Around here anymore, about all we see are a little smaller than a basketball. And the flavor isn't very good.

Yes they are big. My Grandfathers black diamonds were a really dark green. His farm was mostly sandy red land in one part and that’s where he grew them. I went out with my other cousins (we were in grade school) and together we would lift up a melon and crack it open out in the field and it was really good. That was in the 1950’s.

John had to laugh at the story of cracking melons. We were a little more devious, we’d take our scout knives & cut the hearts out, eating them & leaving them in the field thinking Pop would never know whether the tractor or trailer wheel split the melon at least that’s what we believed. Ha. Boys y’all haven’t had a watermelon until you’ve had a Bradford, Sugar Baby or a Black Diamond. As a youth we’d haul truckloads of melons to the French Market in New Orleans from our farm. The Bradford melon juice was so sweet Pop said folks would make liquor from the juice & by far the best selling were the Bradford’s. Our farm has been in the family since 1821 & my great grandfather was one of the last folks in the community to grow them commercially because the yield was not as good as the Black diamond or a melon we called tiger melons because of their strips & size. As a youth we’d have stacks and stacks of melons under the oak trees to grade them by size for the market. The Bradfords though were handled differently Pop would make sure never to stack them more that 3 high because the rinds were not as tough as the other ones and stacking too high would crack them open. He would wear us out if we didn’t follow his orders. Those melons were the ones that brought the highest prices and were the first to be sold in the Quarter. My brother and I found several quart size mason jars full of those seeds in the barn but didn’t have much luck in growing them because of the age of the seeds I suppose. You can still get seeds that say they are Bradfords, they are expensive & don’t exactly taste like the ones Pop would grow but they are close. At a little less than a dollar a seed we didn’t buy many but it was worth the try & effort to bring back a memory or two. So if you every get a chance to taste a Bradford, do.

While we are on the subject of Watermelons, there was a 1974 film starring Charles Bronson about a Watermelon farmer. The title of the film is Mr. Majestyk. The spelling is correct. It was actually pretty good if you are a Charles Bronson fan, as am I.

Back in the 1970's when I was still working, we grew some watermelons in the yard. I had so many, I took a few to the office to give to anyone who wanted them. We had a black man who worked there who took two of them. One of other employees, made comments about it. He got in trouble because of racial remarks. That T in the picture above, looks like it is so heavily loaded that the fenders are almost scraping the tires!
Norm