New Year, Old News: A look at watermelons in local history

Rebekah Sheats
Contributor

January always brings a fresh start—a fresh, new year and usually some new resolutions to go with it. Historically, January has been a month devoted to looking back over the events of the past year and recalling the interesting occurrences and changes that have taken place during that time.
In the hurry and bustle of everyday life, it’s easy to overlook the obvious, the commonplace, and the normal. Eighty-six years ago, this was the case with a staple product of Jefferson County culture: watermelons.
Watermelons have been part of our local history for centuries. In 1884, W. M. Girardeau and other growers planted hundreds of acres of watermelons each year. They sold the melons and also shipped tens of thousands of pounds of seed to out-of-state markets.
In the mid-1900s, D. H. Gilbert was one of the main exporters of watermelon seed. By this point in the county’s history, watermelon production was such an integral part of Jefferson County life that it often went unnoticed. In January 1937, however, that suddenly changed. The Monticello News showcased the local watermelon crop in a front-page article entitled “LARGE SHIPMENTS TO DISTANT LANDS.” The article read:
“Large shipments of watermelon seeds from Monticello have become so frequent that in recent years, although general interest in this industry is felt by all our citizens, no special comment has been forthcoming. But recently, Mr. D. H. Gilbert reports that his warehouse received substantial orders from the cities of Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt, Africa. Inquiries have also been received by Mr. Gilbert regarding shipments of watermelon seeds in vast quantities; shipments expressed in boat-load volume.”
Watermelons and their seed continued to be an important crop for Jefferson County for much of the twentieth century. Gene Brock, a local farmer born in 1934, had many memories of helping plant and harvest watermelons as a boy in the 1930s and 1940s. When he entered high school in Monticello, Gene wrote a report on watermelon seeds. He recalled: “At that time, Jefferson County produced three fourths of the watermelon seed in the world. The seed was used as filler for medicine tablets and things. My granddaddy and several other farmers grew watermelon just to get the seeds out of them.”
As a teenager in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Gene began working at the railroad station in Monticello. His job was to pack boxcars full of watermelons brought in from the local farmers. “Usually I packed two or three cars per day,” he explained. “The most I ever packed was five boxcars in one day. That day I was working for three farmers, and I had somebody handing the watermelons in to me, so I didn’t have to go back and forth from the cart to get them. You could put 30,000 pounds on a boxcar.”
The boxcars were inspected by a federal agent to ensure proper packing and to check the quality of the melons. Gene recalled: “Every time you put up three tiers of watermelon, the federal inspector would come in and look through them. He could tell a green watermelon.” If the inspector found a watermelon that didn’t make the grade, Gene would have to remove the offending melon and restack the others.
“I learned from that inspector,” Gene noted. “I got to where I could grade the watermelons myself. If I knew something was a cull, I wouldn’t put it in the stack, because I’d have to redo it.” Much of Gene’s training came from what he learned through working with the inspector.
Gene packed watermelons into boxcars at the Monticello station and at New Monticello until the spur was discontinued. After the train stopped coming into town, local crops began to be shipped via semitruck rather than boxcar. “The semitrucks would go to the field to load the watermelons,” Gene noted. “I’d ride in the semis, pack them out for two hours, then come back and weigh them.” There were enough farms in Jefferson and neighboring counties to keep Gene and other young men busy the entire season.
Watermelon production in Jefferson County has seen a steep decline in the past few decades, but watermelons are still a vital part of our lives, as witnessed by the Watermelon Festival celebrated here each June. Agricultural changes come and go, but nothing can replace the thrill a child (or adult) experiences in biting into a sweet, juicy watermelon on a warm summer day. Hopefully, that simple pleasure is here to stay.