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Watermelon and Walter Hamilton
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This morning about eight thirty AM I took an untouched half of one of the best watermelons I ever tasted out to the chicken pen and set it down there for the chickens
to eat. I almost cried as they pounced on it and began as they always do by eating the seeds. I gave the watermelon to the chickens because my new sachrimeter that I just received had convinced me that I could no longer eat watermelon. Yesterday I ate a quarter of that melon and my blood sugar jumped from
136 mg/dl to 333 mg/dl and it has taken me until about right now to get the blood sugar back to a decent level. A few minutes ago it was back down to 116 mg/dl. So watermelon is not on my menu anymore. The real reason that tears came to my eyes however was not because I am to be deprived of watermelon from now until I die. I don't like that but I can live with it. The real reason is that the sight of watermelon brought to my mind my long gone maternal grandfather Walter Thomas Hamilton. He loved watermelon as no one else ever did and he could tell a good one and whether it was ripe at thirty paces.
My grandfather was a very poor man. He was a tenant farmer during the depression near the town of Plainview, Texas. He farmed 160 acres of good rich loam that was watered from the Ogallala aquifer that underlies most of the Texas Panhandle and was pumped up to the surface at the rate of 1200 gallons per minute and reached the surface at a constant 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Best water I ever tasted. The farm was owned by the Texas Land And Development Company who dictated what he should plant and who received as rent 3/5ths of the income from the farm produce he grew. TL&D also controlled how many acres he planted in what crop. Grandad grew cotton, sugar beets (for seed), alfalfa for hay, milo maize or kafir korn and maybe a little wheat or oats. He was allowed to have cattle, horses, hogs and chickens on the land and got to keep all the increase from these animals. But when all was said and done the 2/5th share of the money crops that he sold was all of the money that he got out of the farm and it went to reduce the debt incurred in buying seed, diesel oil to run the irrigation well and the necessities of life such as clothes. So Grandad throughout the year had to watch every penny. Gasoline was 13 cents per gallon and on Saturday morning Grandad would buy one gallon at the station in Aiken. That would get his car to Plainview and back and the family to church at Aiken on Sunday and Wednesday nights. I'll bet that old car never had a full tank in its life
Each Saturday morning Grandad would take about forty dozen eggs into town and about six to eight gallons of pure Jersey cream. He would sell the eggs to several grocery stores in town. I don't know what he received for them but I would guess that ten or twelve cents per dozen would have been tops and the cream he sold at the creamery for some small amount of money. It was this weekly income from eggs and cream that Grandad lived on and supported his family of wife, daughter, son , and me part of the year and that after paying his tithe of ten percent to the church. It was not an easy life. Prior to coming to town he had carefully studied the ads from the grocery stores in town and knew just where the prices were lowest. He was certainly not an impulse buyer. He did not believe that store bought bread or breakfast cereal was fit to eat nor did he ever buy meat other than bacon, and salt pork. He bought flour, coffee, tea, salt, pepper, sugar and meal. Just about everything else we ate had to come from the garden or the barn.
Grandad loved watermelon above all things. It was very rare however for him to buy one. He simply did not have the money. I paid five dollars and ninety eight cents for that melon I fed to the chickens this morning and I bet Grandad would have considered that price sinful. It was very seldom that he ever bought one but when he did I would be willing to wager that he never paid more than about fifty cents for a big melon and I think that he would have considered that extravagant.
So when I gave the watermelon to the chickens I thought long and hard about Walter Thomas Hamilton. When we were hoeing the cotton together he would tell me how beautiful the plains were where he lived and how happy he was to be a farmer. He taught me more about life than he knew. Among other things he taught me to lie on top of the barn and make images of the gulf clouds floating high above. He was a grand man.
love
dad, grandad, ami
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