Our local Kentucky Kroger has a 2 for $5 sale on watermelons right now.
On the historical side watermelon shipment in stock cars was common from the Missouri Bootheel in the early 1900s on both the Cotton Belt and Missouri Pacific. Joe Webb writing in Two Streaks of Rust notes the watermelon traffic for his Cotton Belt home town of East Prairie, Missouri. In the 1920s and 1930s the two popular local brands grown in the East Prairie fields as the “Irish Grey” and “Tom Watson”. A typical car of the time could hold 800 to 1,000 melons. Buyers would be working 25 to 30 cars at a time on the side track at East Prairie. A melon farmer could grow about a car load of melons per acre, and a acre of melons would realize the farmer $500. Prime harvest season was in August and September. In a good year upwards of 1,000 cars of watermelon would be shipped on the Cotton Belt out of East Prairie.
Overmod-- When you stated “we” I thought you meant the green train had appeared in Memphis. Duh, it was late. Still quite a funky looking thing coming or going.
Firelock–We have 2 giant watermelons and now a giant potato as our train. Next thing you know Penny will send a photo of this on her model railroad.
Overmod-- Well that answers the age old question ’ Can you pull the emergency cord for a watermelon?’ Answer… yes, but only if the train is just getting underway. Sounds reasonable to me…
SSW9389-- 2 for $5 in Kentucky … at least 10 bucks here for one in Northern Saskatchewan. Such is life. Maybe down to 6.99 in September for a while. 1,000 car loads of watermelons, wow. I assume none is handled by rail these days.
Well, let’s go back to South Carolina in the forties–canteloupe, 10 cents each or 3 for a quarter, small watermelons 25 cents each, and large watermelons 50 cents each–and they were fully ripe when the man drove his wagon up by your house (I don’t remember if he had a horse or a mule; I paid more attention to what he had in the wagon bed).
Don’t be. I can most definitely LEAVE them. Along with strawberries, lobsters, walnuts and everything else I’m allergic to and will nbever get to taste. [:(]
I recall an early issue of CTT where a modeler had made a stack of watermelons on a G scale flatcar by painting pecans! [:D] And my aunt from Atlanta says it’s “puh-cons”. A pee-can is something you relieve yourself in! [(-D]
Vince, if you have access to a greenhouse, and some of the relevant ‘soil supplements’, there is nothing for very large and thoroughly seeded quite like these.