Memories ~
From Falls Church to Kilmarnock
© 2007 Abilini's Computer Services
Chessie (circa. 1970)
For those who don’t know, Chessie is the name of the “Chesapeake Bay Sea
Monster”, like Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, only smaller… I hope!
My mother as previously stated loved to cook and to make things worse, she and
my father loved fruitcake (I told you they were strange)! Mom decided instead of
buying dried out fruitcakes that she could make them just as easily and probably
better. So, after figuring out what the ingredients were, she started her new
recipe. She quickly found out that Rind Melon (as claimed), was a key
ingredient and that none of the stores in or around Kilmarnock, carried it.
However she did find, from one of the stores, that Southern States carried the
seeds, and she could grow it herself. Sure they carried the seeds, but no one
there knew anything about its planting process. She found a book and determined
that it is a kind of melon; so, she made a few of hills (that is the way melons
are planted), in the garden and planted the entire package of seeds. She ‘never’
planted a small garden. Our garden had to feed seven, plus our neighbors. Not
our neighbors in Kilmarnock, but all our neighbors in Falls Hill, at that time
maybe 50 that we knew, but that’s another story! Needless to say, our garden
was 100 feet by 50 feet, or PDB (Pretty Darn Big). The tomatoes, the beans, the
onions, the squash, the radishes, the cucumbers, the corn, the watermelon, the
cantaloupe all came in as usual, and then a couple weeks later, the rind melon
was ripe, so we thought. If you don’t know, a rind melon looks like a sugar baby
watermelon, without the green stripes, solid dull green and hard as a rock.
One mild September morning, my mother woke me up, around 3:30 to 4 am, and told
me to get dressed and meet her out at the garden. When mom says get up, you get
up! So, I get dressed to go outside, sleepy-eyed, and dad looked at me and
said, “So, she got you, too”. We both headed toward the garden, mom, being the
smart one handed us each a flashlight, and told us where to stand and what to do
(by-the-way: at 4 am, it’s very dark outside). We formed a line, from the garden
to the creek. I was in the garden with a flashlight and small pruning shears,
dad was about 25 feet away (flashlight at his feet) and mom was about 25 feet
from dad (flashlight at her feet). Mom was the closest to the creek. I cut the
melon from the vine, (imagine a ten pin bowling ball, that weighs about two
pounds), I tossed it to dad, he tossed it to mom and she tossed it (brief
pause), into the creek. This went on for about an hour and a half, and then we
left, with broken backs, and went back to bed.
Do you know how many rind melons grow from one seed?
Meanwhile, our neighbor Boo, Billy and Bobby’s dad, a waterman, got up (everyday
at 5 am), ate his breakfast and walked down to his boat. He saw, what he later
described as, ‘Chessie mosey’d on by, bobbing up and down and was headed up the
creek’ (that means, the tide was coming in). About 8 hours later, Boo came back
home from working the water and saw ‘Chessie mosey her way back down the creek’
(now the tide is going out). Boo went up to his house and called our house. I
answered the phone and he asked, “Is your mother home”? I called to mom and she
talked to Boo for a few seconds, then, my mother rushed to the kitchen and
looked out the window and said, and I quote “Oh Shit!”; mom never used that word
unless something was really, really wrong. Then she started turning red and
laughing, hysterically. Dad and I rushed to her aid, where she looked at us,
pointed at the creek and said, “Look!” We did, and then it dawned on all of us
– Rind melons float! I never asked Boo but some how he just knew; it had to
be, Eloise.
As we were told later, mom found out (she probably read it in some plant
magazine), that for planting Rind melons, you cut one seed in half, plant
one half and save the other half for next year. One-half seed will grow between
8 and 10 melons, she planted an entire bag, around 50 seeds (you do the math).
Also, for a fruitcake, you need a piece of a rind melon about ¼ inch by 2 inches
cut into tiny, tiny pieces and then mixed into the batter. My father and I also
found out, the next spring, that saltwater doesn’t kill Rind melons. They were
growing all along the creek bank, for many, many years to come. I still
think our Chessie is much, much longer than Nessie!!!!
Oh, and by the way, fruitcakes without rind melon taste much, much better
than store bought and are fun to eat; especially, while you eat, you tell this
story.