I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to pick up a few things and to catch up with the latest news. Jake came out to fill my tank with gas as he normally does when I drive up to the pumps. He asked if I had the oil in my car checked recently and I thought it might be a good idea so I pulled the lever for the catch to release the hood. There was a right brisk breeze in the air. It had been raining some, but it looked to be clearing off and turning colder. Jake thought we might have some frost by morning. Jake said the oil was fine and let the hood drop. He finished capping off the gas and I followed him inside.
The Reverend Johnson was over by the stove with Deputy Arnold Suggs and Hurshel Ledbedder. Hurshel’s wife, Dolly, was there with them and they were all laughing and carrying on something fierce. I paid Jake for the gas and told him there were a few other things I needed, then I wandered over toward the stove to see what all the merriment was about. Dolly was claiming she had been in one of the supermarkets in town recently and saw there was watermelon for sale in the produce section. Back when she was growing up you never saw watermelon for sale until mid summer. In fact, Dolly just couldn’t imagine watermelon tasting that good in cold weather.
The Reverend put on a face and said the very best melon he ever tasted was one he stole from Mister Hardley’s field. He chuckled with the memory and said him and his brother were all over this part of the country in the summer when they were boys. With the Reverend being the older of the two boys, it was him who decided what the two boys would be doing most times. It seems they had been out fishing in early August and had not caught anything worth keeping and were on their way back home. They had some yard work to attend to and they had to be back home a couple hours before sunset to still have enough daylight to see to attend their chores. It was mid afternoon and they were not looking forward to the work that awaited them at home. They were taking a short cut across Mister Hardley’s fields when they came upon the watermelon patch. There were all these big melons laying out in the hot sun, most of them with straw Mister Hardley had used to cover them.
Those watermelon certainly looked good on a hot August afternoon. What the two boys decided to do did not seem much like stealing, not like robbing a bank was stealing or like taking candy from a store. Mister Hardley had a field full of watermelon and he certainly did not plan to eat them every one. It seemed likely he would not miss one of the melons. The two boys made no effort at sneaking into the field. They just looked around until they saw a big melon that looked good and they picked it up and walked over to the shade of a big Oak tree. The Oak was beside a creek and the creek had a wooden bridge crossing it that tractors used to get from the field on one side to the field on the other. It was the younger brother that was carrying the melon. He walked to the center of the wood bridge and let the melon drop. It burst open on the wood planks and the two boys dug in.
The Reverend said he was shamed to admit such a thing in the wisdom of his mature years, but that melon was the best he ever tasted. If Mister Hardley had come up to the two boys and given them that exact same melon, it would not have tasted nearly so good as it did stolen on a hot August afternoon. The two boys finished up and washed their hands in the water of the creek, then walked on home to attend their chores. The problem with stealing is you don’t want word to get out that you have been a thief and the problem with the younger brother was he could never keep from telling what he had been doing. Jimmy Hardley was, of course, one of the boys’ best friends and Mister Hardley was good friends with the boys’ father.
The Reverend never did learn exactly how the truth circulated about, but a couple days after the watermelon theft, their father called the boys into the living room and sat them down to talk with them. The Reverend said it was to his credit he did not try to lie his way out of the crime. The two boys just owned up to their transgression as soon as their father began to question them. Their father asked if the melon had been good and the two boys admitted it had. Their father said he hoped the boys remembered how good that stolen watermelon was while they took their punishment. Then he took off his belt, The Reverend said he and his brother were not very comfortable when it came to sitting down for near onto a week afterward. But the punishment did not end with the backside warming. The two thieves had to come down to the store their father ran and work all afternoon on a Saturday to earn money to go to the Farmers’ Market in town and buy two nice watermelons to take and present to Mister Hardley in return for the melon they had stolen.
Mister Hardley met the two boys at the front door and accepted payment for their crime in a stern manner, but it was easy to tell he was not all that angry. He told them that young boys have to be young boys and stealing a watermelon is not such a great crime as crime goes. But he said young boys need to learn stealing is wrong, no matter if the thing stolen is only a watermelon on a hot August afternoon. Then Mister Hardley cut open one of the melons and they all had a slice of watermelon.
“But, ya know,” The Reverend said. “That sliced melon at the Hardleys that afternoon did not taste near so good as the one Brother and I took from the Hardley field a couple days before. Still, all told, me and Brother learned our lesson and we never again took anything that did not belong to us.”
END
