The Great Watermelon Caper of ‘86

A friend posted a video on Facebook of a semi-trailer truck lying on its side at the edge of a highway in Pennsylvania with boxes of vodka scattered from a hole in the roof of the trailer.

This took me back in time to a similar incident when I was in High School.  It was summer time and I was out with my Dad and one of his employees on a carpet laying job.  The house was on an isolated stretch of Hwy 50 just west of Mitchell, Indiana.  On the way back home from the job we saw a semi-trailer truck lying on its side and a good deal of straw dumped down the roadside embankment.

We stopped to check on the driver and found him walking around the rig and checking on things.  We chatted with him for a bit and he told us he’d already radioed in to let his boss know what happened.  In the straw were hundreds of watermelons and he invited us to take as many as we’d like.  He told us that insurance would cover the lost watermelons that were now all up and down this hillside.  We waded through the straw and secured a good dozen or so unbroken ones before leaving the scene.  On the way home I devised a secret plan to capitalize on this bit of insider knowledge.  

After dinner I went to a local craft store and bought a sheet of white poster board with some colorful markers as well as checked out how much watermelons were going for at the local supermarket (~4-5 dollars a piece).  I went to bed at my regular time, but set an alarm for some time after midnight.  When it went off I snuck out of the house with a flashlight and drove my sister’s car back to the scene of the accident.  

By the light of my flashlight I gathered up as many watermelons as I could fit in her car and a fair amount of straw.  Rolling back into Mitchell an hour or so later I pulled into a vacant lot that I’d scoped out earlier where two highways intersected on the edge of town.  The straw I’d gathered made a nice bed for the watermelons which I laid out in rows beside the car.  I wrote in large letters on my poster board “WATERMELONS $2!”, taped it to the side of my car, and then tried to go to sleep with a blanket I’d brought along.

Sometime around 6 or 7 in the morning  I was awakened by someone tapping on my window.  “You selling these watermelons?”  

I threw off my blanket and rubbed my eyes vigorously.  My first customer!  He asked if they were good and sweet and I assured him they were.  He bought several of them and after about an hour or two I’d sold them all and drove away with about 60 or 70 dollars hard cash in my pocket.  

Back home I realized the car was trashed and I must have made up some excuse as to why I was vacuuming out my sister’s car.  Later that day she looked upset and asked in an exasperated tone “Why does my car smell like watermelon?!”