Peddling Watermelons From The Pickup

Toward the end of the Mississippi growing season,when the crops took less attention from the need for plowing and weeding, we would load the old pickup to overflowing with watermelons, corn, beans, peas and anything else we thought we could sell and we would head to the outlying areas of Carthage and Kosciusko and drive up and down the streets shouting our presence, letting the people living there know that we had all kinds of vegetables and fruit to sell and at very reasonable prices.
The bed of the truck would be piled high with our produce and we would ride on top of the pile and while one of my Uncles would drive slowly up and down the street, we would jump off and on the truck, running up to the houses, carrying what we could to entice the folks to buy. The trucks of those days had decent running boards and we quite ofter simply road by standing on these running boards and holding on. On one of these outings while my Uncle Arnold was driving, I actually fell off the truck but, since he drove so slowly up and down the streets, I was able to catch up and get back on before he even knew I had fallen off.
We would sell 20 to 25 lb watermelons for a quarter apiece, and if the people hesitated, we would sell them two for a quarter. The rest of the produce sold for mear coins.
If we got hungry, we would simply break open a watermelon and scoop out the center. The watermelons my grandfather grew were always 100% super sweet. Of course the best ear of corn is one you walk out into the field to pull and shuck and eat right there on the spot.
Fig and plum trees were grown in great abundance. In addition to the crops in the fields, my grandmother had an acre of land adjacent to the house that was plowed and planted and it was from the garden that she would harvest the produce she needed for cooking our meals.
Another crop my grandfather grew that was in great demand was sugar cane. He had one of the few pure sugar cane crops in the area. In later years the sugar cane crops became hybrid and were not nearly as sweet. We would cut canes from the growth and sell sections the people needed. It is pure heaven to strip a section and chew the pulp for the sweet juices. His crops made the greatest molasses, and the process of cooking cane sugar for molasses is a story for another blog.
When we were finished for the day and got back to the farm, if there was anything left in the truck, which was usually the case, we would save the best melons and produce to eat and then we would drive up next to the hog pens and pitch the rest over for the hogs. Those hogs would be in seventh heaven. Come to think of it, slopping hogs is great material for another blog.
A well managed farm the size of the one my grandfather had could produce a large amount of vegetables and fruit. Of course, the families on these farms were very much dependent on the success of these crops. Cotton was the real mainstay of the southern farms and therein lies yet another blog.
A tough life but rewarding.