The Great Watermellon Bust

One night in Bell City in the heat of summer about 1963 some of us young guys were having a water fight and having a good time. We finally tired and couldn't figure out anything to do. One of the guys said it would be nice to have a watermellon. Another said he knew where some was. The local barber Bill Fisher had 8 or 10 piled up in his front yard. His son and a nephew were in our little pack. Also two brothers Ray and Gene Sicism along with Jimmy Griffin and Ivan Griffin no relation. So here we go sneaking up to Fishers place and got all of his watermellons where we took them down to the local lovers hangout, an old oak tree at the edge of town. There we eat all the watermellon we could hold then proceeded to have a watermellon fight with the rest. We looked like we had been drug through the local dump. We finally went home for the night. A couple days later the news was going around town that if Bill didn't get paid for the mellons or get them back he was going to have all of us arrested. We met that night and deceided we needed to do something to stop him from going to the police. Return the mellons was the only thing we could think of, but all of us were broke and did not have the money to buy the mellons. Then a great idea hit me as we were trying to figure out how to get the mellons to return. I had a cousin in Vanduser that had a watermellon patch, mabe we could get them from him and pay him later. Se here we go to Vanduser and to Jesse and Violets Whittley's home to see what we could do. Well Jesse told us after hearing our story to go to his patch and get all the watermellons we wanted.So we got enough to return Fishers and had another watermellon bust. This kind of juvinile thing went on all the time in and around Bell City. We never forgot the time Jesse got us ot of trouble. He also had a good laugh about it.