Stealin’ Watermelons

Stealin’ Watermelons was a song by Elvin Bishop, whose albums were a regular feature of our Tuesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday drinking club back in college. I still remember the lyrics to Travelin’ Shoes. Not politically correct…Somebody fetch my coat and hat, and hand me my walkin’ cane.

I love watermelon. Cold and fresh and sweet and messy and delicious. Eat it with your fingers outside and spit out the seeds. Lick the juice off of your chin. A real taste of summer right up there with grilled hot dogs.

Back in college, when I wasn’t wasting time and working on liver damage, I had a summer job in the field department of a tomato cannery. This is before cell phones. We were ‘seasonal field representatives’, which meant we drove around the county spotting full loads of tomatoes and calling for trucks over the two way radios in our cars to come pick them up.

One grower kind of liked me, and one day as I pulled up to his field he asked if I wanted some watermelon. I said yes. It turned out he had a melon patch and a couple of fresh picked ones in the bed of his pickup. We sat on the tailgate and ate our fill. He gave me one to take home.

There is no sure way to tell if a watermelon is going to be delicious until you cut into it. I buy mine out of the back of a pickup truck parked at the intersection of Eight Mile Road and Hwy 99. The sign on the truck says ‘Maria’s Produce’ and a very nice woman takes your $8 and lets you choose. I’ve been buying from her for at over a decade and her deliciousness percentage is over 95%.

Now I am careful to avoid the subject of watermelon completely when I am around anyone who identifies as African American. No matter what I say I can’t win. If I mention how much I love melon, I’ll be accused of cultural appropriation. If I recommend Maria to a person of color I will be guilty of stereotyping them by ASSUMING they like watermelon and might be interested in a good supplier. I can’t say anything that won’t be construed as either insensitive or (worse) racist. So I keep quiet, a strategy I’m adopting in more and more situations lately.

You think I’m overstating the case? I think not…

A popular gym in Washington, D.C. is apologizing after a bar at one of their pool clubs served a Juneteenth-themed drink.

The drink, which some on social media say was served at the VIDA Fitness Penthouse Pool Club in Washington, D.C., was called a “Watermelon Henny Lemonade” and allegedly contained Hennessy, watermelon liquor, and lemonade.

I would have thought that the bar would apologize for making such an abomination of a cocktail. But apparently the issue was associating the watermelon liquor with the holiday celebrating the emancipation of slaves.

Or maybe it was the ‘Henny’. I bet you didn’t know this, but I put considerable research into each and every blog post. And look what I found:

Hennessy has a substantial consumer base among African Americans, who drink the majority of the cognac consumed in the United States. Accordingly, the brand has also marketed itself with initiatives around black entrepreneurship and Black History Month.

Who knew? Stoker and I have a history with Hennessy. Back before we moved to California we lived in the wicked cities of Washington DC and Des Moines, and we would occasionally finish off an evening of libation fueled frivolity with a glasses of the stuff. Not the best nightcap unless consumed with some ibuprofen. Sometimes even that wouldn’t help.

So it would seem ‘Henny’ is a friend to the Black Community, and that the bar was simply trying to put together a culturally clever celebratory cocktail (CCCC for short). But woke-up traps are everywhere, and they fell into one.

I think I’d rather give up drinking than consume a concoction with ‘Henny’, watermelon liquor and lemonade. No danger I’ll appropriate that.