Congratulations to Lora Bunch Carr on earning first place in Nonfiction for her story, Watermelon Patch Sittin’, in the 2025 Sassafras Literary Adult Writing Contest!
Here is her entry:
First – Lora Bunch Carr – Watermelon Patch Sittin’
Third – Jeanne Wells – Don’t Fear the Reaper
Second – Tricia Steele – The Sisterhood Of Collapsing Lungs
Watermelon Patch Sittin’
A Short Story About My Appalachian Grandparents
Pawpaw and I shared a loved for watermelons. He had a section of the garden where he grew large and small watermelons, and he was not any better than I was about being patient for them to make it to the kitchen table or even to the back porch. He grew both the red and the yellow meated watermelons and was fond of both for different reasons. I mostly like the red ones but would not turn down any of them. We lived next door to each other, and it was no secret he was my favorite person in the whole world.
Pawpaw would come up the winding trail between our houses that was carved out of the bank with roots and rocks as stairs. I could hear him coming and the closer he would get I could hear him calling out to me “Hey Dummy” and laughing his mischievous laugh because he knew he was getting me all riled up. You see this Pawpaw of mine was a jokester and loved to get two reactions out of his people and I was a master of delivering both for him. Perhaps this is why we both loved each other so much. He loved to make people laugh but he equally enjoyed getting people all wound up and sassy so that they would argue and fuss with him. I yelled back excited and with my hands on my hips “Pawpaw I am not a dummy”. He would laugh and say, “come on let’s go find a watermelon”. He would make it feel like an adventure and even though we were nowhere near quiet, and Momma always knew where I was and what was going on I felt like it was a secret mission and Pawpaw would play along every time.
He picked out a small watermelon after thumping around on a few of them to see which one was ripe. He would smile and say “ssshhh lets find a hiding spot”. This was usually under a tree that grew between my house and the watermelon patch. The two of us would sit on the ground or on a rock under the tree and Pawpaw would take out his pocketknife and cut off slices for us to hold and eat right where we were sittin. I don’t know if it was, the type of watermelons he grew or the way I loved being there in that place in time with the man I thought hung the moon but those watermelons to this very day over 40 years later are still the best and sweetest I have ever placed in my mouth.
We sat there eatin and talkin and I’m not sure which one of us enjoyed it more, but I know we loved each other even more than we loved watermelon and that was a lot of love. Pawpaw didn’t treat me like a baby even though he was very clear that I was in fact Pawpaw’s baby, and everyone knew it. He would talk to me like I had some sense. To be honest my whole family was like this. We talked to our children as small people with abilities, and I feel this was a wonderful building block for us all.
My Pawpaw did not have much schoolin, but he was right smart. He had forgotten more things than most people ever knew. He was a frugal and honest man to a fault. He was a caring man also, but I have heard he was strict and hard on his children when they were growing up. As his granddaughter though I did not get that version of him at all.
As we sat in that garden finishing up our watermelon we talked and laughed. He answered every question I would ask and believe me there were a good many of them. Sometimes he would answer with truth and learnin but just as often he would answer with sarcasm and teasing because he wanted to see me get fired up and to challenge him and I always obliged.
When the watermelon was gone Pawpaw looks at me and says, “come on gal let me get you back to yer Mammy”. My grandparents spoke with a deep southern Appalachian accent. At times in my life, it was almost a different language all its own. I often translated for my friends and boyfriends that I brought to their house to visit through the years. As I grew older and learned to speak proper English I spoke less and less of the Appalachian dialect myself, but I never lost the ability to understand it. I miss hearing them banter at each other in their language and I think it is sad that it is quickly disappearing from the area.