Where'd They Go?

 I was walking through the produce section of the grocery store the other day when I came across some watermelons. Unlike when I was a child, they are often available year 'round, now. As I checked the sign for the variety and price, it said that they were seedless. When I was a child, it was rare to find a seedless watermelon. Now the seedless melons seem to be the norm. I honestly don't remember the last time I saw a watermelon with seeds in the grocery store. You can usually still find a few at a local Farmer's Market, but it seems next to impossible to find one of the jumbo, juicy fruits with seeds in the local supermarket.

I have also read that, like other fruits that formerly contained seeds, growers have been hard at work cultivating the seeds right out of the watermelons. The article I read suggested that soon, those slippery black seeds that contrast so beautifully against the crimson red of the melon will be a thing of the past. (I will have to search again for that article and post it here for you.) Now, where is the fun in that?! Watermelons without the seeds completely takes away one of America's favorite past times.

Fun? Past times? Just want am I talking about you wonder. As I stood there looking at those watermelons, memories of summertime, childhood fun came flooding back. I had to smile, even laugh a little, as my mind went back in time.....


We couldn't wait for that last day of school. We were usually already packed up and ready to head for the lake as soon as school let out. A good-sized group of us kids, in the same age range as my little brother and I, from various towns, and even other states, were all heading out to spend our summer at the same campground. We were a close knit group of kids and enjoyed many activities together all summer long. Unlike today, where watermelons are available all year long, we had to wait until the heat of summer for the luscious fruits to ripen. And with those first ripe watermelons came one of our most favorite summer games - our Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest, of course! Clad in our summer attire of swimsuits, we each greedily grabbed a huge, long watermelon wedge, the full length of one of those looooong, generously seeded, stripped watermelons. We ran and grabbed our place in line across a field in the center of the campground and eagerly dived into our hunk of melon, no eating utensils of course. With red, mushy watermelon all over our faces, and juice dripping from our chins, we each took our turn to spit our seeds as far as we could shoot them. Usually one of the 'hip' and courageous parents was the distance judge.

As the contest got underway, the squeals, giggles and laughter began to grow. It didn't take long for us to forget that we were suppose to be taking turns and the speed of seed spitting grew rapidly, turning our group of  kids into a human machine gun. The fun-filled laughter continued and soon we forgot that we were playing a game to win and orneriness set in. Yes, we started aiming the seeds at each other! The fun continued for hours as we aimed, spit, ducked, squealed, screeched, laughed, hit, missed, and just completely let ourselves go. It was summer entertainment at its best, no electronic devices necessary. And when the watermelon and seeds were all gone, and our mouths were just too tired to spit even one more seed, we ran across the road and jumped in the lake to wash all the sticky off. And right now I am smiling a big warm smile as I remember those good ole days.

But as the seeds in the 'new and improved' watermelon varieties disappear, so will those carefree, stress-relieving, seed spitting contests of days gone by.  It is sad that today's youth may never know the joys of the Seed Spiting Contest! Do something extra special for a group of kids in your life this summer. Search out a Farmer's Market with some old-fashioned watermelons, grab an armload of them, and treat a group of kids to some fun they will never forget. You will enjoy it as much as they will!

MY LIGHTNIN' BUG STORY

As a child I passionately loved Lightnin' Bugs. Well, actually that has never changed. I still do. Last summer I relived that joy as I introduced them to a couple of my nieces and nephews. Their excitement as I brought one in to them, darkened the room, and showed them my glowing hand was priceless! The next time I stopped by their house after dark they were outside chasing them and squealing with glee!
And during "peak" lightnin' bug season I like to drive about a mile out of my way when I go home to watch them in an open country hay field where there is such a concentration of them it looks like the stars in the milky way have spilled down to the ground. The city lights can't even begin to compare to the magnificent site of millions upon millions of lightnin' bugs twinkling all at once with nothing but a midnight blue sky for their backdrop. I have to pull over and stop to watch for a few minutes, spellbound by their amazing beauty.

. . . . . . Now, to step back to a bored summer night of my teenage years. My family was all camped out at our favorite campground on Tenkiller Lake. Normally, quite a few of my teenage friends were also camped out there and we kept ourselves entertained until our parents forced us to 'break it up' and go to bed by about 2am. But this one particular weekend most of my friends had other places they had to be and it was mostly just my younger brother and me at our camp. The word "bored" is not in my vocabulary. Very, VERY, rarely do I EVER get bored, and then it is only briefly (like a few seconds, to a minute or two at the most) because I seem to always manage to find, if not create, something to do. Well, on this particular night my parents were sitting in their lawn chairs in the nearby clump of persimmon trees, busy visiting with the other adult campers. I honestly don't remember what my brother was doing, probably making "roads" in the dirt for his Hot Wheels. I didn't want to sit in the stuffy little trailer where I had lots of light and it was too dark outside to work on my afghan. As I sat there a moment thinking of what to do a lightnin' bug blinked a few feet from me. As it did it 'sparked' a thought. . . . .
I jumped up and grabbed the unsuspecting bug as it blinked again. With my hand clinched securely around my catch, I quietly walked over to our little trailer, slid open that tiny metal door embedded in the center of the screen door, and let the lightnin' but go, quickly shutting the little door back!   I worked hard to keep my giggle surpressed as I repeated this process all night long! How many? I don't know. I lost count the first half hour.
It got late and everyone retreated to their own camps for bed. When several of my teenage friends were all out there, we all slept outside in a big group (each on our own cot, of course) but since it was just me and my brother, we very reluctantly had to sleep inside the trailer that night. We all went in, took our turns in the tiny little bathroom to change into our sleep clothes, then laid down to go to bed. My mom was the last one to lay down, turning the final light out. We all settled in, got comfy and was just about to drift off to sleep when......blink, blink.....blink.....blink......blink, blink, blink............ Hundreds of tiny little lights began to blink! I laid there as still as I could, pulling the blanket up over the bottom half of my face to hide my proud, satisfied grin. CINDY!!!!!!! (not my real name, of course) GET THOSE THINGS OUT OF HERE!!!!!
"But Mom, what makes you think I did it?"
"Because no one else in this family would do something like that. Now get up and get those things out of here, now!"
"But I like them. I want to watch them as I go to sleep. They're pretty."
"Well, I don't like them, now get up and get them out."
"But I'm so comfortable, can't I do it in the morning, p l e a s e?"
"No, N O W ! ! ! ! !"
Let me tell you, catching them all the second time and tossing them "out" of the trailer wasn't near as much fun.

The "TENTFIRE" Name

I was on-line one day signing up for my first "dating site." I had just lost my Round Dance partner and was looking for a new dance partner. Some friends had urged me to try looking via a dating site. Hesitantly I began to fill out the sign-up info. In no time it came to the part where I had to pick a screen name.


I thought of several screen names, but each time I checked it's 'availability' it was already taken. It would say that I could use that screen name with the next number after the name. Well. . . .I am pretty unique (which isn't always good, lol) and I wanted a unique name, one that truly represented me. I didn't want one that everyone else picked. 


So I sat there thinking. . . . What is one of my favorite things to do. . . .something that I really enjoy and makes me happy. . . . CAMPING (I had just divorced and my kids and I went camping often to "destress"). . . . . Let's see. . . .we usually like tent camping best so I will use "TENT". . . .to represent not only camping, but the style of camping I like best with my kids. 


Then I thought. . . . What do we especially like to do when we go camping? . . . When we start to set up camp, one of the first things we usually do is start gathering up wood to have ready for a big bonfire at night. My kids and I have always enjoyed relaxing, cooking over, talking and bonding by a big bonfire. And I have wonderful memories of my musical son playing his harmonica, saxaphone and guitar as we all relaxed by our bonfire. Even now the mental picture of those times gone by is still very calming. And when I was divorcing another one of my friends also was divorcing at the same time. We had become friends at the lake over 30 years ago (we won't count past that 30, lol). Our husbands had cut us off from all of our friends and we had lost contact for many, many years. A mutual friend from our old camping days got us back in touch with each other during our divorce period. We (and our families) had been close. We learned that at times we had even been pregnant simultaneously, each having one of our boys only two weeks apart! We, our kids, and several of our long-lost friends then got together often on weekends that first summer of singlehood, camped together at the campground we had all met at originally, reminisced on old times, and caught up on lost years around a HUGE campfire as our kids got to know each other. So I shortened "Bonfire" to use just "FIRE." 


And so my screen name "TENTFIRE" was born. It is a screen name that signifies the beginning of a "new life,"  holds warm thoughts of lost friends found, and fun, happy times with my kids.  Quite a few years have passed now since my screen name was born, yet still, no matter what the day may bring,  the thoughts it holds makes me smile and feel good. It signifies my "happy place."