Watermelons Aren’t As Good As they Used to Be

After a long hot week at work, my body has been craving fresh fruit. So I got up and went to the local grocery store this morning to pick up some various fruits to satisfy my cravings.

The first thing that greeted me in the produce section was a display of fresh-cut watermelon. All of it had a nice deep red color and looked like it would be full of flavor, so I picked up a quarter of one to enjoy this afternoon along with some other tasty choices.

But once I chunked it up and started to eat it, I quickly realized that looks had been deceiving. While it looked really ripe, it had a mostly bland taste and was devoid of the sweetness of the watermelons of years ago. This seems to be a trend over the last decade or two, and I guess it’s because most watermelons you can get these days are the hybrid ones, and the ones engineered to be seedless. With each of these iterations, the watermelon loses something.

I can remember as a kid getting a watermelon was a big deal. They were super sweet and everyone wanted a piece. I can remember numerous times, someone in my mom’s family would pick one up, and then call the rest of the family to meet at the grandparents and have some. There were many Sunday afternoons that my grandparent’s front porch would be full of my aunts and uncles, and their front yard was full of us grandkids all chowing down on juicy watermelon and spitting seeds everywhere.

And as you’ll read later this week in the latest issue of the This Nostalgic Life newsletter, the nightly watermelon races were a big part of wagon train every year. I can’t imagine anyone running as hard as they can to try and win one of today’s watermelons. That really speaks to the loss of sweetness through the years.

Or maybe all of this equates to me finally turning into an old fogey who just complains about how things aren’t as good as they used to be. Maybe I’m just one step away from yelling at kids to get off my lawn.