watermelon thumping

[victor steinbok]

One interesting aspect of all this is that "traditional" methods for
testing ripeness (other than plugging, which is no longer readily
available) simply don't work with industrially farmed watermelons.
South-east Europeans (and others) have developed a variety of
"objective" methods in addition to thumping. Some look at the color
and striping--of course, this would only work very narrowly with a
single variety and growing region. Some look at the "relative weight"
(a common recommendation in US books)--heavier-relative-to-size
implies "juicier", but no further guidelines are usually available for
determining this "relative" relationship. A popular Russian and
Central Asian method is to look at the stem. Melons are considered
ripe if the stem is completely dry--fails completely with US melons.
Others look at the relative size of the stem spot or the one at the
opposite end (where the flower fell off). This seems to hold no
predictive value at all IME, but it's quite popular. Different people
will also give you different versions of "thumping". Of course, all of
these go out the window if you're actually looking for unripe
watermelons for pickling.

As for memories, I have memories (or is it nightmares) of an old, fat
guy at the Boston Haymarket who used to yell in a booming voice
"Shoogaar!" in front of a pile of watermelons. Of course, he yelled
the same thing when strawberries were in season too. I don't recall
any correlation between the volume of his voice and the actual sugar
content of the melons. The guy was around for many years, into the
1990s. But I have not been in Haymarket in over a decade and he was
already gone last time I was there.

VS-)

On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>> A *faint* memory
>
> Isn't that the sad truth! I know exactly what you mean. :-( I'm just
> more verbose.
>
> The same kind of thing went on in Saint Louis, back in those days. But
> the wagons were drawn by horses, not mules, and the wagons had metal
> wheels with metal spokes and rubber tires, very like the standard
> automobile wheel of the '30's, instead of wooden wheels with wooden
> spokes and iron tires.
>
> --
> -Wilson

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org