Old songs, dumb children, and watermelon wine

They say that confession is good for the soul. Well, I don't know about that, but coming fresh off of the heels of THIS post, I thought I'd go ahead and fess up to some more of my evil endeavours.

When you are brought up in a Christian home, you are taught about the dangers of life's evil vices. Some things that come to my mind are smoking, drinking, cursing, stealing, and gambling. My best friend, Kevin, and I had already tried the smoking and cursing and that didn't work out too well. So logically our next attempt at sin and debauchery should be drinking. Again, bear in mind that we were both from pretty strict Christian homes and neither of us had ever seen any form of alcohol before. I think what got us started was hearing a Tom T. Hall song called, Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine. We decided that we needed to try us some of that Watermelon Wine. Only problem was, how were we going to get it? We were only 13-years old. Never fear, we came up with a fool proof plan...we would just make our own!

We spent the next few days doing research. There was no such thing as the Internet back then, so we had to rely on what books we had in our homes. Needless to say, there wasn't much available on Wine Making-101. What little we did learn was that it was all about the fermenting process.

So, a little at a time, we rounded up all of the necessary things; mason jars (stolen from mom's supply in the basement), cloth stainer (one of my old t-shirts), and watermelons (stolen from dad's garden). As we would collect these things, we would smuggle them away to the woods behind my parents house. We had devised us a little campsite/wine processing plant. Our operation took place under the cloak of darkness, by the light of a campfire. We lined our mason jars up in a row, placed our cloth strainers over the top of them. Next we cut our watermelon in half and started digging into the flesh to stir up the juice. We then began pouring the juice into the strainers. Well, that didn't work out so well, it just kind of laid there on top and didn't go through the cloth. So, we removed the cloth and just poured straight into the jars. We tried to keep as many seeds out as we could. We were able to fill up 4 quart jars with juice. We put lids on them, dug a hole in the ground, and buried the jars.

The next couple of weeks was hard for us. We wanted so badly to dig those jars up and check on the fermenting progress, but we constrained ourselves. Finally, a month went by and we figured they were probably ready. Again, in the dark, we made our way up to the site of our dastardly deed. We dug up one of the jars and anxiously began unscrewing the lid. "Hm, said Kevin." "What," I wondered? "I don't know, but it looks kinda dark." "Ah, let me see," I said. Kevin handed the jar over to me. I peered down inside. "Ooh, you're right, looks black." "Reckon we should try it?" We brought the jar over closer to the campfire and held it up to the light. "Oh gross," said Kevin. I stuck my nose down to the jar to smell. "Oh crap, I think it's rotten," I replied. I turned the jar to it's side and began pouring the contents out on the ground. "Plop," chunks of black gooey stuff landed on the ground, splattering at our feet. In our disgusted anger, we dug the other 3 jars up and slung them, breaking the glass and scattering our rotten recipe amongst the trees.

Once again, God had watched over us and prevented us from delving too far into the sins of this world. Or contracting some type of serious disease from drinking rotten wetermelon juice! Kevin and I never tried anything like that again, and you won't find any of that stuff in our homes today.

Moral of this story: Listen to your parents. Try to stay on the straight and narrow. Leave the watermelon wine for Tom T. Hall to sing about.