What is Summer Food?

My childhood was odd and that is an understatement. It was so odd, in fact, that the term "summer food" left me stumped. What is summer food?

I grew up in a Bible thumping hippie commune and rules were their gluten. The glue that held the whole crazy mess together. Odd rules like forcing men to roll up the cuffs of their pants, even in the event that the pants were already high-waters. Harry Potter glasses with the big round frames were the only God-sanctioned spectacles and hair had to be parted directly down the middle of the head, widow's peaks be damned. Strange indeed.

Food however was the ultimate target of the hive minded legislature. We were required to eat millet, a grain most commonly found in bags of bird seed mix, no less than three times a week. Meats and dairy were heavily regulated with most protein being obtained from beans. Cow's milk was strictly forbidden as apparently God only ever intended for man to drink the milk of goats. Even black pepper was banned for a time. No preservatives, no refined sugars, no pork. You get the idea, no summer food. Our food was the same boring slop from January first through December thirty-first.

This barely nutritious monotony leads me to the one memory that finally surfaced after a few long minutes thinking about what I could call my favorite summer food.

It must have been sometime around August as our seven acre vegetable garden was in its prime of production for the year. It was common for us to be pulled from our schooling to work in the field for the day; weeding, watering, or worst of all, spraying fish emulsion; a nasty black slime made of water, fish guts, and bone char, all left to ferment under the summer sun. My friend Sky and I had been toiling for hours, picking cherry tomatoes if my memory serves. Hunger and thirst and a bit of pre teen rebellion had us ready to blow off our duties for a few moments and after a non verbal agreement communicated through well practiced gesture, we bolted for an acre and a half of nearly mature sweet corn. Bursting into the rows, we were quickly swallowed up by the stalks. We ran, in no specific direction, but just far enough and long enough to become hopelessly lost to anyone trying to find us. The air seemed to glow emerald, the sunlight playing through the corn and dappling the ground in a mesmerizing pattern of shifting shadows. Finally we collapsed in the dirt, breathing in the fresh air, reveling in the valley breeze that whipped through the corn rows. Despite the hardships of our cult life, there were good times like these, even if we'd pay for them later.

Sky smiled, a big toothy smile that made me smile before I knew the reason. He was on his feet and moving through the rows and I was on his heels a second later. He has spotted another plant between the stalks, one with wide nodulated leaves and crawling stems. One that promised something delicious and thirst quenching. A plant that surely had been placed there by the hand of God himself. That's how we would have described it back then.

Between the corn, right where it shouldn't have been was a happy and healthy watermelon vine. Clinging to its stem, one perfectly plump and sun ripened watermelon. I've never won the lottery but I have to imagine if I did today, it would feel about the same.

We were going to eat that watermelon, there was no doubt. How to go about it was the crux. We had no knives, and we wouldn't dare bring our find out of the corn, thus outing ourselves and our temporary dereliction of duty. That only left one option. Snapping the watermelon's stem, Sky lifted it to chest height, then let it fall. It hit the hard packed soil with a wet thud, the ripened fruit eager to break open and spill its mouth watering juices. It split almost perfectly in half.

We didn't bother breaking it any further, throwing our teeth at the fruit bowls, and then scooping the deeper parts out with dirt crusted hands. We didn't mind the sticky noses and fingers, or the occasional crunch of sand. It was summer, and for the moment we were free and happy, our thirst and hunger having been vanquished.

I wouldn't say that watermelon is my favorite summer food. I can't say I have one, even to this day, eight years out of the cult. But I have a summer memory, associated with a food. And it's not so much watermelon as a whole, as a definition, or a species of fruit bearing plants. It is that one singular watermelon that I shared with a friend, while hiding in the corn on a summer day when, just for a moment, we had escaped.