Recollections: Legends of Yesterday - Watermelon Market Busting

This is a reprint of original articles by Hugh Woolley, a longtime resident and community leader of Graceville. Woolley published these articles in The Graceville News more than 20 years ago.

Originally published in the November 08, 2001 edition of The Graceville News.

The next three legends that I plan to write about are Othar Williams, Claude Tindell, and Buddie Williams. They were big in watermelons and helped Graceville carry the title Watermelon Capital of the World. Sometime during the late twenties this market shipped over 1,200 rail cars of melons and Joe Bill Hodges remembers the day that they shipped over a hundred cars. John F. Howell said it was 125 cars that they shipped.

The following article must have appeared in the Dothan Eagle when Ed Driggers was Farm Editor before he became Editor of the Eagle. This was when Leroy Collins was governor of Florida. I estimate this was 40 or 45 years ago. This article tells the common story of the melon market.

I wish to point out that Ed Driggers was a special good friend of agriculture as well as a good friend of Gene Ragan and Hugh Woolley.

Watermelon Market Busting

Before Season Gets Started

By Ed Driggers

Eagle Farm Editor

The watermelon market for Northwest Florida and elsewhere in the Wiregrass is riding for a bust

before the selling season even starts for many growers.

That's a capsule report from veteran shippers like Claude Tindell and Othar Williams of Graceville and Ross Deal of Chipley.

When the first loads of melons were being clipped last week’s buyers wanted them all for two cents a pound. This week farmers were haunting the streets of Graceville one-time watermelon center for the world- looking for buyers at any price.

A cent a pound was considered well worth taking if a grower could find a truck with its driver in a mood to load.

It was the big stretch before the Fourth of July when watermelon buyers are busiest. But melons weren't moving through Graceville, Campbellton, Chipley, Bonifay, Cottondale, and the other towns. Some were but it was only a trickle compared to what could have been happening.

Northwest Florida melons should have ripened about June 10, says Tindell and Williams. But the cool wind early this month "knocked" melons off the vines and the buyers off schedule.

Another explanation is that the late March freeze gave Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and portions of Florida all an equal start. Now they all have watermelons.

PHOTO CUTLINE: Othar Williams and Claude Tindell ship melons that were all cut “excellent” in this big patch of theirs.

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