Peter Rabbit is Real!

The warm weather and long growing season in Georgia means an abundance of fruit for months and months. Some of the fruit we glutted ourselves on was growing wild on county property like blackberries and scuppernong grapes, but most of it was filched from yards and gardens.

Tiffany Lane had the best variety of produce. One trailer in particular had a fenced yard that contained a pear tree and a garden with loads of melons. I always thought of the trailer owner as Mr. McGregor from Peter Rabbit, but he was neither old nor spindly; more like middle aged and morbidly obese. We loved to peek into his windows and spy on him watching T.V. He had a daughter my age, but she was not part of the Bicycle Gang, so her family's fruit was ours for the taking.

The pears were easy to access because the tree hung over the fence. We could ride by on our bikes and snatch a few to eat while riding without hands through the neighborhood. We liked to put the cores in this evil lady's mailbox. One day she caught us in the act so we just threw them down in the street on front of her house. It was not as much fun, but still a present to her.

Eventually we grew tired of pears and decided to go after the melons. This meant scaling a fence, but since we were bold and daring; why not? We decided to do this on foot and had to figure out a way to sneak a 10 lb watermelon through the neighborhood to a secret location. Our plan was to smuggle it under our shirts. No one notices a knocked up teen in Georgia, right?

It was like a relay race, shoving the melon under our shirt and running, then stopping to hand it to the next girl. I don't know how we made it to the hidden field with all the laughing and crazy dancing we did along the way. Once we got there, we realized we had no way of cutting it so we threw it to the ground to split it. It smashed to pieces and the scarlet flesh mingled with the bright red earth. We scooped up handfuls and ate them nonetheless while chortling over our success.