I don’t know why, but 100 years ago, people were really fascinated with giant watermelon. I’m talking about comically huge watermelons, created with some slick photography tricks and illustrations. Don’t believe me? The postcards below are proof.
Like this postcard notes, this is apparently how they do things in North Orwell, PA. Not only do they grow massive fruit and vegetables in the small northern Pennsylvania town, they also raise freakishly strong little girls. That wedge they’re lifting effortlessly probably weighs around 400 pounds. I’m not sure what’s in the water up there in North Orwell, but it’s a little scary.
They say everything is bigger in Texas, and this “watermelon blockade” is just one of many examples. Here, we see a man who was forced to stop his horse-and-buggy to clear some runaway watermelon that had found their way onto the road. I’m not really sure how they got there. Maybe they fell off the back of a giant watermelon cart.
This 1909 postcard depicts a “California watermelon.” It looks more like a giant pickle to me, but whatever. Have you noticed that the watermelon of yesteryear got progressively larger as you travelled west? North Orwell’s melons were a little bigger than a cow, Texas grew ‘em twice as large, and California’s watermelon were the size of a school bus … even though they didn’t have school busses back then.
Here’s another 1909 postcard featuring gargantuan fruit (it was apparently a good year for crops). These men harvest the watermelon the way you’d assume a 3,000 pound watermelon would be harvested – they cut it into pieces and haul it off to the farmer’s market. At least that’s what I think is happening in this photo. It’s also possible that these are normal-sized watermelon and the men in this photo are really small. If that’s the case, I’d like to know where they found the tiny horse.