Rocky Ford enterprise., 1915-09-03
MET US AT MELON PILE
CONTINUED from First Page)

| t1nucS 10 grow IN popularity, ana at
tendance Thursdays gathering, the
twenty fourth of the series. was the
largest in the history of both the
fair and Watermelon Day. OF our
unique fiesta G. H. Taylor has we'll
said:
-"Melon Day at Rocky Ford, Col,
is an occasion that strikingly illus
trates the homogenity OF human ma
ture.
The land of Egypt is by nature a
rainless desert, which the river Nile
converts into fruitful garden every
year. That river, taking its rise in
the two great Nyanza lakes, flows
through the rocky gorges of the up
per plateaus and spreads itself out
across dry and dusty plain, reach
ing almost to the shore of the Med
iterranean sea. By the rise of its
flood waters the whole valley of the
Nile is annually overfiowed, and so
watered and fertilized.
| The Arkansas river takes its rise
| in two lakes located near the summit
OF the Rocky Mountains. Bursting
through the grand giant chasm
spreads itself through artificial ca
nails until it floods and waters the
dry and dusty valley that stretches
eastward three hundred miles to the
borders of Kansas, making all the re-
gion to bloom and blossom as the
rose.
| Midway in this area of once dry
and dusty but now irrigated land,
stands the little city of Rocky Ford,
clean, tree-embowered and substan-
tally built: and now almost world
famous for its production of the
sweet and luscious little golden-green
contaloupe and the large luscious OBJ
long watermelon. There two types
of melon stand pre-eminent among
their kind. These it is that have
made Melon Day
| Even as the Egyptians welcomed
the seeming catastrophe OF the inun-
dation of the Nile, so the people of
the Arkansas valley rejoice in the
coming of the flood waters down the
river, and store them up in the great
reservoirs or artificial lakes for irri-
eating purposes.
When the natural inundation OF the
| Nile valley was unusually great, and
only the mounds on which the an
cicnt villages of the inhabitants were
built, remained above water, SO that
they had to travel from one to -anoth-
er in boats, then the people thanked
their Gods and kept the festival OF
the harvest-home. The tax-gatherers
measured the depth of the waters
with their official sticks and announ-
| ced what the harvest would be. and
made their annual tax-levy. 1t
looked little like counting their
chickens before they were Matched
but so certain was the yield to cor
respond to the volume of the water
supply that there were never any
misgivings about celebrating. The
white-robcd priests marched in SOL
emn procession to the water side,
carrying the image OF the water-god.
and chanting hymns they cast into
the water a 1.-THE, gold coin. Then
gay barges with painted sails con-
veyed the merry agriculturists from
village to village to attend the fairs.
/ Then they had boat races and full
/ fights and wrestling matches. Then
the thimble-riggers and the nut-shell
| gamesters piled the crowd for suck
negro minstrels from upper Africa
amused the holiday crowd and passed
the tin cup for the oboli. The old
people sat over the chess-board and
the dicebox. and the boys played at
pitch-and-toss, the girls at a game
similar to baseball with forfeits for
the one who missed catch. The
house-father bought dolls for the
children and cheap. jewelry and trim
kcts for the wife. The meat stall
| abounded in beef and venison, dres-
sed geese and chickens (the latter
artificially incubated in boxes
of hot manure.) Date sweet-meats
and doura cakes adorned the candy
stalls, side by side with leeks and
onions and garlic. Roasted joints of
sugar cane were sucked by the ba-
bies: and barley beer and palm wine
| drunk by the men-and the real es-
| tate agent and the restaurant keeper
"waxcd fat and kicked This was
about the year 1000 B. c.
| Melon Day" at Rocky Ford, in
this year of grace, is just a repro
duction of all that; only a little met
| morphosed; it has come down to us
through the ages. And 'Melon Day
at Rocky Ford is perhaps the most
successfully popular reproduction OF
those harvest festivals OF ancient
times that we have anywhere in
these United States. Excursion
trains bring hundreds OF people a
distance of hundreds of miles to at
tend it. There are few people who
| make annual pilgrlmages from as lar
| east as Iowa and Illinois to be pres
! ent. and the tourist with his .'gas
buggy" has lately been coming in
shoals.
The melon feast itself is open and
| free to all-comers, and lasts but one
day. while the fair continues four
days of the week; and for the whole
| week the town is practically given
over to the festivity. The Rocky
Fordite is not so pious as the ancient
| Egyptian. There are no white robed
priests in professions, and he throws
none OF his coin into the irrigating
| bitches. But all the rest is here. No
LII Ea1l.ts LII tlal...a.