Decker Melon Memories
May 11, 2012 By Carol CowanDecker resident “Middy” Sisson, now in her 90s, recalls summers in the 1920s and ’30s when horse- and mule-drawn wagons would line the streets in front of her father’s drugstore to load up on Decker melons and carry them back to Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Louisville. (What Is a Decker Melon?)
In the 1950s, her son, Jeff Clark, and his cousin, Bob Berry, both saw opportunity in Decker melons. Clark recalls that the price of a watermelon at the ubiquitous farm stands around Decker in the early 1950s was about 10 cents. “So we loaded up the trunk. You could get about 20 or more into the back of a Frazer automobile.”
Back home in Fort Wayne, young Clark would then pull his little red wagon around the neighborhood and sell the melons for 25 to 40 cents each.
“A Coke cost a nickel then,” Clark says. “So did a candy bar. I got shortly rich.”
As a 14-year-old high school student in 1954, Berry gambled and planted 3 acres of watermelons and 2 acres of cantaloupes two weeks earlier than the big farmers.
“Fortunately, the weather cooperated, and my melons came off earlier than everyone else’s,” Berry says. “I had trucks coming to the top of Decker Hill where I had my melons stacked. Some of the larger melons sold for as much as $1.50 each! I made enough money that summer to buy two used tractors.”
Reading this article brought back a lot of memories. My grandparents, Don and Elsie Palmer, lived in Decker their entire lives. Of course, grandfather Don, my father Donnie, my uncle Jeff and I all did our share of work in the melon fields. My grandfather taught and coached in Decker for 48 years. The baseball field at the site of the old school is named after him. I remember that when I was a young boy my grandmother would take me into Sisson’s Drug Store. It’s primary attraction for me was a old Macaw kept by Bill Sisson. I was told not to put my fingers inside the bird’s cage at the risk of getting them torn off.
My grandfather said that at one time Decker had five grocery stores, a hotel, three barber shops, a bank and a restaurant or two – all there because of the commerce resulting from the melons. Now Decker is a shell of its former self with not much left other than memories. Yet still, I”m glad I have them.
My grandfather was one of the biggest Decker Melon Farmers around. The Ellermann’s had a farm on Decker Rd, and I remember the taste of watermelon and just opening it up in the field and eating it. I love my heritage and that Decker Melons are part of it!