My paternal grandfather was the son of two cousins. That was an arranged marriage and both were 14 years old when they married. My grandfather used to tell, with a smile, that it took his parents a long time to realize what marriage was about. After the wedding they were seen playing with a ball or tag game in the big patio of great grandfather’s house. My grandfather told me that the family rumor was that they only started having marital relations when they were around 19 or 20 years old.

The given name of my grandfather was Juan Manuel. He would get up at 5:00 am and eat breakfast consisting of steak, tomatoes and onions salad, aji verde (green hot pepper), pan amasado (homemade bread) and a cup of ulpo (porridge made with toasted wheat flour, honey and aguardiente or pisco).

He would then take his horse and inspect the different fields in his farm.
He had mainly vineyards but also lemon, orange, peach, apple, pear and cherry trees. Also, he and grandmother Hortensia had planted vegetables such as different kinds of lettuce, pumpkins, cucumbers, green, red and yellow peppers, asparagus and melons and watermelons.

Since my grandfather had friends in Hungary (famous for Görögdinnye or watermelons since the 13th century), they managed to send seeds of different vegetables hidden between their letters. One particularly interesting seed was a huge watermelon with a smooth dark green on the outside and vivid red color inside with black seeds.

During summer my grandfather would put up a sign: “Watermelons for sale”.

One summer a big tall forastero (stranger) walking toward the closest town saw the sign and saw the enormous watermelons. He told my grandfather that he had never seen such a thing before. My grandfather said, “wait till you see how much this one weighs” and he put a watermelon on a scale. The watermelon was 19 kilos (almost 40 pounds). The man bought it and said “I will take it with me and make money with it.”

My grandfather figured that the stranger would cut the watermelon and sell it by wedges.

To my grandfather’s surprise, late in the afternoon the stranger came by still carrying the watermelon on his shoulder. He told my grandfather that he had been making bets asking people to guess how much the watermelon weighed. Since nobody guessed, he had made five times the money he paid for it. Now he was going back home to eat the watermelon with his family.