Watermelon originated in Africa in the Kalahari Desert. This conjures up visions of a desperate traveler dying of thirst crawling over a ridge to find … a watermelon patch. However it originated, watermelon is now a favorite in much of the world, and you can count me as an enthusiast. As such, I am disturbed by the great blight on the watermelon landscape. Miserable insipid seedless watermelons are threatening to crowd out one of the world’s food treasures. Without real watermelon, summer might as well be cancelled.

Our two major local supermarket chains rarely stock old-fashioned watermelons. They have only those unnatural spherical melons with mushy pink interiors and half the sweetness of the real thing. There is nothing that looms so large in the poor state of civilization than that people will pay double for a tasteless product solely to avoid spitting seeds. My salvation is in Food4Less, a less prominent chain that stocks good amounts of Mexican produce such as tomatillos, cinnamon, and real watermelon. The melon I chose had a label oddly reminiscent of a soft drink. It was not carbonated, however.

How does one select a good watermelon? Theories abound. In times past, a special triangular-bladed knife was used by the merchant to extract a plug from the melon so the customer could accurately judge the quality. A few years ago, I encountered a farm stand that still did that, but it’s generally a story of times when televisions were only available with black and white picture tubes. The closest you can come nowadays is getting a piece of a melon cut in quarters. It’s usually much more expensive that way, so it’s often better to take your chances on a whole one.

The advice I grew up with was to thump the melon and prefer the ones that sound most hollow. This seems to work, but I’m not sure it works better than picking a melon at random. In season, most of the melons are good. The expert opinion I’ve heard is to pick a melon that has yellow on it. I tend to go with that. Possibly something creative could be done with dowsing rods.

I like to cut the melon into quarters with a long knife, into quarters or eighths or, for small children and melon wimps, smaller pieces. The melon is then scored with the knife into blocks. That’s my melon ritual, but I fully honor and respect the traditions of other melon faiths in this regard—so long as it doesn’t involve seedless melons. When watermelons are gone from the market, summer has ended.