Pecos Cantaloupes, FEMA

I got a crate of Pecos Cantaloupes yesterday and they are just as good as promised. Although you can get cantaloupes grown in California, Arizona, Mexico or even Presidio, TX - the Pecos ones are the sweetest and best. I can usually find the Pecos ones (marked PecosSweet) in the Dallas stores, but not this year. I had to order them from the Pecos Cantaloupe Shed (no website - call (432) 447-2123 to order).
(432) 447-2123(432) 447-2123

The growing season for these West Texas specialties is usually just the month of July, but this year has been strange. One - not many acres were planted because a shortage of workers. Apparently there are plenty of migrant workers, but no place to house them. The oil and gas boom has taken up all the available housing - and they are even building an apartment building and a new suites hotel. It's slow, though, because the workers they truck in to work in construction are soon lured away to the better paying oil patch jobs.
Two - unusual rain. The average rainfall in far West Texas is about 8 inches per year - this year they've already had over 8. The desert is blooming, but it was hard on the melons which thrive in the sun.

In any case, the melons are always the best.

When I was growing up in Pecos, my dad and his cousin had a cantaloupe operation - the M.L. Todd Company. They shipped cantaloupes all over the country via Railway Express, which had refrigerated cars. As I recall, you could ship 9 or 12 melons to New Jersey for $4.95. They had a shed where trailers with hinges on the side (not the back) could drive up unload onto a conveyor belt, be sorted, graded and packed into wooden crates in a very smooth, efficient operation.

The melons too ripe for shipping would be sold as "culls" for $1 a grocery sack full. My younger brother David was in charge of the shed's cull selling operation and my friend Sallie and I had a stand closer to town. Daddy had a fellow build a frame and covered it with an orange and white parachute for shade. I think we made about $100 all summer.

That open air shed, on Highway 80 next to the train tracks, has since burned down. I think the new one is enclosed and air conditioned.

Bluebell Ice Cream has had a flavor called PecosSweet Cantaloupes and Cream, but I haven't found any this year.

The Pecos Economic Development office is trying to get FEMA to send some of those infamous trailers for workers in Pecos, but I think some enterprising trailer seller from Dallas or Fort Worth could take a bunch out there and sell them to people who are now driving 90 - 100 miles each way daily for housing.