The Watermelon Man

The Watermelon Man

One of my favorite training runs has always been out along the Marina area and up to the Number 2 Hwy, you run past the beach and some of the most hi tech research companies in the world (think Silicon Valley type Research Companies) are located here, and of course some farm fields.

True to its foundations Israel maximizes it’s land usage and if is not being built on or having rubbish illegally dumped on it then it will be used for farming purposes, and over the years this field has been ploughed and fertilized with various crops over the seasons.

Now you would think that with all the wealth that surrounds these fields that theft would be of a cyber crime nature. Thus I was surprised when a couple of months back I started to notice that there was this car parked on the edge of this field it was always there twenty four hours a day, then a shelter with a platform was erected and as I ran past I could make out an old mattress on the platform and a camping stove for making coffee.

It now dawned on me that a watchman was living over looking these fields, guarding watermelons against theft. With all the social and political problems in the world, theft of watermelons is a problem. It is the most popular fruit in the country and everyone there is an expert on all matters watermelon. Now stealing watermelons is not a simple task, I mean how times have you heard of people shoplifting a watermelon.

So watermelon theft in Israel is a “Clear and Present Danger” run by the lords of the Underworld, farmers over the years must have had fields stripped over night and thus now the Watermelon Man stands guard.

He must have done his job well as the crop survived and was duly harvested. Last Saturday I was out running with Chaim and as we past the now empty watermelon field I told him the story [as above] and jokingly wondered what had happened to “The Watermelon Man”.

Ten minutes down the road on our run, lo and behold on the edge of another field there is the shelter and in the dawn light “The Watermelon Man” was patrolling the field, either that or coming back from relieving himself.

Now the absolutely funny thing about this story is that across the road from the field is a group of buildings that are probably one of the most high tech security aware buildings in the world the global HQ for the famed Israel Mossad Secret Service, these guys can trace a person breaking wind in Kazakhstan, have access to satellites that can zoom into postage stamps on postcards in China.

Chaim and I laughed at the irony of this situation, Mossad for all its power and Global resources could not monitor the watermelon fields across the road, forget hi tech spying Mossad it seems cannot protect a watermelon field it can see from its windows. It just struck me as ironic that with the resources of the world not a 100 m away, you still need “The Watermelon Man” for security.