In that case, bergie's answer was more pertinent than mine.
One further detail: many years ago, it was customary in many places for children to steal watermelons from the small fields where they were grown. The sport of stealing melons from the watermelon patch had many names in different areas, but it was fairly common. MOST farmers tolerated it, even permitted it, but there were rules: children had to sneak in and out, and it was required that they take only what they could eat themselves. If the children were caught, the farmer would usually pretend to be furious -- it was a part of the game.
The reason that I mention this here is that the ritual usually included the older children telling the younger ones tales about at least one farmer in the community, usually the farmer they were visiting that very night, who was rumored to keep "a shotgun loaded with rock salt" and wait on the front porch or in ambush for the arrival of the kiddies. The older ones would often fill the stories with details of other children who had
supposedly been blasted "with a butt full of rock salt" in earlier years, and the stories would be embellished with remarks on how painful it was for the hapless young victims. The goal was the same as with the telling of ghost stories around campfires: it was entertainment, and being permitted by the older kids to go along for the first time was a rite of passage. Those were safer times.
Hey, have you ever been snipe hunting?
