I still don’t get what he meant. I’d gladly buy them, in 2009.
I was apartment hunting, and was at the point where looking in the Greensheet was a pretty good idea. The complex was south of the railroad tracks, which in and of itself didn’t really matter to me. I opened the door to the complex office and walked into another world.
The room was absolutely choking with cigarette smoke, and sitting at the desk was a middle-aged, overweight, grey haired woman in a flowered muumuu-like dress. Hanging from her lips was a cigarette filter with about 2 inches of ash. There was a large overflowing ashtray next to her gnarled, hairy, red-clawed hand. She was also sporting a rather full mustache.
As she was on the phone, she gestured to me to take a seat while she finished. I sat gingerly in the fold-out metal chair she pointed to, and found myself looking across the room at someone with a powerful resemblance to a less dapper Junior Samples. He was sitting in a chair messing with a Havahart rat trap. Not wanting to be seen as stuck-up, I hesitantly entered into a short conversation with this gentleman.
gg: “Uh, you looking to catch some rats?”
JS: “Nope. Skonk.”
gg: “Isn’t that trap a bit small for a skunk?”
JS: “Naw, he’ll squeeze on in thar.”
At this point, my ashy, moustached hostess got off the phone and went with me to look at the apartment. I kept the tour brief and got away from there as fast as I could.
The idea that (white) guys from the South would maximize profits by bringing a large truckload of watermelons to (a) New York City, and (b) park it UNDER A BRIDGE near the intersection of several major housing projects in Brooklyn (nearly completely occupied by blacks).
Sounds like it’s playing on two stereotypes at once: (a) inner city blacks buying stuff out of the back of a truck, and (b) eating watermelons. My friend’s wisecrack was to comment how the sellers must have been selling a lot to the other guys parked right next to him, selling “stolen” radios and speakers out of the backs of THEIR trucks.