Steve Rollins got some tomato seeds and watermelon seeds from home and planted them in the revetment by one of the hooches. He watered them, they got lots of sun, and they grew. They could have used some Miracle-Gro, though. Before a tomato ripened, it would disappear. Rollins was not real pleased and started watching to see what was going on. Finally, he caught a kid from Mississippi from another unit picking the green tomatoes. When confronted, he apologized and explained that he just missed fried green tomatoes so much that he couldn’t help himself. He was frying them in his hooch. There were no hard feelings, and the guy got to be a regular visitor in the platoon area. In fact, there is a photo out there of him taking refreshment in our club wearing only his briefs.
Steve’s garden suffered a major setback on December 30, 1970. We were building new revetments near the garden and the old revetment collapsed on the melons and crushed most of them. We were also getting some late monsoon rains and most of the tomatoes rotted.
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