The Watermelon Kid

The Watermelon Kid by Bill Terry was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1984. The novel follows A. J. Poole, known as the “Watermelon Kid” ever since he won a watermelon-eating contest in Batesville (Independence County) as a boy, and his adventures following a roadhouse band called the Highway 70 Six across Arkansas in the 1950s. Terry had previously written for the Arkansas Democrat and served as editor of the Arkansas Times.

Korean War veteran A. J. Poole hails from DeValls Bluff (Prairie County), where his mother has made a career of rescuing people from drowning in the White River. After her death in 1954, A. J. takes tuna fish salesman Pierpont Higgins of Canton, Ohio, the last man they rescued, to Flossie’s Place in Lepanto (Poinsett County), where they meet a friend of A. J.’s, Leroy Scroggins of St. Joe (Searcy County), who plays piano for the bar. There, they get the idea of helping Leroy form a band. They recruit yodeling guitarist Will Durst in West Memphis (Crittenden County), along with drummer Thurmond Spooner and bass player Lawrence “Pepper” Coe, whom they find in Forrest City (St. Francis County), and singer Randolph “Doodle Socket” Purvis, whom they see dancing on the front porch of his dogtrot house near Jonesboro (Craighead County).

The band initially decides upon the name Hot-Lick Lads but soon changes to the Highway 70 Six. They offer A. J. and Pierpont the job of managing and booking, but A. J. has other business and opts to look in occasionally, while Pierpont decides to stick close to A. J., saying “that kind of man bears watching and some looking after by one known for his prudence and perspicacity.” The band takes in waitress Rainbow Wimberly at Coy’s Restaurant in Hazen (Prairie County) for added sex appeal.

Following the formation of the band, much of the novel consists of various humorous vignettes of A. J. and Pierpont traveling across Arkansas and occasionally reuniting with the band as they do the roadhouse circuit across several states up and down the Mississippi River. In one, A. J. gets charged with statutory rape and assault after freeing a sixteen-year-old girl who had been chained up by her crazy preacher father in a bus along the Spring River. He learns judo in the two months before the trial and so can hold his own during this brief stay in Tucker Prison. In another, A. J. and the band sabotage a professional polesitter whose act is drawing crowds away from the local roadhouse. In one extended sequence, A. J., Pierpont, and the band help Rainbow (who has now had two kids with Leroy) in her quest to become a beauty queen; complicating this, some men threaten to release topless pictures of Rainbow they had obtained, but the band spikes the blackmailers’ drinks with a mixture called “screwdaddle wampus,” which turns them crazy. With the help of a traveling evangelist, Rainbow is crowned the new White River Water Carnival and Beauty Pageant queen, but she is disqualified when she, without thinking, reveals that she has two children with her common-law husband. This public revocation of her title sparks a riot. After they are released from jail, everyone heads over to the Silver Moon Club in Newport (Jackson County), and there, the band splits up.

Kirkus Reviews described the novel as “nothing very substantial, more material for smiles than laughs—but silly, headlong fun, speeding smoothly along with some of the natural good-ol’ boy comedy that distinguished Charles Portis’ Dog of the South.”

For additional information:
Review of The Watermelon Kid. Kirkus Reviews. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/bill-terry/the-watermelon-kid/ (accessed February 4, 2026).

Terry, Bill. The Watermelon Kid. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984.