I don’t know where watermelons came from but I do know I grew up in a farming town where the biggest crop was watermelons and I pitched , picked and otherwise loaded watermelons for all of my youth, I was told it character building back then all I know it was hot and tiring work
I picked cucumbers.
They weigh less.....................
In the first half of the Seventies I worked for a company that had a contract to ship watermelons from SoCal to Oregon, and then distribute them to Safeway stores in Oregon, between Eugene and Salem. Summertime, of course.
Hot and tiring, I agree. One benefit of the job was that we would ‘drop’ the occasional melon and refresh ourselves with the tasty moist heart.