Miles Carpenter owned a sawmill, an icehouse, an outdoor movie theater, and a roadside vegetable and fruit stand. The onset of World War II slowed work at the mill, prompting Carpenter to begin creating decorative carvings out of odd bits of leftover wood. In 1960, he shaped and embellished a chunk of elm wood to resemble a giant watermelon, placing his creation on a handcart and setting it beside his produce stand, where he occasionally propped it up on a wooden Coca-Cola crate as a seasonal advertisement. Carpenter enjoyed describing the incredulous reactions of passing motorists who mistook his carving for real fruit. When passing through Waverly in 1972, a curator at the museum spied the 110 pound melon and negotiated its purchase for the collection directly from Carpenter. Inscribed in pencil on a small oval area that was left unpainted at one end of the melon is: “M. B./CARPENTER/WAVERLY, VA./1960”.