Water fun and summer just go hand in hand. Nothing feels better than a lovely swim on a hot summer's day does it? Growing up we had a funny sort of relationship with water. You see Daddy was afraid of water and worried incessantly over us. Granny and Grandaddy thought nothing of spending entire weekends camping at the river and letting us paddle about in shallow water off the sandbar where they camped, but Daddy's nervousness soon ended that.
Granny got around Daddy's fear by enrolling all 7 of us grandkids (my four cousins were included) in swimming lessons. She'd spend hours on end at the pool watching us swim. There was a sheltered area and Granny sat in the shade with her book in hand, scanning over the pool periodically to see where each of us was (usually we were all pretty near one another).
I think Daddy reconciled himself to the idea of us in water after the lessons though he never completely lost his fear. One of my last teen memories of swimming took place in a rather nicely built pond. It had a nice sandy bottom and was only about five and half feet deep. Daddy went with us into the water that particular time, which is why it's so memorable.
I remember paddling away and suddenly hearing a high pitched little scream...Turns out the pond also had fish and Daddy standing still in the water made them curious so they'd swim up to him and test this still item by touching their mouths to his legs, lol. Oh we had the best fun with Daddy and he finally was completely unnerved by fishy curiosity and got out of the water.
When I was living in the old railroad foreman's cottage with my first husband, we had no air conditioning and few of the ancient windows could be opened, so it was hot hot hot. Daytime the children and I lived for noon when the private pool club opened in the next small town. It was a small pool fed by an artesian well and oh that water was icy cold, so cold it burned the skin when you first slipped in. I suspect the 100F temperatures is the only thing that made that water bearable at all. Had we lived in a milder climate we'd never have been able to get into the water at all.
The children and I thoroughly enjoyed that water and often passed the evening in our stuffy hot house quite comfortably because our bodies were so thoroughly chilled by the hours spent in the water.
Fond memories of summers in the water...and that's just the beginning of the memories.
1 comment:
Summer and water seem to go together! We had a plastic circular pool with a vinyl liner about 2 and a half to 3 feet high and 10-12 feet across. My 2 sisters and I loved to swim in that pool. We would have our friends come sometimes too. We even put our slide in it sometimes and made a waterslide! Of course the squirt guns were always fun! When we went on vacation we always had to find a motel with a pool and right after supper we'd so swimming! Good memories of my childhood in the 50's.
Good bless, Kathy in Illinois
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