The Swimming Hole

Attending the family reunion was a regular occurrence in the summer where I grew up. There was a phrase that brought relief to every kid and parent within ear shot of 200 yards, "Who's ready for a swim?" All of us could envision the shade, rafts and rope swings.

I was eager enough to have known where all the best of these wetlands could be found. When I was a kid no matter where I lived I would do the reconnaissance as if I was my sole mission.

Once a week when I was 8, my best friend Julie and I would ride our bikes down to our escape. We gathered picnic lunches of what often consisted of a cheese slices on a baguette, chilled grapes, and a thick slice of blueberry or peach cobbler. Julie's mom canned and had a basement full of mason jars for the taking.

So there we were, 2 kids loading up our bicycle baskets with gourmet goodies and fishing poles in hand. We'd race off in the hot wind with nothing but steam fueling us out of the hot sun and into the tree lined lake at the end of our street. We secretly kept an inner tube on the embankment to enjoy at our leisure. It would be so hot on our bikes one of us would shout out, "Last one in the lake is a rotten egg".

Once we cooled off in the lake it was as if we have been given new life and eyes to see how perfect the day truly was... and the lunch worth waiting for. By my calculations the cheese would be perfectly melted by then and the cobbler warm again.