Swimming

Good morning!!

A friend sent one of those funny commercialized "back in the day" remembrances the other day, and one of the things remembered was that we swam in rivers, creeks, and goodness knows where else without fear of germs.

Oh, that is true, my friends.

When my parents decided that it was time to put no. 2 and myself into swimming lessons, they decided upon the instruction of Miss Margaret Monroe, a small tough lady who taught PE in the schools of Brownsville.  Miss Monroe had chosen, bought, and improved a section of wild resaca out in the brush near town.  She improved the area by grooming the bank and having a lot of clean sand laid down on the bottom of the area she planned to use for swimming lessons. She came around every morning in a little truck and picked up her aspirants to take them out to the country.

 A resaca  is a stretch of slowly moving water where the river "used to flow". In other words, I guess the main part of the river had veered off on its own, leaving a part behind to be tranquil and placid and green.  Brownsville, Texas, was the home of many a long, twisting and turning resaca, some of them fresh and clear, and some dark and murky.  In any case, the bottom of the resaca was soft and very gooey, as we found to our dismay when our feet sometimes found the part where Mis Monroe's sand had not been applied.  And we were surrounded by real wilderness, my dears. The "brush", the wild scrub that covered the land, had not been cleared away by lovers of mesquite bar-be-cuing.  We had ANIMALS!  We had boars and tortoises and snakes of all kinds.  And Alligator GARS! They are real! The resacas were full of cotton-mouthed moccasins and other more benign water snakes, all undistinguishable and all frightening.  Miss Monroe's re-furbishments must have turned the serpent world away, or it might have been the gosh awful noise of twenty or more youngsters all yelling and splashing at once, for I remember seeing only one snake that summer, far out in the resaca where the timorous beginners of Miss Monroe's early  class dared not go.

After we learned to trust Miss Monroe, we were put through the paces, from lying back on the water with the hand supporting us, to the gradual disappearance of the hand and the miraculous discovery that we were floating!  From that, we became invincible and no. 2 and I became swimmers.  Both of us enjoy  the water mightily to this day.  My parents could not swim, either one of them, and they marveled that we had learnt so easily.  All it takes is lessons, folks, and I surely take this opportunity to thank my parents for being willing to put their kids beyond their scope of expertise in that department, at least.

After the lesson  was over, Miss Monroe would put us all back into her truck and off we'd go to home, after which she drove around town picking up her intermediate or expert pupils.  Gosh, that was fun! Nice!  Let's swim! YAZZYBEL