I grew up on the high windy plateaus of south-central Wyoming. There was no water to speak of except for a couple of reservoirs north of Rawlins on the way to Casper. The North Platte River was a few miles east of Rawlins which at that point in its meandering was probably not more than 10 feet across. Oh, and Brush Creek in the Snowy Mountain Range southeast of Rawlins before Laramie. It was swift and cold but not very commanding. Lake Louise at the top of the Snowy Mountains was pretty but not someplace you'd want to lay a blanket and sit out in the sun. Too chilly even in the very middle of summer. The snow run-off was still icy.
In our town we had an old swimming pool that I remember going to a few times with my older sisters. It had broken and crumbling concrete everywhere and was generally in sore need of repair, but still viable as a city amenity. But when the polio epidemic became like a plague and continued into the early 50's, that pool was condemned and closed.
At that time no one knew just exactly WHAT caused polio or how it was contracted. We weren't supposed to go barefoot or to public gatherings, especially those with water. Heck, just about everything we did or had done was suspect of carrying the dreaded polio virus. Because it was such a horrible disease leaving in its wake crippled children or children destined to exist in iron lungs--and those were the ones who survived the initial debilitating symptoms of the disease--everyone was very careful about not breaking the rules.
When Jonas Salk invented the vaccine for polio in 1955, everyone's life changed for the better. People could just exist more easily knowing there was a shot that could inoculate one from the horrors of such an unspeakable disease. But, it took a long time to restore and rebuild the infrastructure of what had been abandoned and junked during the polio "witch hunt", so to speak.
I was in the 6th grade when the new Rawlins Municipal Swimming Pool was completed in Washington Park several blocks northwest of my elementary school. I was excited about "going swimming" with my friends. But....I didn't know how to swim. (Lois' kids took swimming lessons and they learned. I wonder why I didn't?) My friends had all learned how to swim when their families had gone to the reservoirs for picnics and boating excursions. But my family didn't do those kinds of things for recreation. We NEVER purposely went somewhere that was strictly for water fun.
I was a dunce. I was a fraidy cat. I was scared of the water. I wanted to jump in and swim like the others, but it looked like a puzzle I couldn't figure out. So I would sit on the side and dangle my feet in the water while the others jumped in, splashed each other as they ducked in and out of the water, and had a wonderful adventure.
Truthfully, it was really my mother's fear of the water that overcame me every time I put on a swimming suit and bravely strode out of the sun into the dark entrance of the Rawlins pool to pay for my ticket. By the time I crossed through the dressing room and walked back into the sunlight of the open pool area, I was already embarrassed about my lack of swimming ability AND my unwillingness to put myself into a situation that made me look even more stupid than I already was.
My mother was deathly afraid of the water and often told of an experience that happened when she was pregnant with the twins (I think that's the pregnancy). Some of my mom's family and some of my dad's family all went regularly to Bear Lake in Idaho for an outing. My parents talked often of these excursions as being fun times for the husbands and wives as well as the dozens of kids they had among them. But this one time, my mother was very ill in the first trimester of her pregnancy and no one knew she was pregnant. Otherwise no one would even have let her near the water (there were so many taboos and old-wives tales about being pregnant, etc.)
Apparently, my dad's brother Afton was a prankster and made things lively. He was ten years younger than my dad and not married yet, so probably a teenager. When my mom said she didn't want to go into the water because she didn't know how to swim, Uncle Aft said if he threw her in she would learn sure enough. There was a lot of hooting and hollering while he picked up his sister-in-law and dunked her into the water...until after she went under and didn't come up. I'm not sure if it was because of her pregnancy or her fear--or both--but the aftermath was that they had to pull her from the water and revive her. She was unconscious. A reason to be afraid of the water. And she repeated that fearful story as often as she thought necessary to warn me of the dangers of water.
After I graduated from high school, my friend Teresa Spencer was given permission to drive to Colorado to pick up her brother Freddy at the end of his work week where he assisted on the road crew paving the highway through the hogbacks near Morrison. She asked me if I would like to come along for the ride. She would drive during the day, and Freddy would drive when it was dark to come home. My parents said it was okay.
We got to Colorado early enough to have some time on our hands before Freddy finished his work. There was a recreation facility nearby which had a big outdoor pool with a slide. Teri suggested we go swimming. I told her I couldn't swim and was afraid of the water. She said, "That's nonsense! You just come right back up after you jump in." What she didn't add, probably because swimming was so second nature to her, was that, sure, you came right back up. But by heck, you better know what to do with yourself before you went right down again!
We jumped into the pool. We both came right back up. But I went under again. And I had NO clue how to keep myself afloat, let alone swim, dog paddle, or otherwise get myself out of the water. So, before I knew it, Teri had jumped in and brought me to the surface of the swimming pool where I sputtered and heaved and pretty much was a wreck. She continued to swim until time to pick up her brother, but I was having a miserable time and just wanted to go home.
I went to BYU that fall. We had to take eight credits of PE at that time to graduate. I wanted to do the showy stuff. Ballroom dancing. All classes full by the time my name rolled around to register. Bowling. All classes full. Fencing. Ditto. Can't remember what I finally took, but it had to be awful. Sophomore year rolled around. There was a brand new PE building with THREE Olympic sized pools--and enough classes for just about the whole school to take swimming lessons.
One promise I made to myself, probably when I was "drowning" the first time, was that I WAS going to take a swimming class SOMETIME so I would at least learn how to tread water in the awful eventuality that I might be drowning for real. I would be able to keep my head above water. Here was my opportunity. And so, I signed up to take beginning swimming. Thankfully, I wasn't the ONLY person in the class who did NOT know how to swim--even a little. Level playing field, for the most part.
But I hated that class! It was at noon in a beautiful brand new facility with windows at the third story level where students could gaze down through to the pool area and the swimming classes. And there were lots of gawkers at noon! Each Tuesday and Thursday I would just go through the motions so I could pass the class and in the end know that I had just a couple of skills that might keep me alive if I ever found myself under water. I could hardly wait for each of those horrid 50 minutes of class torture to end.
One day the teacher said we could go early, as soon as we did such and such. I finished as quickly as I could and took off for the dressing room--completely forgetting the rule NEVER RUN in the pool area. Yup! I slipped and fell to my knees while dozens of people were watching from their eagle height perch at the windows. I jumped up and walked as quickly as I could without running--and without looking like I was in pain--to the dressing room where I collapsed onto the bench and wanted to scream and cry my knee hurt so badly. It didn't take long for the bruises to appear. Perfect tiny blackish purple window panes thanks to the ceramic tile which lined the pool area. It took days before the pain in my knee went away. And weeks before the bruises finally turned brown, then green before they faded.
I knew the requirements for a swimming certificate and for a passing grade from day one. All the other requirements for the class paled to this last one--jump from the high diving board of the largest pool. When the day came I literally had to force myself up the ladder to the platform and out to the end of the diving board.
Even now, I do not know how I made myself step off into space. I am terrified of speed and height. the exact combination this feat produced. As I sliced the water feet first, I could feel my swimming suit try mightily to disassociate itself from my body. Thank goodness my crotch kept it on, though I'm sure it was buried at least three inches into my internal organs by the time I bobbed to the surface.
And the first thing I did after that dive was get out of the pool, climb that ladder again and dive a second time. Just to say I had done MORE than was required of me. I have told some people I dived three times. As I review that experience, NO. I don't think it is in my nature to do any more than ONE MORE. I'll just say I dived twice. The second wasn't as paralyzing as the first, but close!
At the end of the semester could I say I had learned to like the water, even a little bit? NADA! The only thing I could say is that I had met the requirements which said I knew the rudimentary basics of moving through the water and keeping afloat. A swimming certificate. It didn't change how I felt about---and still feel about, to a certain degree--water, water sports, cruises, lakes, oceans, big bodies of water, and the smell that accompanies water. Especially tide water which STINKS!. I can handle wading in a stream. I kind of like that--which got me into a heap of trouble one time. But that is a story for another day.
I used to look at the genealogical sheets and see that my great grandfather Huggins was born in Toms River, New Jersey. Wow! That sounded just a little bit romantic. And to think he left there and came all that way across the Great Plains as a pioneer to the Rocky Mountain West. Once in an airplane we passed over that area and Ross pointed it out to me through the window down there along the shore. I wanted to see it in person.
When I was working for Data National Corporation, I had business in New Jersey and made a detour to see Toms River which is on a cape. It was a raw day. The sky was grey, the temp was chilly, the wind was sharp and the smell was AWFUL! It wasn't at all like I had imagined that place with an interesting name. I gave a silent prayer of thanks that my great grandfather had left New Jersey and gone west as a pioneer, suffering who knows what kind of privations to settle in the tops of the Rockies where most bodies of water are about no bigger than the bathtub. Now THAT is my idea of perfect water. No need for a bathing suit. No expectations to sit out in hot sun. No scratchy sand infiltrating every pore of my body. No stench of the tide or the ocean. Just clean water in a manageable quantity.
Do I still know how to swim? Probably not. I haven't really been in a swimming pool with my complete body immersed for over 20 years. And I pay $55 a month to my HOA for my neighborhood pool which I can see from my back yard!
I think I could still tread water, though, and maybe even float on my back. I did kind of enjoy that now and then. But will I purposely seek out a vacation that would require me to be a water nymph? Nah! That's why I'm going on a RIVER cruise. Get to keep my clothes on and dry.
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