Our Old Swimmin' Hole - A return to childhood
By Willis E. Johnson
Wichita, Kansas

    Come folks.  Take my hand and go on a sentimental journey with me...A sentimental journey HOME.  It was 1918, and I was five years old.  Back then, we didn't have the amenities we have now.  We had kerosene lamps and outside privies.  We heated with wood and coal, no swimming pools, but Third Trees, where we five boys swam naked, became our Mother away from home.  By age five, I could swim like a fish.  Naturally, we all became Tarzans.  High in the cottonwoods we jumped limb to limb, caught, then dove into the creek.  Easy now we are hand fishing.  Swim close under those grapevines hanging in the water, reach under slow and gentle.  Yes, that is a big carp get your forefingers into his gills and you have a fish.

    Don't panic when a sunning moccasin hits the water.  He is as scared as you.  If you touch a big snapping turtle, LEAVE INSTANTLY.  He can "borrow" one of your fingers.  No, no, big brother Rusty!  You don't have to prove you can roll in poison ivy like those Thoman boys and not be covered with runny blisters in three days.  Rusty did and Delia, our mother, had to paint his whole body with zinc oxide for two weeks to clear his body again.

    Why yes, those worms on your body are leeches.  You have two choices, pull them off or burn them loose. When you get home place iodine on the marks they left.  Yes, Third Trees was our haven on earth.  Sometimes the Miller girls were fishing around the bend as we played or sunned on the bank.  A lady is a lady and a gentleman is a gentleman.  We left the girls alone as they did us.

    I was in high school when the THREE SISTERS OF THE FATES TAUGHT ME A LESSON THAT I'LL NEVER FORGET.  I walked over to visit my best friend without knowing my worst enemy was with him in their wash house making a go-cart.  (I term my friend Bob and my enemy Bill.)  I stepped inside and instantly me and Bill were into a verbal fight and Bob was trying to keep us apart.  Out came Bill's mother (Bess) to settle our heated battle.  

    In Fowler, everybody called me Biddy because of my love affair with my pet chickens when I was five.  When I was nine Delia, our mother, gave birth to our last brother and flew off to heaven on white wings because she bled to death internally before we could find her doctor again.  I loved Bess because she was a mother that always helped me.  She started arguing with her son and politely I excused myself telling Bob I'd visit him later.

    I pretended to leave.  I DIDN'T!  INSTEAD, OUT OF SIGHT, I EAVESDROPPED BESIDE A BACK WINDOW.  "Billy," Bess was scolding, "you must remember that Biddy doesn't have a mother.  He can't help being dirty and Hance, his father, has him and all the rest of the kids to take care of".  I was on cloud nine as I listened to her.  Then Bill was telling his side.  "Mom," he argued, "every time we play football it is always me that Biddy smears the hardest.  He cheats in all of his games.  I know he can whip me because he had a professional teach him dirty fighting.  He drives me crazy every time he's around."  At this, I wan on cloud 99.

    It was then that Bess dropped her unintended bomb.  "Son," she said, "YOU MUST REMEMBER THAT BIDDY IS A POOR BOY."  What?  Me, a poor boy?  ME?  Why, I had twenty cents in my pocket.  Slowly I turned away.  Already tears filled my eyes.  Blindly my feet carried me off up the alley.  I hadn't the slightest idea where they were taking me and I didn't care.  Strange, they took me to Third Trees where I sat on the bank staring into the water doing my best to assuage a broken heart.  I wept for hours, I had returned to the only mother I knew, Third Trees.

    It was then, figuratively speaking, Delia returned to me after many long, lonely years.  Mother was not what I expected.  Instead, she was inside me tearing me to pieces.  "Willis," she said, "everything Bill says about you is true.  You go around filthy like it's a badge of honor.  You do badger and try to pick fights with Bill, are very rough, you do cheat him.  It is past the time for you to straighten your life out and act like a friendly adult."

    Delia melted away.  It was near sundown and the birds were singing as I left.  This was the turning point of my life.  HOME is where the heart is.  In one afternoon I had changed completely.  There after I was clean, helped my family and apologized to Bill, who is long-deceased now.