If you drive through the better sections of Memphis or Jackson, you'll see that most of the rich folks who live there have a swimming pool in their backyard and those pools are really nice. They're made of concrete and sunk in the ground just like the regular swimming pools in some of the parks. Usually they'll have a diving board at the deep end, and steps that lead down to the water at the shallow end.
Those pools come in all sizes and shapes from just rectangles to round to sort of shaped like a kidney bean, and they all have a deep end and a shallow end. You'll know which is which because there are signs painted on the concrete that tell you.
They have a stone or concrete patio around them where the wealthy people can sit in chairs at round tables with big umbrellas to shield them from the sun and sip their pina coladas. If there are people who live there who like to work on their tan, they'll have a fancy chaise lounge or two on that patio too. That furniture comes from really pricey stores, but it's really nice. I suppose some of people do get into the water sometimes, but from what I've heard, mostly they sit in a chair or lay on a chaise lounge and watch their kids play in the water.
Most of those fancy pools have a fence around them. The fence has two purposes. One is to keep their insurance costs down. Insurance companies don't like swimming pools because some kid in the neighborhood might wander into one and drown. Then the owners get sued and the insurance company has to pay. The insurance companies like a swimming pool to have a high fence with a gate to get inside and a lock on the gate.
There is another reason for a high fence. Now, nobody in Buck Lick has one of those big, in-ground pools with a high fence around it, so I can't say if this is true or not. Apparently there are some of those rich people who like to get naked out beside their pool. The fence stops their neighbors from seeing them out there naked and sunbathing or swimming or...well, whatever else they like doing naked and outside.
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Even some of the middle class folks in those cities have their own pools, but usually they're above ground and are a plastic liner held up by a metal frame. They're almost always round and only about four feet deep. You have to climb a little ladder to get in and out. Some of them have a wood deck that starts at the back deck of the house goes all around the pool. You can jump in from the deck, and they have a little ladder so you can get back out.
If the deck is big enough, there'll be one of those same tables with an umbrella and a couple chairs and maybe a chaise lounge or two, but those tables and chairs and chaise lounges usually come from Walmart. Those people do get into the water but their pools are pretty small to do much swimming. The wives usually float around on an air mattress so they don't get their hair wet. The men just jump in to cool off on a hot day and then try to get their wives off the air mattress so they get wet too.
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The people in cities who can't afford a pool or don't have a place to put one go to the municipal pool in a park. I've been to one, once, and it wasn't much fun. Yes, there were a lot of women in tiny little bikinis to watch, but more than a few should have covered up what they were showing.
Actual swimming there was pretty hard to do. People kept diving in off the diving boards at the deep end, so swimming there meant you had to keep looking up to see who was going to jump next so you could stay out of their way. In the middle there were teenage boys splashing each other and any teenage girls brave enough to get up off their beach towels and go in the water. At the shallow end, there were always a bunch of moms with their little kids and you couldn't swim for fear of running into one. There were a couple of moms I wouldn't have minded running into, but if I had, Jackie would have banished me to the couch for a week.
There's another problem with municipal pools. No matter how hot it is, they don't open up until Memorial Day and they close up after Labor Day.
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Now, folks in Buck Lick like to swim, but we don't have our own pools. Instead, like most small towns in the South, we have a swimming hole. Ours is out on Buck Lick Creek. No, it's not really a hole. What a swimming hole is, is a place in a big creek or a small river that isn't real deep and has a slow current and has trees that overhang the water. You can take a cooler of beer or soft drinks down to the swimming hole and hang out for a few hours and swimming holes are open year round.
There's always a rope hung from a big tree branch that hangs over the water so you can swing out over the water and then let go so you fall in with a big splash. That's a favorite with the younger crowd. The guys want to show the girls how far out they can swing before they let go. The girls are a little more reserved so they don't swing out as far. Given how skimpy their bikinis are I can't say as I blame them. If they hit the water too hard, they might lose the top, not that any of the guys would mind all that much.
On a Saturday when it gets hot enough you sweat just from going outside, Jackie packs a cooler with soft drinks and makes some sandwiches, and we head down to the Buck Lick swimming hole. We sit on the bank in the shade and eat our lunch and then I go in for a swim to cool off. Jackie wears her suit under her clothes, but she won't come in with me if there are any other people there. She says even though she's wearing a one-piece bathing suit, they'll still see that her tummy isn't as flat as it used to be.
Now, I've seen Jackie naked and her tummy isn't nearly as bad as she thinks it is. Betty June Philips is only nineteen and hasn't had two kids, and her tummy sticks out way more than Jackie's does. I'm not even sure how Betty June manages to get her bikini bottoms on straight because she sure can't see where they are once they get past her knees. Jackie never listens to me about that though.
For the most part, everybody behaves themselves at the swimming hole, at least during the day. There are too many mothers and fathers around for the young kids to act up too much. That changes after it gets dark during the summer months.
Now, it doesn't get really wild or anything like that out at our swimming hole. It's not like those rave things I keep reading about with really loud music and people running around with purple hair and wearing weird clothes. It's just a few young, single adults getting together around a campfire with a few beers and doing what young, single adults do. Hell, when Jackie and I were dating, we used to do it if we weren't going to a movie or doing something else. I have some very fond memories of those days at the swimming hole.
At first, everybody'd just sit around the fire and talk and drink beer. Along about eleven somebody would decide to go swimming and it wouldn't take long before all of us were in the water.
Now, you'd think it would be pretty normal for people to go swimming in a swimming hole, and it was. What most parents wouldn't consider normal was most of the couples had somehow forgotten to bring their swimsuits and ended up skinny dippin'. It was really great if there was a full moon because you could see which girl was everything she looked like when she was dressed and which girl was helping Nature out a little, sometimes a lot. I'll tell you, back then, Jackie standing there in the cool water with nothing on but a smile would raise my...
Well, anyway, before Jackie and I got married, we had some fun times down at the Buck Lick Creek swimming hole. After that, we still slipped out there once in a while just for old time's sake. That stopped once Jackie got pregnant the first time. She couldn't fit into a swimming suit, and once our son was born, she said she didn't look good enough to parade around in any kind of swimming suit. Instead she paraded around our bedroom naked. I kind of missed the water, but we still had a lot of fun.
I said the water was cool because it is. Buck Lick Creek is fed by a few springs up on Gary Lynn Mason's farm, so that water feels real nice when it's about ninety-six in the shade. You can just wade out to the deep part which is about up to your armpits, sink down, and let the water cool you out just like if you were in air conditioning.
It's funny how that works differently between men and women. Any man who gets in the water at the swimming hole sort of shrinks up. Women tend to sort of swell up in some places, some more than others, but it's still really great to see that happen. Now if only seeing that would bring my little deputy back to attention, but he's hiding and waiting for warmer times.
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Well, this May, we got ourselves a heat wave right in the middle of the month. That wasn't normal at all. Usually we don't have our last frost until the middle of April and from then until June, the temperature sort of creeps up until we're in the eighties during the day. This year though, we had almost a week where you'd break a sweat just getting from the house to your car.
It was ninety-seven by the thermometer on the bank when I came home for lunch on that Tuesday. I knew something was wrong when I saw all the windows in our house were open. We put in central air twenty years ago, and those windows haven't been open since except for one day every spring when Jackie says she's airing out the house and she'd already done that this year.
When I walked in the door, there was Jackie in a tank top and little shorts standing in front of the old floor fan I keep in the garage for when I'm doing something out there. She had the tank top pulled up over her bra.
When she heard me, Jackie turned around and frowned.
"Something's wrong with the air conditioner. All it puts out is hot air. Even with as little as I have on, I'm still hot. If I didn't think the neighbors would see me, I'd strip naked."
