Taking A Dip

Another Tale from the Franch

I have spent a great deal of my childhood swimming in questionable bodies of water. As kids, it didn’t matter where what we were swimming in, as long as it was cool. A lot of our swimming happened at my friend Meg’s place. Their dad set up a cow tank right off their front porch. It was great. We could jump off the porch into the water, cool off and splash around. The horses would stop over on occasion to take a drink. We’d just jump in wearing whatever clothes we had. Sometimes we would walk or ride out to the cow pond and swim. It was a smallish pond full of murky water. The cows drank from it, bathed in it, and did who knows what else in it. It was full of squishy mud, tadpoles and frogs. It was our dream come true. We would bring a strainer from Meg’s mom’s kitchen, and scoop up loads of tadpoles and little frogs. We would fill our irrigation boots with water and dump our critters in there. Occasionally we'd even catch a crawdad. We would swim and splash to our heart’s content. We never worried about catching the plague or stepping in a cow patty. We just enjoyed having good, clean, unadulterated childhood fun.