From
the series Uprooted
Every morning Aunt Lou dressed for her job at
Broward General Hospital. She put on her
starched white uniform, her white stockings and white shoes and pinned on her starched white nurse’s cap and walked to work.
Uncle John left for work at his store and sometimes daddy and the
children would go with him, but most days the children were left home alone
while daddy took mama to look for work.
She soon found a job working as a cashier at a grocery store.
Then daddy started taking her to work every morning
and he decided that Rebecca and Robert needed swimming lessons. He decided that after the family started
taking drives looking around Fort Lauderdale nearly every evening house
hunting. He saw that there was water
everywhere and that made him fear for the children’s safety.
Uncle John said that Fort Lauderdale was the “Venice
of America” named after a place called Venice in Europe. There, he said, the streets were water. Here, the streets weren’t but there was water
nearly everywhere else.
He said that nearly the whole place had been water
and swamps, so some people got the idea to build sea walls and start dredging
the mangrove swamps. They put the dirt
from the swamp beds behind the seawalls.
That meant that there was a dry place to build houses and roads on. Then, the houses were right on the canals
that were left between the sea walls.
So, daddy insisted that Rebecca and Robert learn to
swim. Daddy took them to a place that looked just like a castle called the Las
Olas Casino Pool. Looks can be very
deceiving. The place was monstrous. First, the children had to go into the locker
rooms and leave their street stuff there.
The place was as cold as ice.
Then, they had to shower in cold water before
getting into the pool. Rebecca couldn’t
understand why someone had to wash-up before going swimming. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Rebecca had to wear
a bathing cap. Robert didn’t have to wear
one, because he was a boy! They said that it was to keep hair
from clogging up the pool’s filters.
Rebecca said that Robert’s hair was just as likely to clog up the
filters as hers was, but her argument did not work.
After showering the children were made to climb down
a ladder into the pool’s icy water. It
was miserable, but both children learned to swim many different strokes and
they each learned to dive off the small diving board into the 12’ deep water
and to jump off the high diving board into the deep end. They had to master different things to
advance to higher classes which they both did over time.
The best thing about swimming lessons was when they
were over daddy would take them across the street to the ocean and let them
play in the ocean to have fun and to warm up.
Daddy quit worrying so much, because Rebecca and Robert could both swim like fish.
Rebecca and Robert never liked swimming lessons even
when, while trying to persuade them how great the pool was, they were told that
Johnny Weismuller, better known as Tarzen from the movies, swam there. The children saw pictures of him at the pool
in the newspaper and on post cards, but Rebecca and Robert remained unimpressed. Especially since, no matter how many times
they were at that pool freezing and taking lessons always keeping an eye out
for him, they never once saw him there.
Not one single time.
©Patty F.
Cooper, Elizabethton, Tennessee, July 5th, 2014
All Rights Reserved
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