GOING SWIMMING IN THE CREEK

PAINTING BY STEVE ATKINS
When I was about eight or nine years old, my sister and I would sneak off into the woods and go swimming in the creek behind our house. Well, I didn't actually swim, I was afraid of the water but I carried my inner tube and floated on that. The boys ruled this place. They had rope hanging from a tree and would swing out over the water and drop off, splashing all of us. We thought they were so brave, we never complained.

We were told over and over again not to go but the minute the grown ups had their attention on something else, away we went. It was probably about a mile from our home and this was in the days before parents panicked when their child was missing. They just waited on us, mad as a hornet. Mama would switch our legs with a small limb from a tree. She even let us get it ourselves, so of course we got the thinnest one we could find. I know now, that one hurt more than a large one would have. We didn't have our little lives destroyed by a spanking. We thought we deserved it for disobeying our parents. They whipped us, we got over it and all was well.

The last time I remember going, we stopped off to pick some blackberries on the way home. That is when the big disaster happened. My sister reached in and grabbed a yellow jacket nest. She was covered with those stinging things. She ran screaming to the house. Mama saw her coming and got a washtub, filled it with all the kerosene she had and stuck my sister in it. She finally stopped screaming quite so loud but she was in pain for quite a while after that. I don't recommend this treatment because I don't have any idea what it was supposed to do. It must have worked though because she was back to normal pretty soon. We didn't sneak away for the rest of that summer.