GOIN’ SWIMMIN’
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GOIN’ SWIMMIN’
THE sun was laying a fervid course higher and higher athwart the bending
blue; in household kitchens was the odor of sassafras tea—and in your
mouth the taste of it; the air was humid, the earth was mellow, winter
flannels a sticky burden, shoes burning shackles; snakes had long been
out, and turtles were emerging, to bask, and to pop in, as of old, with
exasperating freedom; you yearned to follow them.
The water _looked_ warm. Snoopie Mitchell, always authority on
everything, bluffly asserted that it _was_ warm. But Snoopie appeared to
have a hide impervious to discomfort. Snoopie did as he pleased, and
nothing ever hurt him, notwithstanding. Sometimes you wished that your
father and mother would observe, and learn, to your profit.
“Dare you to go in swimmin’!” volunteered Billy Lunt, that hot spring
noon, when it seemed to you that you must burst out of your smothering
clothes as a snake out of his skin.
“Aw, we ain’t afraid; are we, Hen?” you answered promptly, enrolling Hen
for support.
“No. We’ll go if you will,” retorted Hen.
“Snoop Mitchell—he’s been in an’ he says it’s dandy,” informed Billy.
Of course! That Snoopie! He was well named.
“Aw—I bet he ain’t, just the sam-ee,” you faltered enviously.
“He has, too. You ask him, now.”
And Snoopie at the moment opportunely sauntering near, Billy hailed him:
“Snoopie! Ain’t you been in swimmin’ already?”
Snoopie grandly nodded, and nonchalantly spat betwixt two front upper
teeth.
“Course I have,” he answered. “Ain’t you kids been in yet? Aw, gee!”
“Was it warm?” you inquired humbly.
“Jus’ right. Makes you feel fine. We go in every day, about—me an’ Spunk
Carey.”
That settled it. The swimming season had opened.
During the afternoon at school you and Hen and Billy were in an ecstatic
tremor. From behind his geography Billy darted into sight two fingers,
you responded, daringly, with two fingers, and Hen telegraphed quick
accord with like two fingers—the mysterious “V” sign of the Free Masonry
of swimmers.
Teacher saw, and frowned; but “teacher,” by reason of her limitations of
sex, could not appreciate what you were having, and what she was
missing.
With a proud consciousness, you and Hen and Billy foregathered after
school and started creekward.
“We’re goin’ swimmin’!” you called back to former associates.
“Aw, it’s too cold!” they complained.
“We don’t care. ‘Twont’ hurt us.”
“Bet you don’t go in!”
“Bet you a hundred dollars we do!”
“Bet you two hundred you don’t!”
(Dollars meant so much less to you in those days than in these.)
“You come along and see!”
“Uh-uh. We’re goin’ to play ball.”
Very well; let them stay and play ball, if they liked. You would be
entitled to strut on the morrow.
In the afternoon sun the creek lay smiling, inviting, deluding. Upon its
bank a new crop of tin cans testified that the fishing season, also, had
opened. Some of the cans were yours. The grass was soft, and sitting on
it you vied with Hen and Billy in pulling off shoes and stockings.
“First in!” challenged Billy, hastily peeling.
You fumbled with the buttons which united waist with knickerbockers, and
silently resolved that you would let him beat. Evidently Hen was of mind
identical. Billy, now naked like some young faun, but singularly white
and spindly, gave a coltish little kick and prance, and, with
ostentatious gusto, advanced to the water’s edge.
Yourself exposed to the world, feeling oddly bare and defenseless—a
feeling which with wont would disappear, as the summer wore on—you stood
and, shivering, wrapped yourself in your arms and watched him.
Billy stuck a toe into the water and quickly drew it back.
“Is it cold?” you queried.
“Naw! Come on!” he urged.
“Let’s see you go in first.”
“That ain’t fair. You come in, too!”
“Naw! You dared us. You got to do it first,” declared Hen.
“Huh, I ain’t afraid,” asserted Billy.
Resolutely he put one foot in. Involuntarily he flinched—but he followed
it with the other. Witnessing his actions, reading that his toes were
curling, you and Hen jeered and whooped. As you jeered, you continued to
huddle, and to shrink within yourself. Gee, but it was cold! Somehow,
the sun did not warm, and a little breeze, heretofore unnoted, enveloped
you with an icy breath. You humped your shoulders, and your teeth
chattered. Hen’s teeth, also, were chattering. You could hear them.
“Go on! Duck over!” you told Billy, derisively.
Billy was game. Suddenly, with water up to his quaking knees, he ducked.
In an instant he was upright again—staggering, gasping, sputtering, but
triumphant.
“Come on in!” he implored, wildly solicitous that you and Hen, hooting
your glee, should participate more actively. “’Tain’t cold. What’s the
matter with you?”
Followed by Hen you diffidently moved forward. Shivering, gingerly you
teetered down, twigs and little stones hurting your yet tender soles.
Billy ducked again, apparently with the utmost relish, and floundered
and splashed, his energy very marked.
You experimented with a foot—and hastily jerked it out.
“Gee!” you exclaimed. “I ain’t goin’ in! It’s too cold.”
“I ain’t, neither,” decreed Hen.
“Aw, ’tain’t cold a bit when you’ve wet over,” assured Billy eagerly—but
suspiciously blue. “Take a dare—aw, I wouldn’t take a dare! You’re
stumped! Yah-ah! I’ve stumped you!”
Diabolically did Billy flounder and gibe. He paused, expectantly, for
you planted a foot, and gasped, and followed with the other; so did Hen.
Billy playfully splashed you.
“Come on!” he cried. “Come on!”
“Ouch! Quit that, will you?” you snarled, as the poignant drops stung
your thin skin. “I’m comin’, ain’t I?”
Deeper, a little deeper, you went, with your piteously pleading flesh
trying to recede from that repellant glacial line creeping up, inch by
inch.
Billy shrieked with joy. What is misery when it has company!
“Duck!” he cackled. “Duck! ’Twon’t be cold after you’ve ducked.”
Must you? Oh, must you? Yes. You drew a long breath, shut your eyes, and
desperately butted under. So, you dimly were conscious, did Hen.
Ugh! You choked; your stomach clove flat against your backbone, and in
you was not space for air. Blindly you recovered, and lurched and clawed
and fought for breath, while Billy rioted with wicked exultation.
“’Tain’t c-c-cold, is it?” you gasped defiantly.
“No; ’tain’t c-c-cold a bit,” chattered Hen.
“I told you ’twasn’t cold,” sniggered Billy.
But you impetuously plashed for shore; so did Hen; so did Billy. With
numbed fingers you made all haste to pull your clothes over the
goose-flesh of your weazened limbs and your shuddering little body. You
began to grow warmer. You tried to control rattling teeth.
“’Twasn’t cold!”
“Of course it wasn’t!”
“We’ll tell all the kids it’s bully.”
“Gee! I feel fine, don’t you?”
“You bet!”
“Let’s come again.”
“Let’s come to-morrow.”
“N-no, I can’t come to-morrow,” you declared.
“I can’t, either,” said Hen.
Retrospect was most delightful; but prospect—well, here was a case where
the prospect did _not_ please. Anyhow, you had not been stumped. Your
honor was intact—and you could rest on your laurels. You could nicely
combine discretion with valor; so why not?
“I’ve been in swimmin’,” you ventured, with becoming modesty, at the
supper-table that evening.
“John! When?” reproved mother, aghast
“To-day, after school.”
You endeavored to speak with the carelessness befitting a seasoned
nature such as yours—but you awaited with some inward trepidation family
developments.
“Why!” ejaculated mother.
You felt that she was gazing across at father. Much depended, you
realized, upon father. However, he had been a boy, and he surely would
understand.
“But wasn’t the water too cold?” she questioned anxiously.
“Uh-uh,” you signified, steadily eating.
“It _must_ have been cold,” insisted mother. “Why, the sun hasn’t had
time to warm it yet. I should think you’d have frozen to _death_!”
“It was dandy. Makes you feel fine,” you assured boldly. “Billy Lunt
dared Hen and me, and—”
“I suppose if some other boy dared you to jump off the top of the church
steeple you’d do it, then,” stated mother severely.
“He’d have to do it first,” you explained with a giggle.
“Well, I _should_ think you’d have frozen,” murmured mother, with an
appealing glance at father.
Perhaps _she_ would have frozen—being, like “teacher,” of a sex
unfortunate. But not you—nay, not mighty, dauntless, much-experienced
you, with your ten long years backing you up. Huh!
* * * * *
Not always was swimming thus a task; the embrace of the creek, deceitful
and inhospitable.
Ah, those glorious, piping, broiling summer days, when from the faded
sky the heat streamed down, and from the simmering earth the heat
streamed up; when abroad, in the maples and the elms and the apple-trees
incessantly scraped with ghoulish glee the locusts, and in the fields
the quail cried perseveringly, “Wet! More wet! More wet!” when the sun
ruled absolutely, and everybody—save you and your fellows—stewed and
panted under his sway; “dog-days”—aye, and, boy-days! Then, then, at the
swimming-hole the kingdom of boyhood held high carnival.
All nature lay lax and heaving, seeking shade and avoiding exertion, as
outward bound through the stifling afternoon you and Hen hastened for
the swimming-hole. Even the birds were subdued, and the drone of the
bumble-bee was languid, protesting; but what did you and Hen care about
such things as temperature or humidity? Goodness! You were “goin’
swimmin’!”
As you pattered on, you and he, the boards of the sidewalk scorched your
bare soles, toughened as they were, and even the baked earth of the
pathway along the vacant lots tortured, so than with “ouches” and “gees”
you hopped for shaded spots or sought the turf. Beat down upon your
flapping straws the strenuous sun—his beams, after all, not unfriendly,
but merely testing, and in a hearty way, welcoming.
He recognized you two as akin to the meadowlarks and the gophers, and he
knew that he might not harm you. You were immunes.
The outskirts of the village are reached right speedily; and now off at
a tangent, athwart the drowsy, palpitating pasture where the bees are
busy amidst the clover, making for a fringe of trees leads a path worn
by many a hurrying, bare, and buoyant sole.
You can hear, ahead of you, an enthusing medley of gay shrieks and cries
and laughter.
“Crickety!” you say to Hen, quickening the pace. “There’s a whole lot in
already!”
And you are not even undressed!
On before, between the tree-trunks at your destination, you can glimpse,
strewn over the sod or hanging from low branches, rejected and dejected
garments—limp shirts, hickory, checked, tinted; stumpy trousers,
dangling or down-flung. You descry the patchy blue of Snoopie Mitchell’s
one-suspendered overalls; so you know that Snoopie is there. You know
who else is there, too. The apparel is evidence.
The sight redoubles your efforts. In rivalry with Hen, panting,
perspiring, eager, you penetrate the trees and stop short on the bank.
You have arrived.
Yes, here they are: Snoopie, and Billy Lunt, and Fat Day (his body
covered with hives), and Skinny, and Chub, and Nixie Kemp (who can
exhibit the biggest vaccination mark of all of you), and Tom Kemp (who
is always peeling, somewhere), and—oh, a glorious company, wallowing
like albino porpoises, threshing like whales!
“A-a-a-ah, lookee, lookee!” greets Snoopie (indefatigable, omnipresent)
shrilly, grinning up at you; and for your benefit he stands on his head
and waves his brown legs above the surface.
“Hello, Fat!”
“Hello, Skinny!”
“Hello, Jocko!”
“Hello, Hen!”
“Hello, Nix!”
“Come on in! Come on in!”
“Gee! It’s dandy!”
“Water’s jus’ fine! Warm as milk.”
“You’re missin’ it! We been in all day.”
Harrowing announcement!
Nor you nor Hen needs invitation by word of mouth. You are ripping
feverishly at your obstinate buttons, and tugging feverishly at your
pestering clinging garments. But how absurdly simple was your attire, as
reviewed to-day from your environment of starch and balbriggan, hosiery
and collar. Nevertheless, many a time, in your agony of haste, you
envied Snoopie, who with a single movement slipped the one suspender of
his overalls and ducked out of his voluminous shirt, and with a whoop
was in!—happy Snoopie!
Now, investing apparel cast aside in an ignominious heap, at last free
and untrammeled you stride forward. From knee down and from neck up you
are dark-brown; between, you are whitish-brown. Before the season closes
you will be an even brown all over (like Snoopie), if your ambition is
realized.
First you must wet your head. This is the law; else you may get cramps.
You hurriedly wet it.
“Look out!” you warn with a significant step or two backward, to gain
momentum.
You give a little run, and with a rapturous shout and a grand splash
_you_ are in. So is Hen.
Oh, bliss! The caressing, rollicking flood envelops you to the
shoulders. You wade, you kick, you sputter, you blow, you plunge your
length, you squeal your joy intense—you convince yourself and would
convince others that you swim; and your comrades wade, and kick, and
sputter, and blow, and plunge their lengths, and squeal—and
ostentatiously paddle. While Snoopie, crawling about under water, grabs
legs; presently grabbing yours, and down you go, beneath, to emerge
strangling, clutching, incensed.
Stirred from the very bottom, all the pool is beaten to foam, the sun
looks down between the spangling leaves and smiles, and the trees fondly
overhang, stretching down friendly boughs.
* * * * *
What a wonder you were, as a water performer!
“See me float!” you yell—this being the popular pitch of conversation.
And you _could_ float—almost, that is, until your feet or your face sank
too far and forced you to rally.
“Aw, that ain’t floatin’! Jus’ watch me!” decrees Snoopie.
Snoopie really could float—and challenging admiring eyes he proceeds to
display.
“Watch _me_!” implores Fat.
“Aw, gee! Watch Fat! Aw gee! That ain’t floatin’! That ain’t floatin’,
is it, Snoop? Fat wiggles his hands down by his sides!”
“Don’t either!” declares Fat, angrily, flopping his mottled self to a
standing position.
“You do, too! Don’t he?”
You could stand Snoopie’s superiority, but not Fat’s.
“Well, I didn’t wiggle ’em much, anyhow,” grumbles Fat.
With breath tight held and head tilted stanchly back, launching yourself
and paddling furiously dog-fashion, you can easily imagine that you are
cleaving a path through the murky flood.
“You’re touchin’ bottom! Aw, you touched bottom!” accuses Fat.
“I wasn’t, either, darn you! I started ’way up there at that stick and I
come ’way down here!” (The distance is at least a yard.)
Betimes, splashing out, you all seek the banks, amphibious-like; to
streak yourselves fantastically with mud, to cover yourselves
luxuriously with hot sand, to race, to gambol, or to loll on the turf
and emulously compare sunburn, “peels,” and vaccination scars.
In again you scamper, and the pool resumes its cauldron turmoil.
The sun, from his new station low in the west, sends rays slanting in
beneath the trees to signal “Home.”
“Come on, I’m goin’ out!” says Hen. “You’d better, too. Your lips are
blue as the dickens.”
“So are yours,” you retort. “Ain’t they, kids! Ain’t Hen’s lips bluer’n
mine?”
A farewell wallow, and out you wade reluctantly. One by one out wade
all. Your hands are shriveled with long soaking. You are water-logged.
There is sand in your hair. Languidly you dress.
With Snoopie and Hen and Fat and Skinny and the others—a company now
chastened and subdued—back you stroll across the pasture, the setting
sun in your face, the robins piping their even-song, the locusts done
and quiescent, katydids tentatively tuning up as their successors. The
sky is golden in the west, pink overhead, blue in the east. Upon the
clover the dew is collecting, annoying o’erzealous bees. Skinny and Nix
drop off to the left, Snoopie to the right, each lining his straightest
course for home.
“Good-night, kids!” they call back.
Now in the village, the little group rapidly dwindles. Presently only
you and Hen and Billy remain.
Billy turns in.
At his gate Hen stops.
The next gate is yours. You are glad. You are tired—so tired—so very
limp and tired—and so hungry!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL PICNIC
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THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL PICNIC
’TWAS the day of the picnic—the Baptist picnic. You yourself were not,
by family persuasion, a member of that denomination, but the Schmidts,
next door, were, and by the grace of Hen, your crony, you were enabled
to gain admittance, upon occasion, into the Baptist ’bus.
The ’bus was not scandalized. You had been in it before, as Methodist,
Congregationalist, Unitarian—what not. So had Hen. Only a few little
girls were shocked, and gazed at you disdainfully.
“_You_ ain’t a Baptist!” they accused.
“Neither’s Blanche Davis!” you retorted, carrying the debate into the
enemy’s country. “I guess I’ve got as much right here as she has!”
“I came with Lucy Barrett,” informed Blanche, primly.
“An’ I come with Hen Schmidt. His father’s a deacon, too!” you asserted.
“Oh, he ain’t—is he, Mr. Jones? He ain’t—is he?” appealed the little
girls, shrilly.
Mr. Jones, beaming with long-suffering, Sunday-school-superintendent
good humor, obligingly halted.
“Henry Schmidt’s father ain’t a deacon, is he?”
“Yes, I believe so,” affirmed Mr. Jones, pleasantly.
Thus you valiantly maintained your position—and Hen’s.
When you and Hen had pantingly arrived at the rendezvous you had found
yourselves in the midst of baskets and bustle. The baskets gave forth
fascinating, mysterious clinks. In your individual capacity of guest you
had brought no basket of your own, but you had helped Hen carry down the
Schmidt contribution, and you knew of what it spake and smelled, and you
had peeked in under the cover. Besides, Hen had told you, in detail.
Clad in necessarily stout shoes, but quite superfluously clean waists,
you and he, with the basket between, had hastened to the place of
assembly.
Other boys appeared. Poor indeed was that wight who could not rake up a
Baptist friend—particularly if his own church gave picnics. Therefore,
behold, as at the millennium, the creeds of your world united to-day
under one flag—which happened to be the Baptist.
Snoopie Mitchell, of course, was there. Snoopie usually went fishing or
skating on Sunday; but at picnic-time and Christmas even he did not deny
the comforts of the church.
“Hello!” you said.
“Hello!” said Snoopie nonchalantly. “Aw, you kids are too late!”
Snoopie never was too late. He had the instincts of the ranging shark,
and, moreover, perfect freedom to obey them.
“Why?” demanded you and Hen breathlessly.
“They took it away. Gee! Two freezers bigger’n me!”
“More’n the Methodists had?” you inquired eagerly.
“You bet!” affirmed Snoopie.
You sighed—a happy, satisfied sigh.
The passenger ’buses arrived, two of them. They were greeted with a
cheer, and scarcely had the gaunt, rusty, white horses of the foremost
one swung about to back ere into it you all scrambled.
You and Hen promptly plumped down at the end—end seats and the seat with
the driver being the choice ones.
“Children! Children! Be careful!” appealed the superintendent,
mechanically. Poor man, already he had done a hard day’s work!
As well might he have cautioned a river running down-hill. Jostled past
you girls and boys, elbows in ribs, shoulder thrusting shoulder, in a
competition that recognized no sex. Like lightning the hack is occupied
to overflowing; packed with two lines, facing each other, of flushed,
excited children, with here and there a flustered matron; you and Hen,
as stated, holding the end seats, Billy Lunt (he wasn’t a Baptist,
either) up with the driver, but Snoopie, crafty, ragged Snoopie, hanging
on at the steps!
The ’bus rolls off. You all shout back derisively at your outstripped
associates.
Father had darkly hinted that you should take an umbrella and rubber
boots, and spoken of “total immersion,” whatever that might be; but, lo,
the sky is cloudless, the morn is of sparkling summer, the air is fresh,
everything is lovely, the town is behind and the picnic before, and you
don’t care, any more than you know, what he meant! You are in the ’bus;
and the only person you envy is Snoopie, perilously clinging to its
rear.
With the horses at a trot he springs on and off, drags his feet or
sprints behind, and is continually saying “Lookee!” while he performs
some new, adroit, impish deed. The women gasp and exclaim “Oh!” “I wish
he wouldn’t!” and “Mrs. Miller, can’t _you_ stop him!” Then somebody’s
hat blows off and creates a diversion.
Half a block in your wake is the other ’bus, and occasionally jogs apace
a carriage, with suggestive rattle of dishes and bulge of hamper.
Your vehicle rumbles over a creek bridge and slowly rounds a curve.
“I see it! I see it!” announces Billy, wriggling on his elevation.
You all stretch necks to “see it,” too. Yes, there, just before, in the
woods to the right, are the forms of the earlier invaders—the good men
and women constituting the volunteer band of provision-arrangers.
The ’bus turns to the roadside. Issues from the driver a long and
relieved “Whoa-oa!” But, even as he says it, you and the other boys are
out, over the sides. Under the fence you scoot, to race, madly whooping,
up the wooded slope, fearful lest you are missing something. After you
scamper, more timidly, the little girls, and last of all, ungallantly
consigned to bring the picnic odds and ends, toil your elders.
The ’bus rolls back to town, carrying a man or so delegated to get
inevitably forgotten articles.
Now all the wood is riotous with scream and shout. It is a wood filled
with possibilities. Early somebody discovers a garter-snake, and at the
rallying-cry destruction violently descends upon the harmless thing.
Immediately, dangling from the end of a stick, it spreads confusion
wherever feminine humanity may be encountered. At its approach the
little girls squeal and run, the larger girls shriek and expostulate,
and the various mothers shrink and glare indignantly. The superintendent
it is who boldly interferes, takes the limp reptile, and throws it away.
“There!” sigh glad onlookers.
But Snoopie marks its fall, and presently recovers it; thereafter to
carry it around in his pocket, intent upon sticking it down unsuspecting
comrades’ backs.
In the ravine is the shallow creek. As a means of entertainment the
creek is about as good as the dead snake. ’Tis jump it and rejump it;
’tis wade it with shoes on and ’tis wade it with shoes off; and ’tis
splash far and wide, to see which boy shall get the wetter.
Milder spirits may elect to search for “pretty flowers,” or “help
mamma,” or play “Pussy Wants a Corner,” and “Ring Around a Rosie,” where
solicitous eyes might fondly oversee; where busily labor and perspire
the superintendent and assistants, hanging swings and hammocks, lifting,
opening, and unpacking; where benignly moves the minister, diffusing
unspoken blessings. But you and yours must have more strenuous
recreation. So already, when word is transmitted that “they’re makin’
the lemonade,” your knickerbockers are torn from shinning up trees, your
waist is limp from romping through the creek, and your face is red, and
scratched, and streaming, and dirty.
You are having fun.
Lemonade! Two tubs of it, in the middle of each a lump of ice, about the
ice floating disks of lemon, and a thirsty crowd encircling all.
“Be careful, children. Let the little girls drink first, boys. My, my!
That’s not the way!” cautioned Mr. Jones, as, the supply of tin cups
proving insufficient, some of you evinced a disposition to “get in all
over.”