Swimming

When I was a boy we lived within a mile of the Snake River, which curved to the south and west of our farm in a great bend that gave the area its name, Big Bend. We never went swimming in the river. Mama always warned us of its treacherous undertows and cur­rents. Plus I always secretly knew it had snakes swim­ming in it, and snakes and I respectfully kept our dis­tance, thank you.

We did swim, however, in a swim­ming hole a quarter or a half a mile south of the farm house. The swimming hole was at the junc­tion of a couple of drain ditches and had a culvert, a small, moss-covered cement thing, we used to slide down into the water, a welcomed relief on a hot summer afternoon. (I visited the spot after I was a grown-up and was utterly amazed at how much smaller it was than when I was little.)

At other times we would drive to a place called White Rock, located somewhere on the Owyhee River, a much smaller and evi­dently less treach­erous stream, since Mama let us swim there.

Some­time in the summer of 1955, just after I turned six, I nearly drowned at White Rock. (Mama mentioned in her diary our going to White Rock three times during the summer of 1955: July 23, July 25, and July 28. She did not mention my near-drowning, but she did record on July 28 that while up swimming she shut her little finger in the car door and "it sure hurt.")

Anyway, back to drowning. I was wad­ing along the side of the river in shallow water, stepping among the rocks that covered the bottom in the spot where I was. Some of my older bro­thers, swimming farther out in the stream, had seen some fish and were trying to catch them with their hands.

The next thing I remem­ber was standing or sitting on a rock that was slippery, with my body mostly under the water, when a fish splashed right in front of my face, just inches away. It startled me enough that I lost my balance, and I slipped out into the water, my head underwater, and I started drifting down­stream. I didn’t know how to swim, and I don’t think anyone had noticed me go under. It seemed like I floated along under­water for the longest time, as my brief little life passed by, although I was probably under only a few seconds.

As I floated by my brother Kay, who was thirteen, he saw my foot in the water. As he grabbed for it I remember his yell­ing something like, "Hey, here's that fish!" And he pulled a cough­ing, sputtering little brother foot first out of the water.

The whole experience scared me terribly. For years I had a great fear of any water I couldn’t see the bottom of, such as a lake or a river. A few years later, when I was a teenager, this fear kept me from earning the Eagle rank in Scouting. By the time I quit Scouting, I was only two merit badges short of Eagle—swimming and lifesaving.

By the summer of 1967, just after I graduated from high school, I finally worked up the courage to try water skiing for the first time. And I actually survived.