Listen to Jim’s podcast:
or read his story below:
THE KING OF QUEEN CITY TAKES THE BUS
I’m running lickety-split through a tunnel while being sprayed on all sides with jets of stinging water.
*
The involuntary and mandatory shower is one way the managers of Queen City Swimming Pool in Tuscaloosa have of making sure I wash before entering the large, chlorine-reeking body of water.
*
In the 1940’s and ’50′s, the pool is open to all us white kids, just as most public facilities are. I never see black kids at the pool, so I suppose they aren’t allowed in. But at least the Queen City Swimming Pool is diverse in other ways. Poor kids and rich kids, backwoods kids and city kids, boys and girls, bullies and nerds, handicapped and fit, can all get into the supervised green lagoon and splash about as much as they please. As long as they follow the rules.
*
I’m very young, now, in this flashback to childhood, and this is SOMETHING TO DO–get soaked, sniff chlorine, attain a sunburn, play with friends and family, and maybe grab a snack afterward. When I get older, it will be a way to meet girls, even if I can’t bring myself to talk with them. I can at least gape. Funny how no girl I ever meet at a swimming pool or swimming hole or at the beach ever looks the same, fully clothed, as she does in a bathing suit. In fact, I can barely recognize these girls with their clothes on–guess it goes to show I’m not always concentrating exclusively on their faces.
*
I don’t know how to swim–in fact, nobody in my family can swim. Guess it is because our visits to bodies of water like this are infrequent and we can’t afford to attend summer camp or employ swimming instructors.
*
But swimming isn’t the point, anyhow.
*
Splashing and jumping and holding my breath for as long as possible and inhaling tart water through my nose and nearly strangling and showing off and watching other kids and fending off bigger kids and helping little kids stay afloat–that is what’s important. Getting all shriveled up and tired is the point. Having BEEN SOMEWHERE AND DONE SOMETHING is the point.
*
Later, wet-haired and clutching a bag of soggy towel and damp bathing suit, I ride home on the public bus. Catching the bus is another adventure. Back in these Tuscaloosa days, everybody rides the bus. Most of us don’t live in families who can afford more than one car–or even one car–so the bus is part of daily living. Buses do allow black children to ride–they are not excluded like they are at Queen City. But, of course, the black kids have to ride in the back of the bus and the white kids have to sit up front. Never the twain shall meet.
*
When I’m grown up, I’ll be so glad we can all mix and ride together, because I get to fulfill my childhood dream: I sit at the very back of the bus, where I can get a three-sided view of where I’m going and where I’ve been, and I can watch all the rest of the riders. It’ll be a feeling of power, a way of being alone while being part of the crowd. People won’t be able to see me, but I’ll watch out for them and record their behavior.
*
I’m going to be a writer, you know. Writers are always watching–it’s their way of participating without getting involved. I’ll understand this by the time I grow up.
*
But for today, back here in the nearby past, I am a happy kid whose only responsibility is to play and pretend and absorb the bits and pieces of my small world so that, generations later, I can re-visit, recall, re-smile, regret, cherish, understand, wonder, regurgitate the experiences.
*
So that I can file a report on this fragment of life, for your eyes only.
*
So that you, too, might be inspired to re-tool sweet memory and hitch a ride to your favorite long-ago getaway
*
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed