David, Brenda and me by our 1955 Chevy in 1956

The day of swimming lessons came, we dressed in our bathing suits, cheap plastic flip-flops from K-Mart and with towel in hand, we proceeded to our two door 1955 Chevy, which also didn’t have air conditioning. Did I say it was hot in Florida. My sister Brenda, being older, got to sit in front with Mom, or shotgun as we called it. Whoever yelled “shotgun” first got to sit in front, unless Mom overruled it.  There were no child seats at that time, not even seatbelts or bike helmets. It’s a wonder we survived.  Kids these days don’t get to experience sitting in the front seat until they are much older and probably don’t know about calling shotgun, a term coming from the old western TV shows we watched every week. Shotgun was the man sitting next to the driver on top of the stagecoach always who carried a shotgun for protection.

We didn’t need a shotgun in those days, but Dad tells the story in a letter to Mom when they were dating, of hunting rabbits with his shotgun, while sitting on the hood of the car going down a country road at night with Billy driving. They got five which his mother fixed for dinner.

Mom usually ruled in Brenda’s favor, so she got shotgun position while my brother and I sat in the back seat. We arrived at Glen Springs in good order where we met Betty and her kids.

Showers

After checking in we headed to the bathhouse and found you couldn’t just walk directly to the spring, you had to go through the bathhouse with the men and women each going to their respective sides. As us “men”, me, my brother, and little Timmy headed towards the men’s side, Betty called out, “Don’t forget to take a shower.” I wasn’t sure what she meant, we were going swimming, not taking a shower. But once inside there it was on a big sign by the door to the pool saying, “SHOWER BEFORE ENTERING POOL” It seemed kinda dumb to me why you had to get wet before, you were to get wet. Oh well, we entered the shower room that had like six shower heads on one wall and got wet. I was glad we had our bathing suits on and didn’t have to get naked.

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