Another swim lesson

 Carrie Combs

Grandma returned to California

and lived out her life with my aunt.

The coastal mountains of Malibu are a long way from the Blue Ridge Mountains sloping down in northwest North Carolina. My first swim lessons started in sparkling blue pools and the cold Pacific Ocean. But the lesson I learned in my dad’s home town the summer I turned 10 wasn’t just about the miles between. 

It was the summer my dad drove my grandma back after an extended visit in California. Grandma Carrie was the one who had suffered a stroke, I don’t remember when. I may have been a baby and those who could say are all gone. My dad brought her out late the previous Fall to spare her another cold winter in the old house. She spent some time with us, but more time with her daughter’s family who had followed my dad out. Now she wanted to go back home. 

I will tell a fuller story of that trip another day, but today I want to tell about the pool. There were two girls near my age across the street at an angle from grandma’s house. Nancy was a few years older and Vanda was about my age. We were having a good time getting to know each other, doing summer kid stuff. They introduced me to catching fireflies. I introduced them to, well, I’m sure I introduced them to something or another. 

One hot day they said “let’s go to the pool.” I know kids would be surprised now, but we had so much freedom. I think maybe we had to get a bit of change to pay. We grabbed our swim stuff and we’re on our way.  We cut through to the red dirt road that ran behind my grandma’s house, down to the bigger paved road, and up a bit of a hill to the park. I never noticed before that there was a pool tucked up above the playground. 

This pool, inside of a chain link fence, did not look like any pool I had ever seen. The water was, well, green. And the walls and bottom looked, um, slimy. “Is something wrong with it?” I asked Nancy. 

“No, it’s good. It’s not a filtered pool, but it’s fine. They close it and drain and fill it on Friday, so it’s clean for the weekend.” I seem to recall this was a Monday. It did not look right to me, but I was hot. Still, I did not want to put my face in at all. I just kind of bobbed around and cooled off, trying not to touch the slime covered parts more than I had to. 

So I noticed the boys hanging on outside the fence, watching us. I can see them in my mind. Three thin sweating brown bodies, staring in like they were hungry looking at a feast. I didn’t understand why they didn’t come in, so I asked Nancy. 

“They’re not allowed. Coloreds only get one day. They have to wait ‘till Thursday .” Thursday. The last day before they closed the pool to clean it before the weekend. 

I didn’t even have a way to process that. I didn’t have an understanding or a knowledge base to comprehend my new friend’s casual acceptance of it. At just barely 10, I didn’t even have words to respond with in any way. 

I also never agreed to go to the pool there again. 

From time to time I hear there are many  people who believe the Civil Rights Movement already stopped this kind of segregation earlier in the 60’s. These people need to do a bit more study. When my family moved to Florida in 1970, it was the middle of the first year the school had been forcefully desegregated. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I'm not in any way saying it was just that part of the country either. In California we were often insulated from the blatant bits by real estate covenants that restricted who was allowed to buy property in a developing community. The first biracial kiss on television wasn’t until 1968, when Captain Kirk and Uhura were forced into it by an alien, and a lot of outraged people screamed in outrage. You only have to look a bit, but you do have to look. 

I can’t even believe this is still an issue, but it is. Making people afraid of each other is a powerful political strategy. Part of me is sad and scared at the laws being passed in my country to forbid teaching children about the ongoing struggles with bias and exclusion. Now we have actual elected leaders saying slavery wasn’t that bad. Even now, there are places altering school curriculums and trying to keep books away from children. Just because real history might imply that we all have value and deserve rights. 

But at the same time, I know that truth will find a way. That summer, 1965, at a pool in North Carolina, I looked with my heart and just saw hot kids like me. There will always be kids who look with their hearts. There will always be kids who ask the questions and color outside the lines. And there will always be kids, a lot of kids, that if you ban a book, they will hunt it down. They will use a flashlight under their blankets. They will find a way past internet controls. They will learn BECAUSE someone told them no. And what they learn will live on. 

That is the power of stories.