(This is a blatant plug for my book Return to Rocky Bottom. Enjoy!)
The cold, black Edisto River snakes through the town
of Orangeburg, South Carolina where I grew up. A small cove called Rocky Bottom
was floored with pebbles to provide a safe harbor for kids learning how to swim.
I cut my teeth on those pocket-sized rocks and later when I was no longer a
child, Rocky Bottom was the place to which I returned ... if only in my heart.
One of the local mothers had trained for the Summer
Olympics when she was younger, so she kindly volunteered to be the town’s Red
Cross Life Saving Instructor. It was a proud day when our own mothers sewed the
coveted Red Cross Lifesaver patch onto our youthful bathing suits. We earned it
by diving off a high platform and swimming against the strong Edisto River current
without drowning. That patch represented a significant rite of passage.
I remember the day we were learning the Dead Man’s
Float in the roped-off section of Rocky Bottom ~ the official dividing line
between safety and peril. Beyond the division, deep water rumbled swiftly past
on a fast track to the Atlantic Ocean.
My face was totally submerged when the shriek of a
whistle jerked me up in time to watch our instructor plunge over the ropes and
dive headfirst into deep water, slicing it with first one muscular arm and then
the other.
She was clad in a Catalina swimsuit designed to make
her look skinny and a black bathing cap. The spitting image of a loggerhead
turtle, she cut through the water like the Gold Medalist to which she had once
aspired.
She swam downriver to a young African American boy
struggling to keep his head above water. When his limp hands disappeared for
what could have been forever, she swam even faster in order to grab his little
body before it was too late.
Just like she had taught the lifeguards, she placed
the boy on the shore and began to resuscitate him. When enough water squirted out
of his mouth to put out a grass fire, I let go of the breath I had been holding
in.
Although it didn’t seem so at the time, the incident
was over quickly. Even so, it has remained a permanent snapshot in my mind, a watershed
moment. I was left with a formidable respect for the cold-hearted Edisto River
when it proved itself to be a killer in disguise. On the other hand, I was
fortunate enough to be there when our swim teacher fulfilled her destiny and established
herself an unbiased heroine who did what she was born to do.
People like her nurtured and shaped me into the
person I was born to be. Growing up in that small town meant that I experienced
good times and bad, altogether creating the person I am today. My memories are what suckle me now and will do so all the
days of my life. Rocky Bottom is the touchstone that takes me home again.
In writing these stories, I chose fictional characters
Scrappy and Boo Sanford to be narrators. A few exploits might point to my own
brother or me, but that’s for you to decide. If any of the book seems familiar,
it’s only because Southern towns are almost always comprised of people in love
with football, fried chicken, barbeque and ancestors.
That pretty much describes the folks of Greenburg,
South Carolina, a town created for Scrappy and Boo and where they seem to
always … Return to Rocky Bottom
No comments:
Post a Comment