Entertainment is hard to come by when you live in the middle of nowhere. No, that's not true...one just has to be creative to make the good times happen. Water usually makes for a good time. So do water slides. Water slides can be really, really fun. They can be painful, too.
The stinky boys and I used to swim in a local creek that had a large trestle bridge spanning it. It was called Love Bridge. Naturally we called the creek - Love Bridge because that's how people talk out in the country. The banks of the creek were about 15 feet high and one form of entertainment was to get a running start and jump off of the "cliffs" into the water. There was a certain area we'd have to jump from in order to hit water that was deep enough. If we didn't we stood the chance of hitting either the shallows which would shatter our ankles, or hitting a submerged car which could shatter our ankles. I'm not really sure that there was a car submerged there. I never saw it. Even when the water was low. Supposedly, it was in a deep area and that's why we couldn't see it. Looking back, I think it was simply Love Bridge lore.
The second form of entertainment at Love Bridge involved hauling buckets of water up the "cliffs", then pouring it down the sides while smoothing out the mud. We created our own water slide. We slid down the cliff! There was one small problem though - mud creek banks have roots. And rocks. And bits of detritus that wash up when it floods. These items can be a little rough on the old hiney-roo. We wore blue jean cutoffs because the material was thick and offered some protection. More so than a swimsuit. In the 70s, the cutoffs looked a little bit like this: By the time we finished water sliding they looked more like this:
Or This. That's why I said water sliding could get rather uncomfortable. A itty bitty innocuous looking tree root could inflict some serious skid marks! And ruin your good cutoffs. Being young-uns, we healed quickly and forgot about how much tree roots hurt, because we swam in and slid the banks of that creek all the time.
It seems like these days, everyone is concerned with safety. I'm not sure if the kids today would be allowed to jump off a creek bank into water of questionable depth (or content). Moms carry Neosporin in case their little darlings get a scratch. But back in the day, I remember that even my Mom took the leap off of the "cliff!" I'm sure she was safety conscious enough though to avoid the submerged car and she made sure to leap out far enough so that she wouldn't shatter her ankles.
Long live the Love Bridges of the world!
My little brother and I used to play a game where we'd toss little pebbles at one another. It was something to do to aggravate one another in a fun way. We'd start off tossing little pebbles at one anothers back or leg. Just one or two when the other person wasn't looking. The game would last as long as there were pebbles available or until we got to our destination.
The game was usually friendly. We didn't get mad and end up tossing stones as hard as we could with the intent to cause bodily harm. But sometimes the pebbles increased in size as the game progressed. This is exactly what happened to our game one fateful day.
It was a lovely summer (boring) day and Scottie and I were taking a stroll through a local park. As usual, we were playing the pebble game with great delight. But as the game progressed, the pebbles started getting larger. Then they became rocks. Then stones. We weren't mad mind you, we were just getting into the game plus, we were running out of small stones to throw.
In this particular park, limestone was just under the surface of the dirt, so most of the rocks were flaky. As the stone size increased they started looking more platter-like. Flat and wide - perfect for throwing like a Frisbee. As you can probably guess, Scottie decided to wing one of these stones past me. He wanted to have the biggest rock and win the game but he didn't want to hurt me and this seemed like the perfectly logical thing to do. Make that sucker sail right past my ear so I'd feel the wind, and hear the whoosh and he'd automatically win the game.
Unfortunately, my stupid head got right in the way of that big old, platter rock and I got nailed pretty good. So much so that I wound up with a concussion. My ears were ringing and my vision was sort of wavy, and I couldn't walk in a straight line.
I did NOT want my Mom to find out because I had 2 previous concussions in a relatively short period of time and I knew that Scottie and I would get our hineys torn up for throwing rocks again and causing another concussion. I did my level best to appear normal but I think that my glassy eyes gave me away.
Both Scottie and I denied playing the pebble game so Mom couldn't really get us into trouble. She grilled me about the way I got the concussion but I was so woozy, I sort of got out of that, too. I just remember that we didn't play the pebble game for a while after that. I'm sort of glad too, because even though I know that the rock he accidentally hit me with wasn't terribly large, it still felt like it was. Sort of like this:
Rock on brothers and sisters! Just wear a helmet.
