I love to swim. Back in days of yore I used to ride a
surfboard until my daughter, in fourteen year old horror, informed me that,
‘Mother’s do not ride surfboards, Mum!’
Apparently I should have been in the kitchen baking cookies. So, although I didn’t drag out the Joy of
Cooking recipe book, I did hang up my board and my board shorts and settled
into plain old swimming as an acceptable alternative, thanking the movies and
one lady in particular, for my ability to do so.
When I was about ten, my little sister
and I used to attend the Saturday afternoon offerings at our local cinema. The special kid’s programs usually consisted
of a couple of cartoons followed by a serial with a nail biting
cliff-hanger. Then an MC would appear on
stage and encourage us all to ‘follow the bouncing ball’ as he led us in the
theme song:
Here we are again
Happy as can be
All good pals and jolly good
company
Never mind the weather, never
mind the rain
As long as we’re together
Here we go again…
There would be a brief interval during
which the children usually ran amok laughing and screaming, rolling Jaffas
sweets down the aisles or throwing them at each other and the ushers who were
trying to keep some semblance of control, and then the main feature began.
The mid to late 50’s was a time of
movie musicals and light-hearted comedies.
We fell in love with Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds, Gene Kelly and
Ricardo Montalban as they sang and danced their way around the sound stages of Hollywood.
But the star who completely mesmerized
me was Esther Williams. Her beautiful
smile as she swam so gracefully in crystal waters, flowers in her hair,
captivated me and prompted me to want to swim just like she did.
That presented a problem since neither
my sister nor I had ever stepped into a swimming pool or even an ocean. However, we knew the local community pool was
just around the corner from the movie theatre and so our decision was made.
On the days the theatre showed an
Esther Williams movie, we arrived ready
with swimsuits in our bags. We saved our
candy and magazine money and then, after watching Esther on screen and
memorizing every move, we raced around to the pool, slapped down our entry fee
and prepared to swim by copying everything we had seen.
Needless to say we learned to swim underwater
before we ever learned to swim on top of it.
We thought it was marvelous to start at either side of the shallow end
of the pool and swim towards each other, underwater, with our eyes open and big
smiles plastered over our faces.
After we had mastered that, it was
time to attempt backstroke, making sure our shoulders came up out of the water
just like Esther’s, then turning from backstroke to breast-stroke…we had a
wonderful time.
Even today, I sometimes find myself
copying Esther Williams’ moves as I swim around my local pool, smiling at the
trees and shrubs, pretending to be just like my idol. Memories are wonderful things.
