My Brief Stint As a Ginger Instead of a Mary Ann

It was the Summer of 1969 and I was 12 years old going on 25.   Space exploration enthusiasts were excited with the notion that Neil Armstrong just might be the first human to set foot on the moon while naysayers and doubters declared that if the USA went through with the trip to the moon planned for later that summer, it  would surely be the end of the world as we knew it.   A little over 400,000 music lovers gathered on a little farm in New York to hear the likes of Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and Janis Joplin in a music fest that would later be known as “Woodstock.”  All of my girlfriends were singing “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies; watching “The Monkey’s” on TV and going to the Tobie Theatre to see “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”  That was the summer I fell in love with Robert Redford and I love him still.

The end of the fifth grade meant to me that I was entering a new phase of my life – SIXTH GRADE, a no-man’s land located somewhere between elementary school and junior high.  Too old to be treated like a child and too young to be treated like anything else.  A “pre-teen almost teenager.”   This was way before the media dubbed the period between 10 and 13 as “tweens”.   Don’t get me wrong, I still had my Barbie collection with Ken and Midge (Barbie’s best friend, a brunette with freckles who was not nearly as cute as Barbie, but I could better relate to her) and my Barbie Dream House made from two Coke bottle crates stacked on top of each other with furniture made from match boxes and bottle tops.  I never got the real Dream Home because we were allowed only three choices from the Sears Christmas catalog and the Dream House counted as three.

In the summer of my 12^th year, the center of my world was Camille Street in my small town of Senatobia, Mississippi.  And, the center of Camille Street in the summer time was the community swimming pool.   Starting in early May, all of us Camille Street kids pushed our noses through the chain link fence that surrounded the pool and watched as the cover came off and the scrubbing began to make the old swimming pool glisten under the blazing southern sun.  Mothers’ pool chairs were dragged out of storage and given a good cleaning.  The slide was put back on the side of the pool and the diving boards – both high and low - were installed at the deep end.  After a couple of weeks of renewal, the pool was ready to be filled with the chlorine purified water that would cool every sweaty kid on Camille Street for the next 12 weeks.

Opening day was always the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend.  At 1:45 everyone lined up on the sidewalk outside the swimming pool gates, donning new swim suits from Baddour’s Bargain Center, a towel from the bathroom cabinet, and 50 cents.  At exactly 2:00, the concession stand window swung open, heralding the official beginning of summer.  A rainbow of colorful flip flops, floats, goggles, and water toys circled the pool as kids dropped everything, racing to be the first one to shatter the glassy stillness of the blue water.

The only thing that threatened the sheer joy of opening day at the pool was THE SHARK –an older girl who sometimes came to the pool and tried to drown me.  An older member of the Camille Street gang, this big old gal would swim under water and grab my legs and pull me under, sitting on me to hold me under water until I almost passed out.  Then she would swim away as if nothing happened and I would pop up from the deep, choking and spitting and crying.  I called her THE SHARK (not out loud, but in my head) and I always kept an eye out for her.  I guess she was my own personal bully and even today, 40-something years later, I occasionally have nightmares about her.

That summer I desperately wanted a new grown-up swim suit instead of the yellow and pink flowered one piece that I had worn the last summer – before I became an “almost teenager.” Growing up in the Hudspeth family of four kids, we wore all of our clothes as long as they fit and then passed them to the next child in line.  Though faded to a sickly looking beige, the suit still fit and my mother was determined that I get one more summer’s wear out of it.  Resigned to the fact that I would just have to wear my Davy Jones t-shirt over my swimsuit all summer, I complained miserably to my Aunt Brenda about the unfairness in my life.

 Aunt Brenda was the first person in my life that I wanted to emulate.  In 1969, she was in her 20’s, a tall, willowy brunette with a teased beehive hairdo that flipped just so on the ends and bounced when she walked.  She drove a light brown Pontiac Grand Prix, had tons of friends and a boyfriend who was a sailor.  She had a job and her own money.  She was everything I wanted to be.

“Maybe you can wear one of my suits,” she told me when I complained about my childish looking swim suit.  I was excited at that prospect, but seriously doubted that my chunky little 12-year-old body would ever fit into anything she owned.  “You can borrow one of my one-piece swim suits,” she generously offered as she dropped me off at my grandmother’s house.

I ran straight to Brenda’s room and began nosing around her stuff as I always did, looking at all the shoes, the dresses and cool jewelry she had.  Then I spotted it - the most glorious swim suit I had ever seen.  It was a shiny, black and red number with peep-a-boo holes cut out of the sides from right under the arm pit to right below the hip bone.  The center piece was just a thin strip of material held in the middle by a big gold buckle.  It was the most stunning thing I had ever seen and I scampered out of my shorts to stretch those small pieces of Lycra over my squatty square body.  As I looked at myself in full length mirror that was attached to the back of her closet, I saw a movie star.  I was no longer Mary Ann, I was Ginger. I was glamorous beyond measure.   There was only one small problem – the top part of the suit had pads about 4 inches thick turning my flat pubescent chest into a scandalous double D.  Nevermind that there was nothing under the thick foam rubber padding.  I figured nobody would notice that.   I quickly put back on my shorts and t-shirt, stuffing the swim suit into my pants so that my grandmother would not see what I was taking back home.

When the big day finally came, I was little nervous as I stood in line with my $2 to pay for my sister, two brothers and myself to swim.  This year, I thought, everyone is going to see a new, grown up Martha.

I spread my towel out on the side of the pool, a t-shirt covering my new swim suit, not quite ready for the big reveal.  Finally, the heat trumped any modesty I felt, so moved over to the side of the pool and eased myself into the water.  Just as I was pulling the t-shirt over my head, I spotted THE SHARK coming in my direction.  It was too late to pull the t-shirt back over my body because half of my head was already out of the shirt, so I pulled the shirt off and tossed it onto my towel.  I was standing in about three feet of water, the foam padding in the top of my suit literally lifting me up out of the pool, watching the devil girl swim underwater toward me.  I started scampering, trying to lift myself out of the water and onto the side of the pool, not quite able to raise my top half out of the water as the padding absorbed the water and became heavier and heavier.  Just as she reached for my foot, I felt myself being lifted out of the water and straight onto the tile beside the pool.  I looked up and straight into the face of Coach Waldrop, the Senatobia High School basketball coach who got the summer gig of managing the pool.  He pulled me straight up, grabbed my towel and wrapped it around me and marched me to the office saying, “Believe me, she could not have pulled you under, not with those buoys.”

“Does your mama know you got that on?” he asked me as I was pulling on my shirt.  “What are you thinking?  That’s not even……believable.”

“No sir, she doesn’t know,” I mumbled, so embarrassed that I knew that I would never again be able to face Coach Waldrop again.  If my mother had seen me, she would have brought the fly swatter to the pool and swatted the back of my legs all the way home.  I don’t like to even think about what my daddy would have done.

“You have plenty of time to grow up,” the coach told me.  “Don’t rush it.”

Coach Waldrop tossed me a package of Now or Laters and sent me home to change into my own swim suit.

I did go back to the pool, not that day, but the next day, perfectly happy in my own little swim suit. Thanks to Coach Waldrop, no one got a good look at my mistake; nobody made fun of me or laughed at me and he saved me from being held underwater by THE SHARK.  He lifted me right out of that bad situation and placed me on dry land.   All of us who grew up in small southern towns on streets named Camille or Magnolia or Maple, or any variation of a southern street name, were always cared for by whichever adult happened to be around.  It was typical for Ricky’s mom to fuss at me for walking barefoot to the ball field or Charlotte’s mom to tell me it was time to go inside for the night.  Many times, my daddy yelled for Lisa to get her bike out of the street.  Jackie and Kathy’s mom fed my sister lunch more often than she ate at home.  Angela showed up at our backdoor every morning for breakfast one summer, had bacon and toast, and slipped back to her house before her mom ever noticed she was missing from the front of the TV.     My brother, Andy, was so often at the home of the twins, Bob and Dave; some people thought they were triplets.   I’m sure Beverly’s mom hauled around Betty Kay as much as she did Beverly.   If one of us yelled, “MOMMA!”  - mothers all up and down the street opened the back door to see what the matter was.  When I was hurt or hungry or hot, I could have knocked on any of the doors on my street and received help or a snack or a hug.  Any of us could have – and did.

Does it really take a village to raise a child?  No, but it sure does help – especially when the village is filled with caring, loving and unforgettable adults like we grew up with on Camille Street.