Fishing Pond Girls Hold on to me…hold on to me… The three girls walked slowly on the edge of the pond, the mud sucking their shoes off as they waded into the water…they didn’t know how to swim so they held on to each other. It was late summer in Toadlena and there were two small ponds above the community that were full all year long, they sat high so they girls could sit there all day and watch the comings and goings as people walked around to the trading post and back…the reeds were tall enough they could hide from the folks but they could be heard giggling as the old ones went by… The three girls had grown up there, going to school different places one went to the Mormon Placement Program in Utah, another to the Navajo Methodist Mission in Farmington and the last to Manuelito Hall in Gallup. Their hair was long and they all tied it up the same way and each summer they had played together as long as they could remember. One was Teresa Wilson, Dodie Manygoats and Julie Nez, they lived in the local area and went everywhere together but the one thing they didn’t know how to do was to swim. So all summer of their fifteenth year they decided to learn how, they spent all summer avoiding it but it was time to go in so they wore cutoffs and went to the pond and held onto each other as they walked in with a rope running between them tied to a fence post. They walked into the water and slowly step by step walked along the edge where the mud was the squishiest and they one by one lost their shoes in the mud. They held onto each other with an iron clad grip and slowly took each step feeling the water rise higher and higher until they were waist deep…then it happened. They could feel their bodies want to get away from them not sticking on the ground but the water pushed them. It is a funny feeling and very scary thing to feel like you are not in control and they screamed and giggled like young girls do feeling panicky and yet knowing the rope was there to use to get to get to the shore. They were all scared and they dug their hands into each other until it hurt and they started to yell at each other. That brought them back to earth and they somehow made it to the other side. They did this over and over, step by step until they could wade across the pond. It was not that deep but deep enough to drown in but they learned to move in the water and as each day went by they learned to float and crawl across the water. That is how they learned to swim in a fishing pond overgrown with weeds and reeds. They left to school each at a different place and would return the next summer to learn how to swim and pretty soon they were swimming like a school of fish. On the rez lots of kids don’t know how to swim because there are not many places to learn and these three that is all they lived for, they could swim anywhere...it seemed when you saw them they were either going swimming to coming from there. They spend their summer at the ponds, and for a little bit at Captain Tom’s reservoir down on the flat at the beginning of summer when it had water. One day Julie came over and said there is a youth conference with the Gahmullies (Mormons) in Farmington and the missionaries were taking a bunch of kids over there for a trip to go to a dance and for swimming, there was a race planned and they wanted to take some kids who knew how to swim. “You know if we go they will want to baptize us…sometime during that trip they are gonna try and make you one of them.“ Dodie said. “Maybe so but at least it will give us a chance to get out of here and do something else…I would like to go anyway for the heck of it.” Julie said. So they decided to go. The three girls went to Farmington and in those days the kids from Farmington didn’t socialize with the rez kids, they were from different worlds. Farmington is for the most part has very few Indian kids who go to school there so the majority of kids are all white. It is just the way it is. The girls went and the youth conference had a lot of kids from all over they took part in a small rodeo and a picnic barbecue along the river and a dance. The girls didn’t really dance but they went and stood around and looked at all the kids there and mainly just visited with friends they knew from other parts of the rez. They kept to themselves. The next morning they got up early and went to the high school where there was an Olympic sized pool. They signed up for the swim meet and when they got ready to go in there was a question on whether they could swim because they didn’t have swim suits but only levi cutoffs, but after some discussion they were allowed to swim in their cutoffs because that was all they had. Teresa was the fastest swimmer of the three girls and she was the first to go in relay with a bunch of other kids from Farmington, she had to swim up and down the pool two times back and forth. She lined up on the edge and not having a swimming cap like the rest of the swimmers she just braided her hair real tight into a single braid, all three girls did that. Teresa was a little taller than Dodie but not as tall as Julie but she was the fastest so she jumped in and took off. Those three girls were not expected to win that day; each was a self taught swimmer. They raced that day each of them in several competitions. The race managers asked the girls if they were from they were really from the rez, from Toadlena or had they grown up somewhere else. They told them that is where they were from. The race managers were at first happy to have them participate but as the day went on their faces were not so happy. Those three girls from the fishing pond, Teresa Wilson, Dodie Manygoats and Julie Nez beat all of them kids from Farmington. They took all the first place trophies back home with them. The trophies still sit in the church at Toadlena in a glass case. They won every race and were never invited back to Farmington again….so it goes with girls and fishing ponds… rustywire
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 15:55:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015