OLD SALTY

While still in elementary school,  my brother Wren and I loved to go swimming on Saturdays.  The nearest "spa" was about 5 miles out in the country.  It was nothing more than a small stream of salty water formed by the numerous oil wells that were always pumping nearby.  It was located deep in the woods past the railroad tracks south of El Dorado.

Wren, Dale Gray, Terral Smith and I would start walking barefoot through the hot sands of South Arkansas, cross the tracks and follow a "dim" little footpath through the woods to "Old Salty".  This was long before integration and many times we would discover the pool to occupied by members of the "other" race.  Somehow, we would persuade them to leave Old Salty until we had finished swimming.  This was not always easy to do.

We would leave all our clothes on the bank while we enjoyed the cool muddy salt water to our heart's content.  This was called, "Skinny-dipping"..

Once after we had finished our swim we started looking for our clothes in the bushes where we had left them.  No clothes could be found!  We searched and searched and finally one of the black kids came out of the big clump of bushes with our clothes, just laughing at the trick he had played on us.

On later visits to Old Salty we would wait till that group finished their swim before we went in...