This is Chapter 23 from my soon-coming book, “Parkinson’s & Recreation 3 - The No Parkinson’s Zone”
“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.” —Warren Buffett
“Naked dudes are inherently funny.”—Adam DeVine
Growing up in the country was one of the greatest blessings of my life and a huge part of why I live in the country to this day. It had much to do with why Melinda and I chose to raise our nine children in a rural setting. We live far enough outside of town to not hear the constant drone of traffic. We live far enough removed from city limits that the stars are not washed out by the glow of bright city lights. We live far enough in the sticks that we regularly see deer, possums, raccoons, bobcats, armadillos and wild turkeys. We can hear the nightly choruses of coyotes wailing in the nearby woods and the countryside we call home.
Where we live is so secluded that I can step out on my back porch and pee from the steps to the ground below with no fear of being seen by a neighbor…it’s a guy thing! In the winter time, I can do the same and write my name in the occasional Oklahoma snow without a passerby calling the police to report my indecency. Melinda just shakes her head and laughs as I think about how simple such moments of freedom are to a man. Each time I experience such freedom, I find my heart grateful for how simple things can mean the most to me. I have sung before millions through the years, but find joy, and relief, on the back porch of my house.
What I now experience every day and what I now call paradise, I took for granted as a boy. My brothers and cousins and I would spend literally hours on horseback each and every week, and during the summer, each and every day! If we weren’t rounding up the cattle to be sprayed for insects and parasites or for their vaccinations, we were most likely exploring the creeks and woods of the surrounding countryside.
Riding through the creek, we could explore to our heart’s content. Winding our way across the creek from side to side, up one bank and down the other, through the underbrush, coaxing our horses to step over the occasional fallen tree, we would sometimes take our fishing poles and test our luck in the murky waters of the many pools created by the lack of summer rain. Tethering our horses to a nearby tree, we would spend time catching grasshoppers to use as bait, seeing who could catch the most perch or who would snare the biggest catfish, and usually someone would initiate an actual real-life pissing contest to see who could pee the farthest across the creek. Simple things…
Always looking for new places to explore, one day we happened across a place in the forest surrounding the creek where a fence impeded our forward progress. As boys being boys will do, we proceeded to guide our steeds down the fence line looking for an opening. Before long, an opening appeared in the form of a break in a few of the wires. Dismounting, we could spread the top wire with one hand and depress the bottom wire with our feet and lead our horses through with our free hand!
Feeling a bit of “should-we-be-doing-this” guilt, our would-be guilt always gave way to our “what-could-be-around-the-next-bend?” curiosity! And off we went! After a few minutes of cautious riding, we came to realize that we had stumbled onto the back property of a local horse ranch. Reavis Ranch, owned and operated by Bob Reavis (a man who employed me as a hay-raker for many years), was known for the many horses that always occupied the pastures. Visible from the road as one drove by the ranch, it always seemed as if hundreds of horses inhabited this wonderful ranch. There were horses of every size, shape, and color. Quarter horses, draft horses, ponies and even a couple of mules! My favorites were the paints, especially the red, white and black ones. I recall how each time our family drove by that ranch, I imagined many grand adventures as I rode away on a paint in my mind.
And now, here we were! Right in the middle of this horse-filled wonderland! How many times had I imagined racing across the pasture on the back of one of those paints and now to be AMONG them! Amazing! As we rode through the pasture that day, imagine our astonishment at the discovery of what can only be compared to the finding of an unknown-of and suddenly-discovered hidden treasure! We had stumbled upon a racetrack!
Actually a training track, the oval dirt track was surrounded and enclosed by a white-washed fence made of pipe on either side. Looking for a way to enter the track, we came upon the most amazing apparatus, a four-horse starting gate! Of course, we took turns guiding our horses into the individual stalls and racing one another! Over and over, again and again, we raced that day. I can still see the mane of my horse, Sugar, flying up in my face as we coursed around the track. I can still recall the sight of my brother, Paul, on top of his horse, Ginger, as we battled for supremacy. Fresh in my hearing are the simultaneous sounds of the horses grunting and snorting amidst the laughter and shouting of boys running wildly around the track. Talk about the simplicity of freedom…
We had saddles for our horses, but more often than not, chose to ride bareback. This was easier on us, easier on the horses and easier to hide some of the evidence of our hidden boyhood agendas! Using the excuse of needing to make sure our horses were kept cool during a hot summer day’s ride, we would ride them into and across the pond. Since a saddle would have taken hours to dry out, it only took a few minutes of riding to dry off a wet horse and a wet boy, and any evidence of the deed having evaporated into thin air.
One of my greatest fears as a boy was to be found disappointing to my parents, and my parents had warned us ad nauseam about swimming without their permission. Funny how they thought that part of their job as parents was to protect me and my brothers. Of course I am being facetious, as once I became a parent, I totally ‘got it’! I absolutely loved riding my horse and I absolutely loved swimming and found myself in heaven at the combination of two of my greatest boyhood loves!
It had not taken long to discover another way to avoid detection. Around the age of twelve, my brother, Paul, cousin, Danny Joe and I came to the realization that we could cut down on the drying time of our clothes if we simply didn’t wear any! Our favorite place to skinny dip was the back pond, called the “back pond” because of its location in the back pasture. This pond was so enticing. Far enough from the house so as to not be seen or heard, we found ourselves taking our daily afternoon jaunts to the back pasture, making sure none of our girl cousins followed and making sure our younger prone-to-tattling siblings had not tagged along.
Tethering our horses to the fence, we quickly stripped butt naked and carefully laid our clothes across the fence. Taking one last glance back toward the farmhouse to make sure the coast was clear, we streaked across the pasture to the pond plunging into its cool, refreshing, murkiness! The feeling of the cold mud squishing between my toes and the joy of laughing with Paul and Danny Joe and the sheer joy of having gotten away with such a mischievous caper still fills my soul with delight to this day.
Muddy and snake-infested as it was, the pond and its refreshingly cool waters overrode any fear of the slithery threats. Reality was our mantra. “The snakes will leave us alone if we leave them alone!” We lived by that saying whether it was true or not. We played hide and seek. We pretended we were in naval battles. We even put a step ladder in the water to act as a diving platform. It had never dawned on us that the ladder protruding from the water might be a clue as to our activities that summer! But, whether we liked it or not, the naked truth was about to come out!
This day began like any other day that summer. Nonchalantly going for a ride, Paul, Danny Joe, and I headed for the back pasture. Once again, we checked for followers. There were none. Tethering of the horses. The stripping off of clothes. The mad dash for the pond. All was just as usual. The only difference from any other day was the lack of the awareness of time. On this day, the water was especially welcoming. The mud was especially cool. The fun and laughter went on and on and on for hours! We were carefree and completely wrapped up in the sheer joy of being alive! In those moments, we were living life as if it couldn’t be any better than this very moment!
We had not seen them coming. We had not heard them coming. We were rapt in naked joy…until we weren’t! I saw them first…coming over the rise between the front and back pastures was my dad’s pickup truck! Speeding toward us, a trail of dust stirred up like a plume of angry smoke trailing behind, was my dad! And in the passenger seat, my uncle Billy Joe, Danny’s dad! Even as I write this, I feel the shock of that moment going through my being! We had been found out! At least it was just our dads…but no, it was not just our dads! In horror, I shuddered to see my girl cousins in the back of the truck, laughing and pointing and giggling with glee, as I yelled to Paul and Danny Joe, “They found us!”
I can still see the look of horror freezing the faces of my accomplices as we all tried in vain to hide beneath the muddy waters! I can still hear the laughter and giggling of the girls as they continued to point our way each time one of us surfaced. “There he is!” shouted Donna. “There’s Paul!” yelled Diana. “And there’s Danny Joe!” laughed Patty Ann.
Still ringing in the halls of my memory to this day are the words of my uncle Billy Joe shouting matter-of-factly to us as we tried to keep our boy-parts concealed beneath the water and out of sight of the girls, “You boys get to the house! Your butts are in trouble!” Having mercy on us, they drove back toward the farmhouse, girls still cackling and giggling even as they drove out of sight. My only solace was that they had seemed to have mercy on us. Mercy? That they did not have us walk naked to our horses in front of the girls!
Fearing for our lives, my brother, cousin, and I walked shamefully back to our clothes, retrieved them from the fence, put them on, then hopped onto the backs of our horses for the long ride of shame back home. It felt like forever and like the blink of an eye as we road home. Forever in the sense that the ride home was long enough for our imaginations to run wild and like the blink of an eye in the sense that it had not taken as long as we needed to come up with a proper and believable explanation for our escapades.
Like condemned men in the old west must have felt when catching sight of the gallows, we each shuddered as we caught sight of our dads waiting patiently for us by the gate. Each holding a switch plucked from the mulberry tree, they glared at us with great dad-disdain and disappointment. With downcast eyes and drooping shoulders, we approached our fate. Surely, we would not survive. Surely, death would be better than what we were about to endure. Surely, this must be a very bad dream. And then just as we were about to meet our doom andjust as if it appeared we would be beaten to death, our dads burst into laughter!
After a brief lecture about swimming without permission and the danger of drowning, we were released from further punishment, our utter humiliation in front of the girls and embarrassment of facing our mothers being punishment enough. In actuality, our punishment was headed off at the pass by none other than my grandmother Jernigan. When she had caught sight of my dad preparing the switch to use on my skinny-dipping bottom, she had taken him to task with these words:
“I seem to recall seeing your bare little bottom shining in the distance, running along that same pond bank when you were a boy. Don’t touch those boys! They’re just being boys!”
My mother summed it all up rather nicely, though. When asked what she thought about catching the boys naked in the pond, Mom simply said, “I wondered why the boys were staying so clean this summer! Now I know why!”
Did we stop our skinny-dipping ways? Nope! We were just more careful. Knowing Grandma had our backs was almost like permission. Knowing my mom was glad we were staying clean was like the granting of approval. Knowing that our dads had done the same thing when they were boys made us feel normal, and free. Simple things bring the most joy. Simple things…and that’s the naked truth!
Dennis Jernigan
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Warren Buffet quote courtesy of https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/warren_buffett_383933
Adam Devine quote courtesy of https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/adam_devine_675538