I’d Rather Be Swimming!

It was one of those hot summer days. Even in my air-conditioned home, I grew restless and uncomfortable, so I jumped into the car, turned up the air-conditioner, and headed to Penn Yan, NY and Keuka Lake.

The sun beat down on the fields, making the corn leaves shrivel in the heat. I stopped long enough to take a picture of a farm and the distant valley which hides Keuka Lake and the village of Penn Yan. There were no air conditioners in the farm house that I grew up in. In fact, it had a slate roof made of real slate (stone) and on a hot summer’s night, one could just lie in bed and feel the heat radiating from the non-insulated attic like you were being slowly roasted in an oven!

Sometimes we kids would go swimming on a Sunday. We used to swim in a farm pond or in one of the many creeks which flowed through our neighbor’s pasture – streams which we shared with the cattle that grazed in the pasture. Swimming in the creek was a wonderful diversion from the summer routine of making hay, combining wheat, and milking the cows.

There were no nearby lakes, no boats to ride in, only tractors and hay wagons to ride on, and some scratchy bales of hay which we used as a temporary bench to rest on. I’d rather be swimming!