Appalachian Heritage

My Salvation by James Wyatt Mother was always partial to summer camps—band camp, church camp, 4-H camp, or any other kind of camp. I wasn't old enough to attend yet, but my sister Shirley, being five years older than I, was. Her attendance at church camp got me in trouble with Mother, the pastor, and the neighbors. One Wednesday, we were hoeing tobacco when we got a call from Shirley's church camp counselor. "Drowned!" Mother yelled, "What do you mean there is nothing to worry about?" Mother slammed the receiver down, loaded me into the Buick, and off we went to Camp Joshua. A racecar driver couldn't have handled that Buick any better that afternoon. When we got there, Mother scrambled out of the car and ran up to the office just as the counselor was walking out of the front door. "Now, Mrs. Johnson, she's okay. One of our counselors jumped in and saved her." Mother demanded to see Shirley and had a look on her face that told the counselor he'd better be finding a brown-haired thirteen yearold —fast. About that time Shirley came around the corner of the building and Mother started smothering her with kisses. Shirley looked okay from where I was sitting, but there was no way she could convince Mother. She started dragging Shirley toward the car. "But, Mom, I'm okay, and we're gonna have a campfire cookout tonight, and I want to stay, pleeeeease!" After a brief argument over whether she would come back or not, Mother let Shirley go get her clothes and then we headed home, listening to Shirley's version of what had happened . "I was wading round the edge of the 42 Y,« n 43 lake when I decided to go out just a little further and slipped down a drop-off into a deep hole in the lake." "Oh my God!" Mother gasped. "I was going down for the third time when this fella jerked off his shoes and jumped in and saved me." "Thank God!" Mother ran off the road on that one and it took a couple of minutes for her to get her nose between the ditches again. Between Mother's oh my God's and thank God's I could hear Shirley sniffling about having to leave church camp three days early. Mother was hysterical, and I was just sitting in the back seat of that '51 Buick, somehow knowing that when Mother kept bringing God into this thing, Shirley and I were in trouble. I was right, too. The very next week Mother went down and enrolled us in swimming class. On Monday morning, Mother loaded us into the car and deposited us at the local public swimming pool. There, for the first time, I saw the thing I would soon hate most in my life—a swimming instructor. He stood there in water a little over his chest and began telling us how easy it is to learn how to swim; how we would never learn how until we overcame our fear of water; how it wouldn't hurt us to put our heads under water; and how easy it was for him to swim. Back and forth, across the pool, his tanned body cut the water. After a couple of days of arguments, I finally figured out that this instructor must have had a complex. He would get upset with me and rant and yell when I wouldn't dunk my head, when I wouldn't float, or when I wouldn't try anything else he wanted me to do. With all his screaming, I couldn't figure out what was the matter with him except that maybe somewhere down the road of his life he had probably met Mother. That afternoon, when Mother picked us up after class, Shirley started in on me. "Mother, he wouldn't do anthing the instructor wanted us to do today. I have never been so embarrassed in all my life. All the other kids did today was laugh at him." Mother gave me one of her looks. When she got me home, I received...