Mr. Jeral Hampton's pond

Jeral Hampton, of Booneville, Arkansas, recently died at an advanced age. He had been a business and civic leader in our community for most of his life. He owned the pasture land that bordered ours to the east, and when we boys were pre-teens, he had a large pond built in his pasture, not too far from the fence. It had an island in the middle with a pier, and we boys basically learned to swim jumping off the pier and dog-paddling back to the ladder.

My mother could not swim a lick, but once we persuaded her to take us swiming in the pond. My younger brother, Robert, jumped out, turned around and started trying to paddle back, but he had gotten his feet forward of his center point and was in fact moving backwards. Mama began to panic, understandably. So, I waded out as far as I could, with not much more than my nose sticking above the water, and was able to get hold of Robert and tug him forward enough that he made it back. It was a tense moment.