Red Lips

Texas summers are a force to be reckoned with. While air conditioning is not my best friend (especially when the control switch is in the wrong hands), I do admit that it makes life a bit more tolerable when it's 100+ degrees during the day and drops down to 80 degrees only in the middle of the night. But really, the best remedy for escaping this infernal heat is a long dip in a cold swimming hole.
I love swimming too, it's such a lovely sensation. When I'm underwater I can hear myself think, without the static of the outside world. The only sounds are the bubbles coming out of my nose and the swoosh of the water I'm pulling myself through. Then I bob up for air and, for a second, I can hear children splashing and squealing, a lifeguard's whistle, birds squawking over territory, general cacophany. Now, back down into the silence. That's nice...
Lately when I've afforded myself the luxury of getting lost in thought underwater, I try to imagine what it must have been like in the old days. I go swimming at Deep Eddy Pool, which I recently discovered is the oldest swimming pool in Texas. Originally it was a swimming hole in the Colorado River, where cold springs came up and a boulder formed an eddy where people would swim. The concrete pool was built in 1915 by A.J. Eilers. In the 1920s, the pool was the centerpiece of a resort - the Deep Eddy Bathing Beach - with attractions such as a zip line, a slide, a ferris wheel, and Lorena's Diving Horse.
This is the most fascinating bit to me. A diving horse! This was an attraction popular from the 1880s until the WWII era in which a horse would dive from a platform - sometimes as high as 60 feet up, and sometimes with a costumed rider atop its back. When I was a kid, the Disney channel would always play this movie called Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken that was based on the life of horse diver Sonora Webster Carver. In 1931, Sonora and her horse "Red Lips" lost their balance on the platform. Sonora survived the fall, but was blinded (caused by detached retinas in both eyes). She continued horse-diving while blind. I probably watched that movie at least ten times, and I cried my heart out every time when she found out she was blind.
These days at Deep Eddy, no diving is allowed, even for humans. But as far as I know, cannonballs haven't been outlawed!