When you grow up on a ranch in West Texas, you learn early about the finer things in life. You eat oysters (of the mountain variety), you hire a full-time lawn service to maintain every acre of your spread (some call it grazing cattle), and you even get your own pair of jeans with free designer rips. And of course, dahling, we always had a pool.
Granted, the cows thought those livestock tanks were for them, but I believed my dad put those tanks all over the ranch just so us girls could take our pick of swimming locations for the day. The water was always ice cold and as pure as it comes, straight from the ground. If we were thirsty, we’d just stick our tongue under the fill pipe for a gulp of goodness straight from God to our mouths. I swear it was better than Fiji Water or Topo Chico.
That’s how we spent our summers, my mom, sister and I—with the pickup backed up to a stock tank, pulp fiction in hand, George Strait serenading us from the stereo speakers. No sunscreen allowed because cows don’t really like drinking oxybenzone. Any time we had a slumber party, swimming was on the agenda, followed by rolling in a huge pile of cottonseed.
If the tank hadn’t been cleaned out in a while, we’d just grab chunks of the moss (picture the Grinch’s snot) and throw it to the ground below. Totally cool. But not if you tried to do a handstand and came up with it all over your face. Gross.
My favorite tank—I mean pool—was at my grandparents’ ranch. My aunt freed her pet goldfish in it before going off to college at Texas Tech, and—no kidding—those suckers grew to be a foot long and multiplied like rabbits. All us grandkids loved learning to swim there, racing from side to side and seeing who could catch the most fish with our hands. I’m sure their great-great-great-grand-fishes are still swimming around in the tank today.
I think Kevin Bacon did his part to bring tank swimming back in style. In I Love Dick, an Amazon series set in Marfa (another one of my favorite places), he ends the pilot episode with a skinny-dip in a tank with a gorgeous view of the mountains. That’s some good living right there.
As I’m writing this, I’m trying to remember the last time I swam in a livestock tank. Sure, I’ve done rooftop pools, lazy rivers and hot tubs right off the ski slope, but it’s been far too long since that good old-fashioned, back-to-my-roots dunk in a redneck infinity pool. Good thing summer’s not quite over.
Brenda Kissko is a native Texan who writes about nature, travel and our relationship with land.
