Learning to swim without an instructor

 One of the fun things that hillbilly boys love to do is to go in swimming in the ponds and creeks. We always did this in our birthday suits. There is no one to teach you how to swim you must learn on your own. My brother was bolder than myself so he learned how to swim very fast. I was more cautious. So when we would go in swimming I would play around the edges. They would encourage but I was not buying it. But I could tell that it was more fun to swim than just play around the edges. One day I discovered that I could lie on my back and float. After that it was easy to begin to paddle with my hands and feet. I swam across the swimming hole a time or two on my back then simply flipped over on my stomach and started swimming.