My guess - or at least my hope - is that every little town has a very special summer place.
It's the place where time stops, where the globe stops spinning, where life slows down, where you can exhale and realize you are "home."
At least that is my memory of just such a place.
I don't now if such a languorous summer retreat is possible today, with our mania for being plugged in 24 hours a day.
It is why I often find myself pining for another place, another time, a simpler life.
In short, I find myself yearning for Bicknell's Pool.
In the little town where I grew up, Oxford, Pa., out in the very far reaches of Chester County, there was just such a place.
It took its name from the family farm where it sat.
It was referred to by one and all as Bicknell's.
In Oxford, Pa., in the hot, humid summers of the '60s, it could have been called heaven.
The Bicknell family farm just outside town was home to the swim club that was the destination for just about every kid in town back then.
Want to know how life has changed? Bicknell's was about a five-minute car ride outside town. I know, it's hard to determine exactly where Oxford ended and "the country" started. Yes, it was rural. We loved it that way. Or at least we do now. Back then, of course, many of us merely plotted our escape to a bigger world. Most days we settled for "escaping" to Bicknell's.
It was pretty easy to accomplish, an easy bike ride.
Or you could take the "cool" approach.
All you had to do was wrap your swim suit in a towel, stick it under your arm (we didn't have backpacks then), walk over to Fifth Street (one of the roads that led out of town), and stick out your thumb. Just about every car was headed to Bicknell's, and no doubt a caring parent would offer a ride.
Every Memorial Day, regardless of the usual miserable cold, rainy weather that seemed to accompany the holiday every year back then, we would troop out to Bicknell's to kick off the unofficial start of summer. We would approach the house at the top of the hill and offer a $5 or $10 bill to Mrs. Bicknell as the "down payment" on that summer's swim club dues. She would dutifully remind us as Labor Day approached that we had managed to "forget" about the balance. Sorry about that.
The house sat at the top of a hill. Below, you could see our own little slice of summer nirvana. A pool with greenish water, a sliding board and high-dive that was a magnet for every kid in the area.
But first you had to traverse the path down to the pool, and then encounter one of the distinctive calling cards of Bicknell's pool.
I've always said I could be anywhere on this globe, be kidnapped, and then blindfolded. If they took me to the dressing room at Bicknell's Pool I would know exactly where I was. It was the literally the smell of summer in Oxford, a pungent mix of chlorine and fresh spring water that was simply unmistakable.
Once dressed you then faced the next Bicknell's challenge. To say the water in Bicknell's pool was refreshing is a bit of an understatement. It was downright cold. No one really knew why. Maybe it was the spring water. But on a hot, humid summer day, there was nothing better.
At the end of the afternoon, you would face the long walk back up the hill to head home, but likely not before stopping at the window at the house where the Bicknell family sold candy and popsicles that would cool the ride home.
As cold as that water was, for some reason you were always sweating again by the time you reached the top of the hill.
How to get home? Not a problem? Just stick out your thumb, or wait for a car to stop and pick up some other kids and jump in the car. Every car was headed back into town. Like I said, it was a different time.
Tonight the Oxford Historical Society will offer their latest retrospective on life in that tiny town where I grew up. The topic? Bicknell's Pool. I was hoping to make it, but work got in the way. Some guy named Trump is coming to Delaware County tonight.
I will be here. But my heart will be in Oxford. Of summers gone by. Of a different life.
Summer over? Not so long as the memory of Bicknell's lives on.
My hope is that every town had a place like Bicknell's. The seasons change. The leaves are starting to turn. The air is turning crisp.
But summer lives on. At least in my memory.
You can almost smell it.
Thanks, Bicknell's.
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