Sepia Saturday - Feb 16th = Wet or Tall?

This is the prompt for this weeks Sepia Saturday post.
Lots to chose from here.

Something tall, something wet, playing, water sports, hanging out (thanks Alan), the list could go on.

I was hoping to find something similar but could not combine something watery and something tall.
So I had to make a choice.

  I thought about going with something tall. . .
. . . like this monkey bridge our Boy Scout troop built in the early 60's.
(and a tall signal tower in the background).

But this just wasn't enough.

While these are fun, I just couldn't come up with enough of a story.
















So I went with the 'wet' theme, The Sea Side.

One of the pleasures my mom speaks of the most from childhood is the once a year trip to the 'Sea Side'.
She never said, vacation or beach, or even where. It was just going to the 'Sea Side'.

It usually meant a bus ride with her dads company holiday.

And she loved to 'paddle' in the water.
Not a strong swimmer by any means, 'paddling' probably meant going in up to about her knees.

In this picture is mom and three sisters and an unknown boy.
Mom is kneeling on the left.
Probably early 1930's.

 Here is my mom and brother 'paddling' on some 'Sea Side' trip.

Here my dad, never a big man, but strong, is lifting one of my moms sisters on his shoulders. My mom, on the left, and my cousin, on the right, seem to be the only ones really enjoying this experiment.

Here is a very early photo of mom and dad at the 'Sea Side'. It is either right before they were married or soon after.
Just after the war.











As children, my brother and I never had holidays to the 'Sea Side'. When we got a little older we did go to Florida. While Florida has all the same components it could never be called 'going to the Sea Side'. It is after all Florida.

Another interesting thing about the Sepia Saturday prompt is the dock on which the kids are gathered.


While we never had anything so elaborate here in Missouri (at least where we went), we did have something just as memorable.

 We had floating wooden docks and in the lake slimy wooden swimming pools.

These two photos show my brother and cousin diving or jumping off of one of these docks.

Like moms trips once a week with her mom and dad, for many years our ritual was one week a year at the Lake of the Ozarks, staying at the same place each year.

While mom staying in the wooden pool with the slimy bottom in the lake the whole time, my brother and I soon found we had more fun using the diving board into the lake.
Avoiding completely the slimy pool bottom.

A little closer to home we had a place called 'Suntan Beach'.
This was Missouri River water that was held in a shallow slough.

They had a picnic area, beach and a playground.

 Here is mom and the sister we followed to America getting some rays.

Early 1960's

When all else failed we always had the little inflatable.

We do not appear to be dressed to actually get wet.

While we never had a swim dock quite like the one in the prompt, I do remember we were very happy with what we had.

Although I would be 15 before I got to 'paddle at the sea side'.