Lake Pontchartrain

I spent many summer days at Lake Pontchartrain. Days surrounded by families taking in the beach, swimming in the huge pools, doing the midway where they would share rides and silly games of chance. In the evening, families gathered to watch the free circus acts and fireworks.
I went solo. No family, no friends...alone. But I watched.
I saw what mothers and fathers were like at play with their children. It was magical to watch children being held, valued, and enjoyed. They weren't burdens, they were the stars of the day.
My mother thought it was healthy for me to be at the beach....to swim, to be out in the sun, to be among other children. And I suppose that while she worked at processing meat at Winn Dixie, it gave her comfort to think of me frolicking in the sun.
It wasn't quite like that.
For 10 cents, I caught the Elysian Fields bus to the lake on Canal Street....another quarter got me into the bathhouse and pool. And with the change from the dollar mom gave me for the day, I caught a burger and maybe a drink.
Sure, I liked to go because there were beautiful homes to see on the bus ride to the beach, and I looked at them in awe...wondering how people managed to live like that.
And once I got to the lake, there was the hope that something really wonderful would happen....some family would see me on the fringe of their fun and include me. That never happened.
Many times I was lonely, sensing that there was some invisible film...some barrier that I couldn't break through....something that prevented me from breaking into this other world....this world of family groupings.
Couldn't they see that I burned, consumed with a need to play and horse around and laugh with them?
I needed someone to be a kid with. But families do not open themselves to sharing their magic....do they?
My favorite part was the evening. When mom got off work, she would sometimes ride out to the beach and meet me. It was so good to see her! And if she and my father were between bust ups, he would be there too.
While watching the tight-rope walkers or trapeze artists perform, while watching the firework with them, I was finally part of something I ached for all day long. And then sometimes we would walk the sea wall
together....taking in the light show provided by the heat lightening, the waves breaking against the sea wall steps and the smell of ozone in the air.
The amusement park at Lake Pontchartrain died in the 60's with the civil rights movement. Like many other places in the South, the lovely swimming pools were cemented in to prevent integrated bathing.
Cement is a very clear way of defining a group's readiness to share and be open. It lays out hard truth in a way even a child can understand.