In the summer, when we were kids we couldn't wait to go to the Denver Harbor park for two whole weeks of free swimming lessons. They would start at about 8:00 in the morning until 11:00 or so, and this was the height of our summer. Sometimes if we were lucky we could talk Ricky Hernandez' Mom into letting the kids go swimming in the afternoon at 6:00. It cost a quarter to get in and that also got you a basket with a big safety pin with a number to put your towel and shoes in. We would swim until nine and when we would get home and be so hungry from the swimming and the walk home that anything on the dinner table tasted great. I think those were the only times we never complained about what we had for dinner.

Sometimes we would go to the park during the day to swing and play on the giant slide. (Well, at the time it looked giant.) If we were in a studious mood we would go to the Denver Harbor Library and check out books to read during the summer. My favorites were the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House Books. I would check them out one at a time every week or two until I had read them all. I now have a set that my son bought me for Christmas one year because he knew how much I loved them.

There was also a gym by the library where you could play basketball, but there were always older boys in there, you know, fifteen or sixteen years old; that didn't interest us till later.