One evening, back in the late 1940's, during the earlier years of our marriage, Wayne and I were out in the barn milking the cows. It was such a steamy hot evening that Wayne suggested that we both take a skinny dip in our big cement cow tank that sat close to our barn. I was reluctant at first, but decided "why not?" We set the buckets of milk aside and undressed in the barn. As we ran to the tank, we fought off what mosquitoes were lurking about searching for a nice tender meal. We jumped into the cool water as they swarmed above our heads.

I had never skinny dipped before and was a bit uncomfortable being undressed outside of the house. After a while, I overcame my shyness and all was fun and games as we playfully splashed the cool water on each other. Our frolicking stopped abruptly when we heard a car drive into our yard. When we took a closer look, we found it was our friends, Paul and Bette Parker, coming for an unexpected visit for the evening. There was no chance of them driving on as they knew we were home by seeing our car sitting in the back yard. Thank God, they never had a clue as to where we were at first or they would have thought we were still milking and have come to the barn looking for us.

Wayne and I had to make a decision as how to get out of the tank without being seen if they looked our direction. We quickly exited the back side of the tank and made a crouching mad scramble to get back into the barn and back into our clothes. Our wet bodies hampered us from getting dressed quickly. We got dressed just in the nick of time because when we started walking to the house, they were walking toward the barn. I am sure Wayne and my face was red. Wayne and Paul separated the milk and I went to the house with Bette.

When we told them we were skinny dipping in the tank, they laughed and teased us a lot the rest of the evening while we played cards. They teased us about it for many years later as well.

We really were only in the tank to cool down from the Oklahoma summer heat. That was my first and last time to skinny dip. That is also my story and I am sticking to it!