I still have not gotten back out on the river yet, however, I’m getting better and stronger all the time and the day will come.

Of course, I have a lot of memories and pictures I can look back on and here is oneof them.

A friend of mine recently ask me about Gatling Beach on the Chowan River and if it was still there. She remembered the place as not having much of any beach, hot and swarming with deer flies.

The little place is still there a few miles down river from where the Blackwater and Nottoway join to form the Chowan, but I think it is private now.  

I had another memory of it. I remember it being a great place, of course, but then too I was only 3 when the accompanying picture was taken in 1962.  

Our families would go there and spend the day water skiing and boat riding, and I’m sure it was nice for them to have some adult company even though us river-rat kids were still hung up amongst them.

Check out the sign on the club house — “Safety first.”

I even remember the day this picture was taken.   Now I know y’all find it hard to believe that a 3-year-old could remember that far back.

However, that particular day stood out. The radio was blaring a song from the clubhouse called “The Locomotion.” I remember the song very well that hot summer day so long ago because for the life of me I just could not figure out why the grown-ups were all excited and running around acting like choo-choo trains along the big river we call the Chowan.