Summers Between the Clubs
Natchez, Mississippi — somewhere between the garden gates and the cannonballs
We never belonged to just one place. We moved between them — quietly, easily — like the humidity that settled over everything by midmorning and never quite lifted. My mother knew someone everywhere, and in Natchez, that was enough. Doors opened not because of money, but because of memory. A name remembered. A face placed. A favor returned without being called one. That was the currency, and it spent just fine.
Stanton Hall came first in the summer rotation, whether by habit or expectation. The pool sat tucked behind that Greek Revival façade like something not meant for everyone, even if no one said it outright. The rules were understood without being spoken. Voices stayed low. Towels were monogrammed. Even the water felt different there — cooler somehow, as if it had been told to behave. Nobody cannonballed at Stanton. You eased yourself in, careful not to splash too much, careful not to be noticed for the wrong reasons. The shadows stretched long across the water in the afternoon, and the statues stood watch like they might remember you later.
Lunch followed at the Carriage House, which is gone now, the way so many things are — folded into memory without much ceremony. But it lives on in the details. Fried chicken with a crust that cracked just right under your teeth. Shrimp remoulade with enough bite to make you sit up straighter. Sweet tea poured slow as a sermon, sugar already settled thick at the bottom of the glass. The ceiling fans turned with a kind of reluctance, and the waitresses wore the same aprons summer after summer, as if time had agreed not to interfere.
Stanton had its limits. It could get too proper, too watchful — too full of eyes peering over the tops of glasses. When that happened, we drifted down toward the bluff and over to Connelly’s Tavern.
It sat near Ellicott’s Hill, high above the river as it moved wide and brown below, carrying everything south whether it wanted to go or not. It was a magnificent place in its own right — worn in, not worn down. Today, they call it The House on Ellicott’s Hill, one of the oldest buildings in Natchez. Back then, it was just Connelly’s, and that was more than enough.
There were no quiet rules there. Towels dragged. Flip-flops slapped loud against wet concrete. Kids ran where they pleased, and the lifeguard, if there was one, mostly stayed out of it. You could cannonball all afternoon, send water crashing over the sides, and nobody would say a word. The place echoed — real echoes — of laughter, splashing, soda bottles popping open. It felt alive in a way Stanton never quite allowed.
We moved between those two worlds without choosing sides. That part came from my mother.
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She belonged, in a manner of speaking, to both the Pilgrimage Garden Club and the Natchez Garden Club — though not officially, and not in the way those ladies kept score. One claimed Stanton. The other laid its hand on Connelly’s. Both saw themselves as protectors of something older than themselves — something they called tradition, though most of it was just rivalry in lace and manners.
My mother handled it the way she handled most things — with a kind of practiced ease that looked effortless until you tried to do it yourself. She floated between them like a diplomat without a country, knowing when to speak, when to smile, and when to say nothing at all. That mattered more than allegiance.
You could see the divide in small things if you paid attention. Linen dresses pressed just so. Gloves even in the heat. Juleps sweating in cut glass. Porch conversations that sounded polite until you listened close enough to hear what was underneath. Old disagreements carried forward like heirlooms nobody wanted, but nobody dared throw away.
We learned early not to pick sides. In Natchez, it was better to know how to stand in both places without offending either.
Belmont Country Club was different again, sitting just outside of town like it had one foot in and one foot out. Getting there felt longer than it was, a stretch of road that carried you away from the weight of all that history and into something looser, even if only by a little. The air shifted out there — cut grass, hot asphalt, and that faint metallic tang rising off the tennis courts in the heat.
My mother played tennis at Belmont, and she played it hard. Doubles mostly, but with a kind of focus that suggested she was settling something that had nothing to do with the game itself. The rhythm of it — serve, return, the sharp crack of the ball — carried across the grounds and stitched itself into the afternoon.
We stayed near the pool. That was our territory. The rules were simpler there, even if they still existed. Cannonballs off the diving board. Grape Popsicles melting faster than you could eat them, sticky trails running down your arms. Burgers wrapped in foil at the snack bar, steam trapped inside like something you had to earn. The concrete burned your feet if you stood still too long, so you learned not to.
Looking back, it would be easy to say it was all about swimming, about summer days spent moving from one pool to another. But that’s not quite right.
What we were really learning had nothing to do with water.
We were learning how to move through a place where everything was known without being said. How to read a room before stepping into it. How to carry a name that meant something to other people, even if you didn’t yet understand why. Living in the space between rivalries, in the shade of magnolias and behind the quiet curtain of who knew who, we learned early what mattered — and what didn’t.
We weren’t rich. We weren’t powerful. But our name was known — and in Natchez, a name spent better than money.
