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Monday, April 27, 2009

Ol' Swimmin' Hole

Well, here'a another little story for you today.


When we were kids we loved to play in the creek in the summertime. There was a big oak tree on the side, the bank had washed out under some of the roots so it made an excellent place to jump off.

The creek was kinda wide and narrow at one end but then it got a little deeper and wider so we decided to dam it up a little as to make a nice swimming hole. The neighbor brought over his tractor and scooped it out so it would be a little deeper. It was probably about 2 or 3 feet deep in the middle.

Playing in the creek kept us occupied on lazy afternoons and it also helped to keep us clean especially after we had been playing in the dirt, picking beans all day or out pulling weeds for the hogs. It was a favorite place for all the neighborhood kids. Since we were all girls we swam together but if the neighborhood boys beat us there we weren't allowed to go swimming.

We didn't know how to swim but a couple of us could dog paddle a little but we loved to play in the water. We had one of those swim rings and a blow up beach ball and we all had to share

In the spring my dad and the neighbors would often fish for horney heads or trout underneath that tree. They had a couple of homemade poles. My dad had a willow pole too that he used for fishing. It had a notch on the end he tied the line around. and then a bobber and a hook tied to the end. He also had a homemade trap that he also kept under the bridge. The way the trap was set up the fish would swim in and couldn't get out. We ate a lot of fish in the early spring. I never did like them too much because they were pretty bony.

One bright spring afternoon the neighbor Dock and his wife Josie went up the creek fishing and were sitting underneath the tree, a fish hit her line and she got so excited she was jumping around. She lost her balance and fell into the creek. The news spread like wildfire through the neighborhood and everyone had a good laugh. From then on we didn't call it the ol' swimming hole anymore. We called it the Josie Hole.

That's it for Today.

2 comments:

Speedy said...

We too had a creek we all swam in. It was located on what then was the outskirts of Dallas. The name of the creek strange enough was Joe's creek..HE HE :) Being this was so close to the city no telling what was floating in it besides all of us....

Yarntangler said...

We had a wonderful swimming hole we called Grey Rocks. It was mostly for teens although if we were babysitting little ones there was a place we took them to paddle separately. We girls would go watch my friend's cute older cousins diving or canon balling off the huge boulders. Mountain fed, it was pure and cold but such a pretty place. I was told recently there's a housing development there now and the swimming hole is closed off -too dangererous for young children. Sigh