The Old Swimming Hole

Back in the 20th Century every rural community had a natural place for people to swim. They were called "swimming holes". Why a pool of water was ever called a "hole" was something I never understood but then I don't have to understand something in order to enjoy it.

Some swimming holes were dammed-up creeks where the water would be just over a grownup's head. Others were nothing more than a deep pool of water, often at a curve in a stream where the water flowed slowly in the summertime. Often there was a large tree shading the pool. Some of the "neatest" swimming holes were beaver dams. If you could swim with beavers and get past the smell, you were on your way to having a lot of fun.

Then there were the big community swimming holes where townspeople would get together and build a big earthen dam with bulldozers and divert a natural creek into it. A week later the dam would be full of water, sometimes ten feet deep or more at the breast of the dam. Big pipes let water in and out so that the water would never become a stagnant home for mosquitoes. The dammed-up water would usually be muddy until the following year. Then boardwalks and diving boards would be erected and sand brought in from elsewhere. A lot of people brought picnic lunches and families would spend entire afternoons at the old swimming hole.

Then along came the environmental do-gooders in the 1960s and the American swimming hole tradition went down the pipe. We were convinced by people with college degrees and new ideas about fun and health and the environment that we were stupid hicks who needed to be shown. These folks also had the elected or appointed authority to enforce the laws that other do-gooders with even more power had signed into law. Nobody could legally swim in a stream, creek or river anymore because of so-called concerns for the public health and the environment.

As a mere boy in the 1960s, I don't recall anyone being harmed by a swimming hole or a single fish being injured or killed because of a kid or a mom or a dad or even an uncle swimming in the water alongside it. But then I never understood why these same do-gooder types tore up all the rural railroad tracks in the 1960s and built concrete highways to replace them. Concrete super highways that were built at the cost of millions of acres of natural woodland and fields. Wild places that used to be homes for countless animals living in their rightful and natural environment. So much for the environmental issue there.

We were convinced by the people in power that swimming in a chlorinated concrete pool would be a lot safer for us. Herding us into big community concrete pools became mainly a public health issue when these goody-goodies realized that we weren't buying the "good for the environment" lie. At least nobody in my state gave a damn about the environment back in the 1960s. That was obvious after the interstates were built. But what they did care about was money. The bottom line.

Before the environmental and health officials let the water out of our swimming holes, we all swam for nothing. Now we all pay for the privilege of walking on blazing-hot surfaces and swimming in fake-blue water that smells like toothpaste and tastes like medicine. This is a sad but true American saga where the winners were the cash registers and the losers were everyone else.