Swimmin Hole

I grew up in Minnesota, on a farm in the country. One of our favorite things to do was to go to the nearby swimming hole. We had a very nice swimming hole named "The Nine Mile". It got it's name from the name of the bridge. I suppose the name of the bridge came from how far the bridge is located from where the Leaf River joins the larger Crow Wing River.

Most evenings after the farm work was done, the neighboring families would go swimming. There were the Bakers, Daughterys, Whites, Crockers, Wells and others. The big tough guys, of which I was not a member, went straight for the top of the bridge. They would climb up the sloped end of the bridge to the top of the topmost big beam and stand over the deep water until everyone dutifully looked their way. Tough guys were mere mortals if no one was watching. If too few people were watching, they would start a conversation with someone far away so they had to make much noice to have the conversation, thereby drawing attention to themselves standing up there ready to jump.

The younger ones of us usually swam out and back from the sandy beach just downstream from the bridge. The moms usually spread a blanket on the sand and watched the very young. As for me, I spent a lot of time swimming in the deeper side of the water across from the sandy beach. I loved to swim slowly along near the bottom of the river watching ahead of me for fish and other things of interest. A couple times I saw a northern pike, but mostly I would see suckers and shiner minnows.

Another thing to do was to try and walk across the bottom of the river. To do this, you had to find a large enough rock to give yourself some weight. If you tried without the rock, you would be swept along with the current. With the rock, you could progress deeper until your head was about to go under and take a deep breath. You kept walking along until it shallowed out on the other side or you ran out of air. Running out of air was no problem, you could let go of the rock and spring to the surface.

I have many fond memories of the time we spent at the old swimmin hole.

Kayak Bandit