Nedra Mitchell has a lot of pictures on her cellphone. So many, it took her several minutes Thursday to dig up two images of swimming holes in the Caledonia area, one she took Memorial Day, the other about 40 years ago.
I’ve been thinking about places I used to swim after a friend commented on all the swimming pools as we drove out Highway 50 toward the Alabama line the other day.
Do kids still swim in creeks, lakes and gravel pits?
Where is the most lyrical place you’ve ever swam?
I use the word “lyrical” because it describes a dreamy excursion to a bend in an Alabama river years ago. In the heat of summer I’d taken a carload of kids over to Gordo to Ma ‘Cille’s Museum of Miscellanea.
As we were leaving, the late Glenn House gave us directions to a swimming hole, somewhere in the wilds of Alabama south of Highway 82 between Gordo and Tuscaloosa. It may have been the Sipsey River. There was a boat landing of sorts and a wide spot in a river with a sandy bottom. I’ve since tried to find it without success.
There were others, of course.
Back in the 60s when the Waterway was a distant dream and the road to Starkville was a two-lane trail that ran between Bob’s Place and the Coffee Cup and through the Crossroads, the highway department optimistically built bridges to accommodate a four-lane version of Highway 82, then on the drawing board. For years, there were bridges connected by a rutted dirt path.
The span across the Tombigbee (which had to be torn down and re-engineered with the advent of the Waterway) was, for years, called “the new bridge.” Though never used as planners intended, “the new bridge” was a favorite spot for at least one generation of courting teens. The place was so popular it was not uncommon on a weekend night to find cars parallel parked along both sides of the bridge.
Back toward town on Highway 82, there is a bridge spanning the gravel pit near the Welcome to Columbus sign. We called it Twin Lakes. The bridge served as a diving platform for what was a popular swimming hole.
There was a cable swing on the same side of the river just downstream from Ruben’s. It was known as simply, “the swing.” To get the best “throw,” you climbed a tree and launched from there. Seems crazy now. The site did lots of business with an eclectic crowd. Occasionally the owner of the property would have the swing removed; a week or two later, it would reappear.
The town of Steens sits between Yellow Creek and the Luxapalila. People jumped (they may still) off a rusting bridge over Yellow Creek between the Superette and Highway 12. There was a swing there, too. We were swimming there when one of the “swingers” dislodged a nest of baby squirrels. Into the creek they fell. Rescuers fished out the little ones. On the other side of town, on Gunshoot Road, there is a “beach” of sorts on the Luxapalila.
Before it was channelized, the Lux was a wonderful option for the spur-of-the-moment float trip. The water was shallow; there were lots of gravel “rapids,” and if you didn’t mind the occasional discarded water heater or refrigerator on the bank, it was the Great Outdoors minutes from home.
Generations of Caledonians have enjoyed swimming at Lawrence Bridge northwest of town at the intersection of Lawrence Bridge Road and the Buttahatchee. They still do. Late Saturday afternoon several groups of swimmers were putting to good use the gravel beach and rope swings there.
Nedra, who is an amateur photographer, teaches art at Caledonia High and grew up in Lone Oak community, remembers well one swimming hole in that part of the county. Her great uncle Leroy Logan was for many years the self-appointed caretaker of Logan’s Hole, an obscure swim spot on the Luxapalila at the end of Wildcat Road in the Steens-Lone Oak area.
Nedra remembers as a young girl attending Lone Oak Church of Christ baptisms illuminated by car headlights at Logan’s Hole.
“They would always sing, ‘Oh, Happy Day’ afterward,” Nedra said.
Jim Buck Vaughn has fond memories of swimming at Logan’s Hole as a kid. When I asked him about it, he quoted from a sign nailed to a tree there. Nedra has a photograph of the hand-painted sign she took around 1977. It reads, “NO!!! cursing, drinking, littering, Sunday fishing.”
Jim Buck said his last visit to Logan’s Hole was sometime in the ’80s.
“Everybody got swimming pools, and we quit going,” he said.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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