The Ole Swimming Hole

This story has been told a thousands times if it has been told once by kids of every generation that have lived near the water, except for maybe the kids of this latest generation that are more interested in games on a computer screen than playing outdoors.

It was a summer day in the late 1950's, probably July and several of us Mercer kids were down at the railroad bridge on Burnt Mill Creek, the trestle was between Forest Hills Drive and Mercer Avenue. We had become bored with playing and decided to build a swimming hole. At that location the creek was only about a foot or two deep so this would require building a dam across the creek. We went just past the deepest part and spent most of that afternoon carrying rocks and logs to the creek. Once the dam was finished it didn't take long for the water to back up and make a nice swimming hole about 5 or 6 feet deep. Tried and wet and now we needed something else to entertain us, so we left the creek and went to play on mosquito vines until dark.

The following day a couple of us headed back to the creek for a swim at our swimming hole. As we were walking down the railroad tracks we could hear voices coming from the creek so we got off the tracks went and through the woods. Sneaking closer to the creek bank we could see some of the boys from Delgado playing in our swimming hole and they had left their cloths on the bank for a morning of skinny dipping. Now they were in our swimming hole without our permission so we made our way across the railroad trestle without being seen and grabbed their clothes and made sure they saw us headed for Forest Hills Drive with them. When we got to Forest Hills Drive we dropped the clothes and kept running. Don't know if they ever got the clothes, but they never came back to our swimming hole.