Easter is a sacred holiday for Christians around the world, but for me as a child, Easter signified the beginning of swimming season. My parents made a rule that we were not allowed to go swimming in the creek until after Easter. Apparently, they were unaware of how balmy those 60-degree days felt to a ten-year-old. I recall one Easter Sunday my dad took us children to the sunrise breakfast at Catawba Valley Baptist Church. Sunrise breakfasts are a tradition in the South. In the old days, people would get up before dawn and go to a church meeting outside, dressed in their very best outfits. Facing east, the preacher preached, and the singers sang, and the hungry persevered. Around 7:30AM, the frozen faithful would head indoors and feast on pork, served at least five ways, and all the other saturated fats that the Surgeon General has declared threats to the future of mankind. We had eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, livermush, biscuits, grits, homemade jellies, and gravy! There were also exotic casseroles, which I didn’t favor, and fresh fruits, which I considered to be a most enchanting decoration. If you’ve never been to an old-time, Easter sunrise service in the mountains, you should.
After the thorough feeding, we piled in the car to go home and began begging incessantly to go swimming. As children, we could go to the “first crossing” by ourselves, but we were prevented from going to the “second hole” or the “swimming hole.” We never really wanted to go swimming at “Marion’s crossing,” because the ford was over-grown, and the fierce briars were thicker than fiddlers in hell. Thinking back now, it seems so curious as to how and why we used the names that we did to identify locations that all the neighbors knew. Those names now, places like the Little House, Deep Bend, Rattlesnake Fields, the Bottoms, Clearwater Beach, the old Mule House, the Loven Hotel, and the Tate Place are lost to the young.
On Easter Sunday, we could go to the swimming hole. The swimming hole was a curve in the creek. Immediately preceding the swimming hole, there was a ford in a shallow area with rapids. There, the water was only a few inches deep. Downstream the rapids got deeper, but the water still moved fast. Before we were accomplished swimmers, this was the space where we practiced. Further downstream, the creek made a sharp bend and the water had cut deep into the side of the bank, which was made of thick gooey clay. I am confident the Indians who lived in this area must have mined this clay to make their pottery. Across from the clay bank, there was a sandy beach. Depending on the year, the sandy side was well-mowed; usually though, it was high in weeds and cock-a-burs.
As kids, we learned to jump off the clay bank from a four-foot-high perch into the water. Our cousin Forrest Dula could do acrobatic flips from the bank. Even at the deepest spot, the water was only five feet deep, so special care had to be taken so as not to hit the bottom. My brother Glenn and I learned to perform dives from both sides and we taught visitors how to do the same. Yes, we loved going to the swimming hole. My mom, who was from Boone where there are few places in any creek deep enough to swim, was afraid of the water. Plus, it is so hard to smoke cigarettes and swim. She did, however, finally learn to dog-paddle a little. My dad would occasionally shed his Dickies and go swimming too. He was very serious about swimming and would swim down the creek and back up one time and then get out.
Perhaps, I loved going swimming so much because of my Uncle Wayne. Little Wayne, as I was known with great pride, always wanted to emulate Big Wayne. My Uncle Wayne loved to bathe in the creek and made a point to go swimming whenever he could, even in the winter. I can remember going down to the river with him once in Glen Alpine and the water was breathtaking – seriously, it was so cold it was difficult to breathe. Although we didn’t break the ice to go in that day, as he was famously known for doing, the stout-as-a-mule octogenarian waded out about waist-deep and then just sort of fell face first into the water. So, I went in too, though not with the same reckless abandon that he showed, having the good sense of a five-year-old to avoid such behavior. Even though I was only in for a few seconds, I still remember the sharp sting of the freezing water. He did a modified breaststroke of sorts to the other side of the river and then turned around and came back. Even though we went swimming almost every Sunday, and most other days too, from mid-March to late September, maybe the cold water of those Easter Sunday swims is why these memories stand out so boldly now.