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The term, swimming hole or old swimming hole will bring back happy joyful memories to many. Most of us, who lived in the suburbs or out in the country, had our favorite swimming hole. This was the place where our friends would gather, on hot summer days, to cool down and swim. I fondly remember four swimming holes that were special places for me.

The Landing Place Pond was the main swimming hole for those of us who lived in the small community of Creston. We called it a swimming hole but really it was a fair size pond. I recall children and adults swimming together.

The day Beulah almost drowned..There were a number of us swimming and some lazing on the grass. Beulah was only about 8 years old and had somehow found herself alone out by the lilly pads. None of us noticed that she was missing. Than we heard a shout and water splashing. It was my older brother. He swam out and pulled Beulah from the water. They performed artificial respiration on her immediately and she coughed up water. Beulah would be ok but it made us heed our parents warning to stay out of water that was over our heads.

The dam, as we called it, was the remains of an old sawmill that was about 500 feet from our house in Creston South. We called the river or stream, The Millbrook.

This was my favorite swimming hole. The water was not too deep, for those of us who were six or seven years old but after a rain it was a little too deep. The water was flowing fast so we would go about 40 feet upstream, dive in and be swept down stream to the dam wall. There was an opening, to release the access water but we knew how to follow the current to the shallows.

Our family moved to Manuels, in 1958, and was introduced, by our friends, to Manuel's river and the many swimming holes scattered throughout the river system.

The flats was an area where the river widened out and flowed into Squires pond. The water, in the area of the flats, would rise and fall with the tides. The water would cool when the tide rose and where the salt water mixed with the fresh water.

There was a diving rock, on one side of the river and a grassy meadow on the opposite side. The meadow was the perfect place to lie in the sun. This is where we gathered on sunny summer days.

The canyon was a few miles upriver from the flats and we only swam there when we became teenagers. There was the upper and lower canyon.

The upper canyon was surrounded by rock and was a dangerous place, especially when diving from the rocks. There have been a number of people injured and I'm not sure but there may have been fatalities. People would dive into a large boulder that was in the center of the canyon. Most of us swam in the lower canyon. It wasn't that big of a swimming hole but mostly we lazed on the rocks. It was more of a gathering place.