Since we are slap in the middle of the Dog Days, I’d like to talk about two things that hold fond memories of my youth and, like most things that are fun to do outdoors, have for the most part sadly gone the way of the dodo. I am talking about rope swings and swimming holes.
I love rope swings. I had one in my back yard growing up in Gresham Park. It was at the far right-hand corner of the back yard in an oak tree. It was there when we moved into the house in 1959. The rope was made from twisted manila jute and had knots tied in it for handles. There was absolutely no grass around the base of the tree and you would hold onto one of the knots, start running, pull your legs up and swing around the tree, out over the valley that led down to the creek behind our house and land back on the other side of the tree. Swinging back around the tree wasn’t as dramatic and didn’t swing out over the valley, but we didn’t care. My cousins, friends and I would play on the rope swing for hours. We carved our initials into the bark. I buried my first pet under the tree. He was a little green parakeet named Joe who lived for nine years and I laid him to rest in a little box between two of the big roots. When we moved in 1973, my father climbed the tree, untied the knot and took the rope with him.
There was a big rope swing in Gresham Park off of Brannen Road, in the woods at the end of Bouldercliff Way. It was a long rope with a wooden handle on the end and was hanging from a limb of a very tall tree. I have no idea who put it up there. It was kind of like a public rope swing. It swung out long and high from each side over a valley in the woods. Sometimes when I was riding around killing time with nothing to do, I would pull into the subdivision, park at the end of Bouldercliff Way, walk into the woods and take a few rides on the swing. The woods, the valley and the swing are all gone now, victims of development and the march of time.
After my father passed away, I was going through things in his basement workshop and found the rope from the old backyard swing in Gresham Park. It was still strong and sturdy, so I brought it home. One day I came home and my wife Marie met me at the door and said, “Chris is way up in the tree out in the back. You’ve got to go out and make him get down.” Chris is my nephew. He was, and I’m sure still is, absolutely fearless. He was out on a limb and tying the rope to it. I walked back in the house and told her I wasn’t stopping him and I wasn’t going to make him get down. He was building a rope swing. The kids would swing on it out over the back yard along the fence line. I swung on it once and was certain I heard the limb cracking. That was the last time I ever swung on a rope swing. Chris and his brother Jason also built a tree house of sorts. They used old wood they found in our garage and basement. It was framed between the rope swing tree and two other trees. They nailed boards across the top of the frame and it was really just a platform as opposed to a tree house. While they were building it, I would come home from work and saws, hammers, boxes of nails and other such implements would be strewn in the yard from the back door to the tree house. I didn’t care because they were building a tree house. A tree house, a rope swing and playing outside was what kids were supposed to do. Later that summer, Marie and her sister climbed up onto the platform and I took a picture of them sitting up there with their cocktails. It wasn’t long afterward that I climbed up with a cocktail of my own. It became a regular occurrence. There aren’t any pictures of me up there because nobody knew I did it, at least not to my knowledge. I’m sure if the neighbors saw me they thought I was nuts. I didn’t care. It was a good place to be tucked away with a beverage and a cool view of the back yard.
There really were no swimming holes in Gresham Park, at least none that I was aware of. We were blessed with Clifton Springs and Misty Waters. We did, however, go swimming occasionally in Sugar Creek, with no mind at all of water moccasins or snapping turtles. Sugar Creek was somewhat polluted at the time and big bergs of soapsuds would come floating by. We didn’t care. We thought it was funny.
The best thing was when a rope swing and a swimming hole were combined. Bert Adams Boy Scout Reservation east of Covington had a rope swing that swung out over a deep cove in Lake Bulow Campbell. There was a pyramid-shaped platform made of logs lashed together on top of a hill. You would climb with the rope to the top of the platform, jump off, swing down the bank, out over the lake, let go and drop about twenty feet into the water. ‘Let go’ was the operative phrase. I once saw a kid swing out, get scared, not let go, swing back and hit the bank full force. He walked around the rest of the week skinned up and bruised.
At the lake behind Northlake Mall in Tucker was a swing similar to the one at Bert Adams, only longer and higher. I believe it was called Lodge Lake before the mall was built. My buddy Chip and I would go there and ride the swing all the time when we were teenagers. One day we went there and the swing was gone. A guy fishing told us that somebody had swung out, got scared, didn’t let go, swung back in, hit a tree and it killed him. They cut the rope down after that.
When we left Gresham Park in 1973, we moved to Rex, Georgia. Rex is east of Forest Park and Morrow. I was eighteen years old and thought I had moved to Hooterville. Then my friends and I found out about the swimming hole at the old Rex Mill and all of a sudden living in Hooterville wasn’t so bad. The mill was located on Big Cotton Indian Creek and the dam for the wheel formed a big pool on the river. There was a big oak tree on the bank next to the dam. Some brave soul had climbed the tree and built two small platforms on it, one about ten feet above the water and one about twenty feet up. We never fooled with the ten-foot platform. We went straight to the top. Some of my bolder friends would climb even higher and jump out of the limbs. I never ventured that high. I stuck with the “safety” of the platform. I don’t know how deep the swimming hole was, but I would dive from the top platform all the time and never hit the bottom. Jumping was an even bigger rush. It seemed like you would hang in the air forever. They eventually opened the dam, drained the swimming hole, cut down the big oak tree and that, like most things that were dangerous and fun, was that.
My favorite swimming hole of all time is on the Chattahoochee River. It is located on a bend south of Powers Ferry and is called the Jump Rock. I’ve also heard it called the Diving Rock. I was never afraid to dive off of anything within reason, as much reason as a twenty year old male can have, but never off of the jump rock. I never saw anyone else do it either. I stuck with doing a lay out and seeing how big of a splash I could make. You can hear it and feel it when you hit the water right. You make a splash that looks and sounds like a depth charge. The rock itself is a big, flat piece of granite, jutting up and out over the river. Rafting down the Chattahoochee used to be the thing to do back in the Seventies and Eighties. A trip down the river always included a stop at the Jump Rock. There were always at least thirty or forty rafts in the river around the Jump Rock and people were lined up to climb the hill, climb the rock and jump. The Jump Rock actually made it into National Geographic Magazine. The July 1988 issue featured an article about Atlanta and the featured photo at the top of this blog was a full page. It is one of my favorite photographs of all time and captures the thrill of the Jump Rock perfectly.
The caption to the photograph reads “In a stunt discouraged by authorities, a daredevil leaps from a rock into the Chattahoochee River.” I don’t know if jumping from the rock was illegal, but there were always a couple of cops in john boats anchored on the other side of the river. Even if they wanted to, I don’t think they could have arrested anyone. There were simply too many people going off of the rock. Rafting down the ‘Hooch isn’t what it used to be, but the Jump Rock is apparently still in use. Last summer Curbed Atlanta ranked it #2 in an article titled Atlanta’s Best Swimming Holes. “Located within the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, this enormous granite formation overlooking the water draws the attention of all ages looking for a fun way to beat the heat. While the water here is approximately 15 feet deep, swimmers should take care when jumping in. Do not dive, and be prepared to touch the bottom,” read the review. So the Jump Rock is still operational and I’m sure just as much fun.
A couple of years ago Jackie and I spent Fourth of July with her son Lars and his family in Panama City. On the Fourth, we went to a place just north of Vernon called Cypress Spring. It is only accessible by boat, canoe or kayak on Holmes Creek. Jackie and I got stuck against a rock in the rapids and almost capsized, but that’s another story for another day. Once there, the spring is breathtaking. The water is crystal clear and cool, about four feet deep. The spring itself is about twenty-five feet deep. There is a rope swing that goes out over the spring, but it’s only about a six-foot drop. The more intrepid visitors would climb a cypress tree, crawl out on a limb, stand up and jump. That was more like it, about a thirty-foot drop. I stood watching the daring young men and women and thinking that in my youth I would be right there amongst them. It was then that a fat guy about my age started up the tree. I stood watching and thinking that this was not going to end well. Sure enough, he made it a few feet up the tree, fell and busted his head open on one of the roots. They got him out of the water and took him, bleeding and staggering, to the hospital. Like Dirty Harry said, a man’s got to know his limitations. I know mine. And at this stage, climbing a cypress tree, crawling out a limb and jumping from it are way beyond my limitations.