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Taking the Dip

The Source

My first attempt at swimming closely resembled drowning. Mom signed me up for the Red Cross swimming class in Pittsfield, and all I can remember about being there is that I didn’t want to be there. Twenty-some pudgy like Pike Countians stood at the edge of the King Park pool, scared to death that we might have to get into the water to learn to swim. I’m not sure how many lessons I took. I was in a coma. It was sex appeal that eventually got my feet wet and my arms paddling. I don’t remember the details, but I recall it was two gorgeous girls and the town creek near Perry. They were in the deep end of the creek and for the first time in my life I had real incentive to swim. It worked. The Red Cross should try that. I eventually went on to become a lifeguard and spent one hot summer guarding the beaches at Monticello, Illinois. There may be more boring jobs in or out of the water, but frankly I can’t imagine what they’d be. The first rule of lifeguarding is “Do not go in the water except as a last resort.” Lifeguards often drown trying to save gurgling swimmers and it’s safer to throw them something that floats. I spent the summer getting the bottom half of my calves tanned and no one drowned. Heck, they didn’t even sputter. Bummer. To research a play on the history of Beardstown I had the opportunity to interview several of the town’s older residents and they often talked about skinny-dipping in the Illinois River. One old fellow told me that only the boys jumped in stark naked, but the girls helped out. “We’d look up,” he said, “and they’d be sitting on our clothes. I guess they were guarding them.” The boys would shiver in the chilly water waiting for the girls to leave. “Some of us were turning into prunes,” he said. When it finally got so late that the boys feared for a whipping when they got home, one boy simply stood up, knee deep in the river. “The girls took off pretty quick after that,” said my friend. I don’t think I even own a swimsuit now, but as our Peoria riverboat heads into the Peoria channel and the water’s at flood stage, I often ask myself if I can still swim. Of course, with a 12-foot channel and boat towering over 30 feet out of the water, the alternative to drowning is to simply walk up the steps to the third deck. You’ve have to be pushed overboard to drown on our paddle wheeler. One very nervous lady from Kansas once asked our captain if we had lifeguards on duty. Although I’ve never heard of a boat carrying its own lifeguard, the captain smiled and pointed to me as being a qualified drowning preventer. She looked at my bald head and sagging torso and encouraged him to steer the boat as safely as possible. Back in the days when a young Abe Lincoln would pole his Talisman riverboat up the Sangamon River, water deaths were common. Historian John Russell once told me that very few people knew how to swim in the early days of our country. I found that astounding. He said, “When an excursion boat went down the death toll was huge. People just didn’t know how to swim.” I guess that neither the Red Cross nor the Pittsfield pool were available in Lincoln’s day, or perhaps there was a shortage of beautiful women in the deep end of the creek. Nowadays every responsible parent tries to make sure that his or her children can swim even though we spend less time around water than our pioneer forefathers. I think that’s a good idea. Drowning hurts. Cathy, a young friend of mine, teaches swimming at the local YMCA. She said, “I get the really little ones. I think they hate me.” I told her that I had similar feelings toward my first swimming instructor and she’d be wrong to take it personally. “I know I’m maybe saving their lives,” she said, “but you should see the looks they give me when I ask them to put their head under the water for the first time.” I once quizzed my Lincoln Land theatre class about how they learned to swim. None had taken formal lessons but all had picked up the skill from a brother or sister or dad. One girl said, “I watched my dog then I did it the same way.” I wanted to ask her how she’d learned to take a drink of water and go to the restroom but Lincoln Land holds us to certain standards. Okay…bottom line: if you have a young one in your family, make sure they know how to swim. On the average, ten people die from drowning every day in the U.S. and that makes drowning the fifth leading cause of unintentional death. But don’t use my method . . . those two girls who taught me are now in their seventies and you might want to stay on dry land.