Corie enjoying Lake Chatuge
Morning Miss Tipper and everyone. Loving these memories. When I was a very young girl my paternal grandfather took us to a big water hole we knew as the Blue Hole. If I recall the water looked a deep, deep blue. Not surprisingly, it happens to be where I learned to swim. I wasn’t a great or probably even good swimmer, but it was so much fun and cooled us off on those terrible hot summer days. Daddy always had big old rubbery looking inner tubes. We rode from grandpa’s and grandma’s house in his old model T (?)
Later as a teenager and lots of changes in the area that old water hole was called the Green Hole, we were still able to cool off in it on a hot summer days. What a pleasant memory for me. So many other places pop up in my mind Big Creek, Charrette Creek, Babbler State Park, many family picnics, swims and down right fun. My uncle had a swimming pond on his farm, we shared that one with the cows. We weren’t too smart about that. Also swam off sandbars in the Missouri River, near my maternal grandparents. I’m now blessed with my own swimming pool and love taking dips whenever I can. I’m 78 now and all these beautiful memories bring tears to my eyes, not for pain, but for all my family who no longer are here. I’m so grateful for them all. Everyone have a blessed and wonderful happy weekend. Summer is fading fast. Enjoy as much as you can and thank God for all these things we have or had in our life.
—Jennifer Lee
I enjoyed the comment Jennifer left yesterday. It sent my mind wandering back through my own memories of getting to swim at various places.
The pond here in the holler is where I swam most as a girl. Pap taught me to swim in the pond. I begged to go swimming in the pond every day of summer vacation that it wasn’t raining.
My uncle built the pond. I can still remember the excitement of seeing him on the yellow bulldozer working on a project that would bring great joy for years to come.
There was always someone with a logging truck in the holler. One summer we had the gigantic inner tubes from the tires to play with in the pond. Sitting on them was fun and it was a challenge to try to stand on them. Of course there was a lot of pushing each other off of them too. The braver ones tried to dive through the center of the tube. That was never me.
When the girls were little I took them to the lake a lot. Our favorite spot to go was Poteete Creek on Nottely Lake. It wasn’t too far from home, there was hardly anyone at the swimming area during the week, and they had a nice pavilion and bathrooms.
Matt’s aunt and uncle have a place on Chatuge Lake so that was always a favorite place to go when the girls were younger. And when they were very young Papaw Tony and Nana had a houseboat on Fontana Lake.
Murphy and Hayesville had a pool, but I never went to them unless I was staying with a friend who’s mother took us. One of my best friends had an aunt and uncle with a pool so we went there a lot when we were older. And by the time I had the girls her parents had a pool built for their grandchildren. We were always welcome and it was very convenient since it’s right here in Brasstown.
I especially like the last part of Jennifer’s comment.
I’m 78 now and all these beautiful memories bring tears to my eyes, not for pain, but for all my family who no longer are here. I’m so grateful for them all.
What a wonderful sentiment! I have those same feelings about my early days of swimming as well as the times that Corie and Katie begged me to take them swimming on hot summer days. I wish the whole world could enjoy the closeness of family and the building of memories that will last a lifetime. In fact, I believe we should teach our children to aspire to do exactly that.
Last night’s video: The Family History & Stories of Opal Corn Myers 28.
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
My mother’s cousin had a place on Lake Chatuge. it was a fishing camp with cabins and a big old house. we only visited there one time but it was the first time I went swimming on a road. In the summer they flooded that part and there was a perfectly good road that was usable in other times of the year I was told. It seemed so strange to be able to just walk down that road until my head was underwater. What fun! I also remember seeing a very strange boat. It looked like a Chinese junke
I’m overwhelmed by all these beautiful, wonderful stories and memories. You all are wonderful people and my heart goes out to all who are now without family, old friends, cousins, aunts, uncles, classmates, brothers or sisters. I pray you all know life goes on and God is always there for you. Accept Him trust Him and believe on His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will comfort you and give you His peace and get you through your life or what we have left of time on this earth, with a great reunion to come. He is our family. Bless you all and know you are loved by this little old Great Grandmama. Prayers and love always. Thanks for hearing me out. J
We built our own ponds in the branches and creeks, we had places in the river where we swam and we swam in Fontana Lake. My fondest remembrances though were floating the Nantahala and the Little Tennessee. You spoke of truck inner tubes. We has access to inner tubes from those huge haul trucks that work in mines and quarries. We could fit an ordinary truck tire inside our tubes. Big enough for two people aboard and maybe more depending on their size. We even built platforms on them the carry ice, food and drink. This is not your average boring lazy river float. If you know the Nantahala and parts of the Little Tennessee you know they’re anything but lazy.
And speaking of sunburn, you ain’t never seen sunburn like you see on someone has spent the day paddling down a river on a hot sunny summer day.
The City had a pool but we couldn’t go there. We were those nasty kids from Needmore. They were afraid some of the “rust” we had accumulated would soak off in their nice clean chemically laden water. They feared we would pee in their nice clean chemically laden water. We too were afraid, of their chemically loaded water.
Good morning Tipper,
Where I live there was a lot of surface strip mining for coal. once the stripping holes were abandoned they would fill up with water. In the summer when it was hot and someone said they were going to the strippins you knew they were going swimming. two names I remember was the Powder Hole and the Bluey, sounds like everybody had a swimming hole with the word blue in it. I never went swimming in them because they were kind of dangerous. but I remember my older brother going a lot and they were on private property so when you went you were trespassing. Of of course those days are long gone, but these posts got me thinking about them. I think most of the stripping holes are filled in now. I enjoy the old time pictures and how people dressed up and posed for pictures. thank you for sharing!
We would go as a family to the reservoir. Dad would drop us with my mother (who was an excellent swimmer), at the public beach while he would go to a quiet area to fish. We loved it. Some might say it wasn’t right for him to fish somewhere else but understand that my dad worked two jobs, day and night so he deserved to have some quiet time.
Your mention of attempting to dive through an inner tube triggered a painful memory. We had a pool for a few years when our daughter was about10 through early teens in age. She and I were competing at diving through a car inner tube. We were competing for distance also. When it got beyond her limit she wanted to see how far I could make it from the board and still hit the target. After several successful attempts she had the tube all the way to the beginning of the shallow end. I made it but ruptured a muscle/tendon in one leg from the board. I surfaced and told her to get my crutches. That was the end of that test. The crutches were left over from a tear in the other leg some 18 months earlier.
Growing up, we had a good sized creek behind our house. My folks always kept tire intertubes and patches around. Us kids would roll those tubes up the creek bank on the little dirt trail, then jump in under the bridge, float back down. I remember how cold that water was and how hot that black tube was. You had splash on some water before sittin down or you burned. I can still smell that hot rubber…. we “wasted” many summer days in that creek.
Wow! Great post. My earliest memories are of our family (mother, father, brother and two sisters) going to swim at York Beach Me. in May. The water temperature of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine in May doesn’t hit 50 degrees. Didn’t matter. We all went in and swam. My sisters came out if the water first then my mother brother and finally my dad and i. Our feet and legs were blue from the cold water but it didn’t matter. We all went in.
Actually my brother and I spent our first few winters living at Old Orchard Beach Maine where my aunt and uncle had an apartment house. My mother would tell everyone about how the two boys would play in the sand and snow on the beach.
As we grew older each weekend from May through September our father would take us either to the ocean to swim or to one of the many lakes nearby. I became a “water baby” only truly happy in or near water.
Years passed and I married after college and kept the tradition going, taking my family either to the beach or a lake. Each summer my family camped at different state parks where we spent out time hiking the White Mountains and swimming in its beautiful waters.
On one of my two week active duty tours my medical unit went to Hawaii nd worked at the clinic on base. It was during that time in Hawaii that I fell in love with the people and islands of Hawaii and swore I would return to live.
In 1991 when I had a chance to move to Hawaii I did. Moved there without a job or permanent place to live. But God has always been good to me and within a week I had a full time job with the state of Hawaii and found a place to live. And I did for five years.
Almost everyday for five years I was at the beach body surfing. Body surfing was something my father taught me to do in the cold waters of the Atlantic. I remember one cold May day watching my father body surf with two seals, one on each side if him. I only mention this because many years later while body surfing at Waimanalo I had two hammer head sharks swimming on either side if me. But that’s another story.
While living in Hawaii I became a Sunday a school teacher and deacon at a Hawaiian Christian church (Kawaialo in Honolulu). With my high school students we would spend two weeks each summer bringing the Word to the Big Island.
In 1996 I moved to Florida to marry my wife ( sight unseen) and we spent as much time as possible in the Gulf waters. My happiest times have been in the water getting close to my Savior.
In 2012 my wife and I traveled to Murphy to find a home near her sister’s home off of Hanging Dog Road. We did and have lived here ever since.
Now instead of the ocean I spend my free time hiking with my wife and her family in the beautiful mountains we live in. I’m still a water baby but have returned to my roots of the northern Appalachian Mountains to these mountains.
Truly love the mountains, the lakes, and the people.
Thank you for your blog.
While growing up in northeastern Ohio, we went to Lake Erie to swim in the summertime which was about five miles away from where we lived. It is a freshwater lake and unfortunately in the late 50s and 60s it was polluted from the many manufacturing places starting in Cleveland which was about 35 miles away. It was cleaned up by the 70s. I usually went with our neighbors who had young children. My three siblings went also. We had a large inner tube and other water toys that we played with. You could look out and see ships sailing in the distance. We had so much fun and usually went swimming three or four times a week.
dear tipper
your stories take me back to a better time. I live close by in Hiawassee. I’ve been following you and the girls for a few years and I came to one of your book signings. I didn’t have a bad childhood but I came from a not perfect background. my mom divorced my dad before I was born. then remarried and divorced my new dad by the time I was 12. had a very different upbringing from those those and your family. I would watch The waltons when I was little and it was my dream to live in the mountains in a farmhouse surrounded by family. I made it to the mountains. I don’t have a farm house but I do have a home. everyone in my family has passed on except for my children so I’m the elder. The reason I’m telling you this is just like watching The waltons as a child. I watch y’all’s videos and I guess kind of live vicariously through y’all. it was my dream exactly what y’all are doing and how y’all live was my dream. thank you for showing the world how family should be.
jennifer pidgeon
I hope y’all can read between the lines and see I was blessed in my life to not only have a close knit, loving family and then after marriage, it was the same closeness and loving with my wife’s family. When I say family, I mean the whole “she bang,” grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, cousins- get the picture. Money was in short supply, but we had boundless amounts of love for one another. I also loved the Waltons and would eat my heart out wanting to live in a large family like them in the mountains.
What a different world we would have if everyone did indeed have the warmth and security of growing up in a close loving family.
There was a creek running through my Grandparents property that was a treat to wade in during a hot steamy day. A few times we were permitted to walk further downstream to the sheep hole and the water was up to my neck. I miss my youth and visiting my family.
Hmm you’ve got me thinking again – as you often do. The “things” that we remember were in their time fun, interesting, exciting and that made for them being remembered. But something else caused them to be “blessed” memories. And I think you and Jennifer both touched on what that is. It is the relationships of family, friends, classmates, workmates,church family and so on that makes them blessed memories. If we dig a little deeper, it is the feelings that go with those relationships; friendship, comradery, love that underlie them that is the “blessedness”. And I wholeheartedly agree parents and grandparents and friends should work at teaching the importance of blessed memories and live and work to make them. Seems though, that maturity is required before their value is recognized. Children are not sensitive to most change but adults, who have lived some, are which shows them what is the treasure now will not stay that way. Just by this one instance (many times repeated) you show again the attraction of BP&A. It is the heart that is in it. And that really is the secret of a good life – have your heart in it.
When I was a child growing up, I had no opportunity to learn to swim. The two rivers in my area were each about 5 miles away. One was black with pollution from the upstream cotton mills releasing dyes and other things into it. The other was inaccessible because of no public access any where near me, you could not even fish in it. The nearest town with a public swimming pool was 15 miles away. I had no transportation to get there and wouldn’t have had the money to pay even I could have got to it. The creek I enjoyed so much was not much more than ankle deep except for a few knee deep holes. The farm ponds always had cows in them cooling off in the summer heat and leaving “deposits” all around the edges. Still no rain and real time temperatures near 100 degrees with feel like temperatures near 11O degrees for the next several days, a good cold deep water hole sure would feel good.
Jennifer’s comment about memories of family got to me too. Most of all of my family on both sides of my parents are now dead except for a few cousins I never see. Many of my deceased wife’s family are also dead. I loved and was as close to them as my own family. Now the memories of them and the time with them is all I have left and while I am glad to have these happy memories, they hurt and cut at me like a knife, I lay awake for hours at a time during a lot of nights thinking of those memories. My reason for preaching outside of faith, time spent with family is the most precious or valuable thing I/you will ever have in life. No price tag can be put on this time.