SWIMMIN' HOLE

We stood looking across the confluence of the Thief River and Red Lake River from near the Eighth Street bridge remembering times when the swimming area was a very busy time in the summer.


Gone is a toddler's fenced in area, the slide, the barge, the high dive, and the spring board. Was that the bath house? Where were the boys playing basketball, the croquet set up, and the picnicking groups dotted on the hill?


Typical summer afternoon scenes at the old swimming hole in the city have seemed to disappear. Gone are the toddlers playing in the water and beyond the fenced kiddie area, the younger ones squealing, shoving others underwater and try to get on the wet log. It is the area with the slide, as if it were set aside for an age group not quite strong enough yet to buck the current to the barge where the older kids dove, sunbathed, and sprung off the board doing cannon balls. The goal was to be strong enough to swim to this elite older teenager place. Around the bend was the high dive and the spring board.


On a grassy slope between the spring board and the basketball courts is where the teenage girls soaked up sunshine at Tindolph Park. It was about this time of the year in 1956 the bevy of pretty sunbathers spread their beach towels and covered themselves with baby oil mixed with iodine. After all this is were the boys were! Who were these sun worshippers? According to the caption under the picture they were Darlene LaFave, Sandy Sandvig, Karen Austin, Janet Helgenset, Kay Froiland, and Ruth Jorgenson.


In addition to providing swimming facilities for the city folks, Tindolph Park provide lessons for those who wish to learn to swim. Bus loads of children were brought from small towns around Thief River Falls to take lessons from people like Mr. Jones.


The bath house was made of block, painted white. Just inside the door was a place that sold snacks and issued a pin for a basket to check your clothes. One end of the bath house was for men, the other for women. Once through the doors of the women's section, there was a row of toilets with doors and a big room with benches to change in and out of swim wear. There was a little shower off to the side. There was no roof. If so desired, boys could climb up the wall and look at the women changing their clothes.


How would that be possible? Behind the rooms in the back of the structure is where people played ping-pong. The block walls graduated from three feet to the height of the building. And easy climb for those wishing to peek. There was a door leading into the bathhouse from the ping-pong area.


The ping-pong tables were dominated by high school boys, just as the basketball courts were.



We lived in the country during this time; if I wanted to swim it meant a three mile bike ride to town. I was okay with that and pedaled in after lunch nearly every day. By the time we moved to town before I was to be a sophomore, I must have 'forgotten' about the beach, I don't remember swimming in the river, laying on the grassy slope, or jumping off the high dive, except off hours.



The guy I was dating at the time had a really hard time getting to the barge in the midnight hours. I thought that odd, I was certain every male could swim like my brother.

It isn't called Tindolph Park any more, it is called LaFave Park, re-named for someone in the community just as it had been named for someone in the community when Thief River Falls was a young city.

I suppose children take swimming lessons at an indoor pool. There is no Mr. Jones in their young lives to row them from the swimming area across the waters to the Eighth Street bridge. And if the girls are not sunning on the grass that means the boys aren't playing basketball.

Makes a person wonder if there is still a water show when the banks of the river are lined up with people on a hot summer day watching people ski by waving at the crowd.

Do people still picnic? Do they still play croquet? How about horse shoes? The area is well maintained. The parking lot seems to have been increased in size.

Can you see yourself walking into the bath house? Did you by a frozen Snicker from Gretchen Larson? Did you check your clothes and wear a pin on your swim suit? Did you figure out how to dress so now one saw you totally naked?

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