The Ole Swimmin Hole

In the summers of our youth, there was nothing better in the midday heat than to take a refreshing dip (skinny-dipping allowed) in the closest cool water we could get to fast. There were numerous places like that, but since most of us didn't have, or even own, a pair of real "swimming trunks", we would have to go far from prying eyes.

There were many "wash-holes" and moving water creeks to choose from. We had Okelala, Twenty Mile, and fish ponds such as Rowan's, the lake out east at the turn to Pratt (the "fish lake"), a very snaky one at Ratliff's, and many others. Someone with an automobile at the pool room only had to mention the idea that we should go, and he would have a loaded vehicle in seconds. There would even be some riders on the fenders and running boards if needed. I always tried to chip in on gas to the tune of a nickel or dime, just so the driver didn't think I was a deadbeat.

To keep up with the dozens of swimmin' holes, they were aptly named something by the users if they weren't named already. I would have to think a while to recall most of them, but I am certain that the most remembered, although not the most-used was "Blue Mars". I haven't a clue as to how that name was given to the rippling falls and deep washout, but Dr. Henry Outlaw (Bo, as he was known then) has written a short verse about the place, and I'll bet he is right-on with the origin.

One Sunday afternoon after a couple of hours of playing in the water there, a couple of adults came by and began feeling up under the bank for fish. They soon came out with a decent-sized moccasin which we hadn't known about. Well, at that time we decided it was time to get back to town, amid the laughing of the "grabblers". Maybe they just wanted to run us off. They succeeded beyond expectations.
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Blue Mars

Take the cotton gin road
Past the airport
Leading down to Prather’s Bottom
A field road,
Dotted with farm houses,
Negro and white sharecroppers
Both with patches of cotton and corn,
Then to the artesian well,
Cool water spurts forth like time,
Constant as the seasons,
Quaff for families farming on shares.

Below the well a path,
Down a sandy bank
To the swimming hole
In blue clay where mules and stock mired up;
The Blue Mars
Hued out by many floods,
A hole deep and blue
As the fall sky after a rain,
Water forced deep
By a water fall,
Aerated and pure.

Blue Mars
Where only the brave and strong-willed
May touch bottom,
Where water runs deep
And cold in the summertime.
Lined with white hissing sand
Sifted over many years
From the creek bank,
Home of sun perch, bream and goggle eye,
Cottonmouths claim the waters
Edge behind logs
Where flow is silent and still.

Above the boundary of sandy beach
Giant cottonwoods stand like sentinels,
Reflected in Blue Mars,
Guardians of the river bank.
When the wind blows
The leaves clap like a thousand
People in the Tabernacle,
Like an audience’s applause at an opera.
On a calm day you can hear
The carolina wrens and white throat sparrows
Call out in the high branches.

Beyond the creek
The Indian mound
Looms over the bottom land;
Sacred burial grounds,
Some ancient culture
That peopled the land
For untold centuries;
Where Indian spirits whisper,
A voice from another time,
Resonant in the leaves of cottonwood
and babbling in the crystal
Waters of Blue Mars.
A harp of voices somewhere
In the high pines.

Where coons come to drink
And wash clams by moonlight,
Where bobcat, deer, and bear
Roam and suck the
Blue water.

What track is frozen in clay
With sharks teeth of another age?
Do the cottonwoods applaud their past?
Does the fountain
Boil over their bones?
In the depths of Blue Mars
Where is their secret?
Who will touch the bottom
And bring back that ancient clay?

Henry E. Outlaw