by William Bryant

“Don’t let those gar eat you!” My Papaw would tease from his lifeguard seat in the old, pick-up parked along the ditch. I can still see his sunburned arm with the green eagle tattoo hanging out of the window. But the gar didn’t scare me much, I was eleven years old. But my seven year old brother would worry himself to death trying to keep an eye out for the toothy scoundrels.

Nobody had a swimming pool in their yard back then. The “city”, if you could call a town of three thousand a city had one, but it was no fun. Big kids were always dunking you underwater ‘til you thought you were gonna drown, or pulling your shorts down in front of everybody. So me and my brother did what every other kid we knew did. We swam in the drainage ditches…and didn’t think twice about it. We didn’t know they were drainage ditches, and we didn’t care. To us, it was just water. And water was for swimming.

The water was dirty and not very deep, and you couldn’t dive, but you could jump off the culvert. We swam in our underwear and got lots of ear infections. I remember wearing shoes when we swam. Papaw made us. “That ditch is full of fish hooks and broken beer bottles.” He would say. “If you cut your foot in that water you’re liable to get the tomain.” Now that I am a doctor, I know it’s actually spelled ptomaine, but I could tell by the way he said it that, if he tried to spell it, he would have spelled it like I have written it. Anyway, I’m not even sure you can get ptomaine (or tomain) from cutting your foot on a fish hook or piece of glass in a drainage ditch, but it worried me enough back then that I wore the shoes without fussing.

The water was still and dark green or brown. I suppose you could call it stagnant, but I didn’t know what that meant either. I just knew it was swimming, and it was fun. You had to watch out for snakes a little bit and every once in a while you would stumble across an old commode, a big, old, bloated dead catfish or a washing machine somebody had junked and thrown in, but other than that – no worries. It was just you, the muddy bottom, the carp, gar, softshell turtles, herbicide/insecticide riddled water and pure fun. I can still remember countless ear infections with painful nights and waking up in the morning with pus on the pillow. But somehow I never related them to swimming in the ditches. I’m pretty sure my grandparents knew it was related, but they didn’t think much of it. I know we never went to the doctor for them. My Mother would be a little upset.

“Mom, those ditches are dangerous.” She would protest.

“They never bothered you did they?” Mamaw would reply. Mom couldn’t argue with that.

My favorite ditch was the one that ran under the old trestle. It was a little secluded by a bunch of trees and not too many cars came by. I liked to avoid being seen in my underwear when possible. This ditch was wide, deeper than most and almost seemed to have a little current to it. I jumped off the trestle and landed like a cannonball – pretending I was one of those Mexicans I saw jumping off the cliffs on TV.

I quit swimming in ditches when my neighbor actually got a pool in his backyard. His Dad owned the local Chevrolet dealership. And he didn’t get one of those little blue plastic things with cartoon ducks on the sides, or even one of those real nice above ground jobs. No, this was a genuine, in the ground, concrete, swimming pool. It had a diving board, slide and everything. I think I was about fourteen. Girls would come over and lay by the pool in their swimsuits…usually two piece suits. I forgot all about the ditches.

That is until now.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a kid swimming in a drainage ditch. Every time I cross one, I look down and see if there is a truck parked nearby and a couple of near naked young boys splashing around in the water like they were having the time of their lives – which they would be. I never see it. I hardly ever even see folks fishing in the ditches. I don’t know where they fish, but they don’t fish in the ditches anymore. Maybe the farm chemicals finally scared them away. Or maybe we have become a society of non-fishers and non-ditch swimmers. I hope not. I hope somewhere there are kids who skin down to their underwear and jump into a smelly ditch without even considering the consequences…and I hope their parents let them do it.

Now I’m a doctor, and every time I see a kid with “swimmer’s ear”, I ask them if they have been swimming.

“Yes I have.” They invariably say.

“Were you swimming in a ditch?” I ask.

“No,” they look at me with absolutely no idea what I am talking about. “I was swimming in a pool.”

“Hmmm,” I observe. “You should try it some time.”

I look over at Mom. She is smiling. I wink at her and smile back. She knows exactly what I am talking about. I think she was once warned about the gar too.