THE OLD SWIMMIN' HOLE BLUES MAN

It was a festering flowing backwash of pure pollution with decomposing varmint carcasses, raw bovine waste sewage, bountiful bacteria, dive bombing bugs and a chaser of potential cholera. It was my beloved swimmin’ hole called the downtown Huntingdon pool.

It was downstream from a covey of cows that used the stream that feed into the pool as a portable toilet. Hence, the floating frothy cow pies festively bobbing upon the current.
Hopefully, you didn’t surface from some underwater exploration of the rocky bottom gasping for breath only to get a mouth full of snicker doodle cow dung and urine for your efforts.

This teeming Petri dish was probably why I got such excruciating ear infections almost every summer I swam there as a boy. Ear pain that plunged down to my jawbone pounded and pulverized me into a fetal position at times.

It became so bad that my doctor actually prescribed a bathing cap for me to wear to swim there. This drug store script was for the Ester Williams Hollywood sparkles’ bathing cap so popular then. OK, I just made that part up to make it sound more special.

It was just a plain rubber girl’s swim cap that more than a few kids said made me look like a sissy- and that was my friends. My boyhood masculinity was at a particular low tide during those bathing beauty days as Wilma the wonder girl/boy.

Our Mifflin St. gang lived at the downtown pool in the summers before we had to work for our fathers or get a summer job somewhere. It was about a 20 block walk from my house to the pool. We paraded down the steaming sidewalks daily carrying our trunks wrapped up in our towels and some suntan lotion like a pride of lions hitting the beach.

Once we got to the pool we changed in the locker room and then went to the adjacent snack bar for a coke and their specialty-a frozen candy bar. It was so ice hard that one big bite could knock a front tooth out faster than a right hook from the school bully.

There was a diving board at the dammed up deep end. Four planks of splintering wood held back the rushing water that you had to climb over to get to the concrete platform of the diving board.
One time I got caught in the current of the planks and was in danger of slipping over the small falls to the rocks below. I hung there dangling while the kids, just inches above me, ran, laughed and jumped off the diving board.

Nobody noticed me. I considered shouting for help, but I was too embarrassed. I decided to just let go and either drown or break my body on the rocks and shattered glass underneath me. Drawing attention to my ridiculous predicament was too much for my fragile ego.

Once I was swept over the planks cutting my feet bloody I heard a kid yell out “Look someone just went over the dam. And he’s wearing a girl’s swim cap!”

Invariably, you never do anything really stupid without an audience. But I returned the next day to swim again. After all, it was my old swimmin’ hole.

THE LEGENDARY BLUESMAN PORK CHOP DRIPPIN’S DUNMIRE
By Elwood P. Tiswilly

Pork Chop Drippin’s Dunmire was a blues legend for the ages. He was born April 1, 1912 on the banks of a bend in the Juniata River down stream from McVeytown’s infamous whirlpool watery grave for lost and delirious dolphins.

Pork Chop Drippin’s was the youngest of 16 children and was always the last one to get the drippin’s from the single pork chop served for their annual Christmas dinner. Hence his nickname “Bill”.

Pork Chop walked 10 miles to school to clean the black board erasers for 10 cents a year. He didn’t have no formal education, but he did graduate from the school of hard loxs and bagels taught by his one time Jewish manager Bernie, which inspired him to write his classic blues song “Mazeltov and Chitlins’ Blues”.

Pork Chop’s ten years in prison for stealing a stray cat to pet once brought forth the following prison blues’ standards “Smashed Tators With Water Gravy Lunch Line Blues”, “Watchin’ Your Cell’s Toilet Overflowin’ Blues”, “The Bad Behavior Sitting in Solitary Blues”, “The 20 to Life Suicide Blues”, “My Cellmate’s Stinky Smelly Feet Blues”, and his most popular prison blues song “Jimmy’s Looking Pretty Good Tonight Love Sick Blues”.

Once he served his time, Pork Chop played the bars in and around central Pa. that even a dead drunk Hank Williams wouldn’t stagger into. This was his most fertile period creatively when he composed such classics as “Women-Can’t Live With “Em, But Can’t Marry Your Dog Blues”, “When a Man Loves a Truck Blues”, “Drink, Drunk,. Drunkard Blues”, “The Whole World’s Spinnin’ But Me, ‘Cause I’m Outta Beer Money Blues” and his masterpiece “Livin’ At The Down ‘N Out Inn Blues”. But let’s not forget his follow up tune “Been Down So Long, Hell’s Fire’s Blisterin’ My Face Blues”.

His records are now collector’s items, particularly as dinner plates. He died dead broke and alone at age 45 after he sold his two string fiddle, Mrs. MaGilacuddy, for some free beer nuts. They saw him coming at the U Goin’ Inn?

However, he sired 57 children. His great great granddaughter “Soccer Moms Mabely” has inherited his musical genius. Her first album “The Grass Is Always Greener Next Door, ‘Cause It’s Chemically Treated Blues” has shot up the hot 1000 charts to number 987. The irony drips like August Mississippi delta chain gang sweat in her first single “Our Credit Card Shaped Pool- Try Repossessing That, You Blood Suckers! Blues”.

TURKEY TROT RACES
The Turkey Trot Races to raise money to send chronically fidgety children to Bruno’s Tap Dance Camp in the Bronx will be held July 4th at Rec Park in Lewistown.
An hour after eating several servings of really greasy art festival food the runners will try to line up, if they can wait that long, for the 20 yard dash to the public toilets. The first one to go wins a change of underwear, a tin of Kettle Corn and a six pack of hot Italian sausage sandwiches with peppers and onions.

Dear Common Ground Magazine:
I have some common ground to sell in the Florida Never Glades. Perhaps you could pass this along to your readers. It’s in the Gateway to Gators’ Promised Land. All offers, reasonable and unreasonable, will be accepted. No need to visit the property. All transactions can be completed on c-Bay, the poor man’s e-Bay.
Love, hugs and cashier’s checks,
Rutherford B. A. Shyster
CEO of Swamplands Inc.
Sink Hole, Florida 172