Taking A Look Back
It is predictable. Their noses wrinkle at the thought of it. Any time I mention the subject, the faces of the high school students in my “Local History” class show that they find the idea repulsive, distasteful, probably unsanitary, and definitely passe.
What evokes this disgusted response from the modern teenager? Why, the thought of swimming in the Monongahela River.
The present swimming pool generation invariably reacts this way when I say to them, usually with a faraway look in my eye, “I can remember swimming in the Monongahela River as a boy.” I then wax poetic about the broad beaches that once graced the river’s banks, about riding the “waves” from the paddlewheelers, about watching bravehearts swim across the river and back.
You have seen those news programs where the host asks questions of several guests who appear on a split screen, live from whatever different cities they happen to be in. This column is a print version of that media technology. I recently asked a few folks to tell me what they remember about those days, and what follows is a conversation of sorts. The people in this “conversation” now live all over the country, and they all correspond with me via letter or email.
What do they have in common? They all grew up around Brownsville or West Brownsville, and they shared with me wonderful memories of swimming in the Monongahela River — memories spanning the decades from the 1930s to the 1960s. Our “panelists” include Shirley Beck Johnson (Pittsburgh); Beverly Reese Ahmadian (Brownsville); Richard “Corky” Reese (Heath, OH); Lou Roberts (Stamford, CT); Marilu Stapleton Coppinger (Phoenix, AZ); DuWayne Swoger (Brownsville); and Hannah Millward Fisher (Tucson, AZ).
In their youth, they all swam in the waters of the mighty Mon. Years ago there were popular swimming beaches on both sides of the river at West Brownsville and Brownsville, and each had a devoted clientele. West Brownsville native Beverly Reese Ahmadian described one of the most popular spots.
“We called it Moffitt’s Beach,” she explained. “It was across the river from G.C. Murphy’s where the Lane-Bane Bridge piers are now. People came from everywhere to swim there.
“There was a life guard stand. I did not know Jake Swogger, but Mike Jacobs was the West Brownsville ‘Jake.’ He taught the kids how to swim, kept the beach clean, whitewashed the rocks that marked it off, raked the sand and the water constantly so that the kids wouldn’t get hurt. I believe that Mike was one of the lifeguards. I can still picture him.”
Lou Roberts recalled that same beach during an earlier era.
“I was a life guard at the old West Brownsville beach one year,” Lou remembered. “Andy Sepsi, who was my football coach and teacher, was the supervisor in charge, and my fellow lifeguard was a boy named Hanks (Henck). I don’t remember his first name, but his sister was a teacher at Brownsville High School.”
Beverly Ahmadian’s brother, Richard “Corky” Reese, wondered if any reader remembers a particular invention he saw in action at that West Brownsville beach.
“I can vaguely remember someone building an underwater diver’s outfit out of an old ice cream can,” Corky recalled. “I can remember him going under the water, and apparently it worked. There was quite a crowd there, so someone should remember it.”
“A game we played in the river,” added Marilu Stapleton Coppinger, “was to find a rock of a unique size, shape or color. We would swim out a ways and drop it. Then we would all try to find it and ‘bring up bottom.’
“I could hold my breath for quite a while. One afternoon, alone, I decided to jump off the lock wall and bring up bottom there. I had no idea how deep the channel was at that point. I thought I would never make it to the surface – and I didn’t bring up bottom!”
Another popular West Brownsville beach was the “sand bar.” Beverly Ahmadian described how she would get to it.
“Our mode of river transportation was a log. At the beginning of summer, we would find a tree that had fallen over the winter, cut the branches off and drag it to the water. We would dive from the log, or straddle it and paddle it downstream until we ended up at the sand bar. It was a wonderful sandy area, and the sand extended as far as you could walk in the river. After a day of swimming there, we would paddle back to Moffitt’s Beach (against the flow of the river), drag it to our hiding place, and start again the next morning.”
DuWayne Swoger remembers the sand bar.
“It was on the west side of the river,” he told me, “just downstream from the railroad bridge and directly opposite the mouth of Redstone Creek. The sand bar existed because it is on the inside of a large bend in the river, and the slowing of the current on that side of the river allows for the accumulation of the sand along that side of the bend.”
Of course, that meant the opposite (Brownsville) side of the river on that bend could be rather rocky. Shirley Beck Johnson, who lived in Blainesburg, remembers one particular rock very well.
“In the 1950s, I was swimming with some of my girlfriends at the sand bar,” she told me. “I’m not sure who all were there, but I’m fairly certain Marie Hatalsky was, as she was from Blainesburg. It was one of the few times I ever swam all the way across the river. After resting in the middle by treading water, we finally made it across. It was hard going over there, as it was very rocky on that side. We found a large fairly flat rock, and we all climbed on to rest before swimming back.
“After a good while, we were ready to swim back. I looked into the water, and all around where we were, the river was full of snakes. Apparently, they were attracted to the same large rock, or perhaps they lived under it. We threw stones in the water to chase them away, then quickly got in and swam back. We made it back a lot faster than the original crossing. I never swam across again.”
There were popular beaches on the Brownsville side of the river too. DuWayne Swoger described Empire Beach during the 1930s.
“During the Depression years,” he said, “the very popular swimming area in Brownsville was known as Empire Beach, down below the old Empire mine along the Albany road. The beach was downstream from the Pike Mine tipple between the railroad underpass on Albany and the railroad bridge. There were a couple of loads of fine “red dog” that were hauled in and dumped. No sand, that was too expensive. But it was raked, cleaned, cleared of heavy stone and rocks. Two lifeguards were provided and paid for by the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Eddie Anderson was one; Paul Thomas was the other.
“It was an extremely popular place with the public. You might see possibly 150 to 200 people down there on a Sunday afternoon.”
There was another beach near there, but it was a beach for a different group of swimmers.
“When the Empire Beach was in its prime,” DuWayne continued, “I lived at Snowdon patch (near Lynn Road). We would leave the patch, go around the hillside toward the “old fort,” down through the woods and come out in the vicinity of Empire Beach. But we didn’t go swimming there. We went on down below the railroad bridge, where we swam without any clothes on. That was the place where many of the boys did our swimming. Directly across the river was the sand bar. There was always a group swimming there. We often wondered why they got the sand, and we got the rocks!”
The skinny-dipping boys had no monopoly on boldness though. Marilu Coppinger confided, “I must admit to being extremely daring one night, and sneaking out to experience what all the boys talked about. There was a specific location where they swam without suits. But I just went alone one night, and I must say it felt wonderful. The water was like velvet.”
But was that velvet water actually safe to swim in? Why have those broad beaches now disappeared under the waters of the Monongahela? And what about those colorful tales of doing battle with the “busters”?
Next week, join me here to share more memories of swimming in the Mon.
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Comments about these articles may be sent to Editor Mark O’Keefe, 8 – 18 East Church Street, Uniontown, PA or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com.