The Fite Recreation Area (Part Two)

(This is the second of a two-part series on the Fite Recreation Area by Jim Fite. He wrote this in 2012 to share how a special place in the Lattimore area came into existence.)

In 1943, Holt McPherson was editor-in-chief of the Shelby Daily Star. Mother and Daddy liked his columns, and they invited him and his wife to the branch for supper. Mac was home for his first furlough, and everyone enjoyed the get-together. The next day in an editorial, Holt told of his enjoyment of a country meal in a beautiful setting. He said that it was a memorable experience.

Down the creek a few hundred yards, a first attempt was made to build a swimming place. Mules and a dirt hauling pan were used to build a dam about four feet high across the creek. This did hold water and made a pond which was used for swimming and playing until the first rain came and washed it away. Plans were made for a permanent swimming pool by the stream nearer to the picnic ground and house.

The pool was started in about 1930. Mac would have been six or seven years old, and he said that he was just old enough to dump the mule pulled pan. Dirt was dug off of the side of a hill and a dam was made beside the creek. Over and over again, a small amount of dirt was removed from the hill and deposited on the dam. The pool was made to taper from the deep end of about six and a half feet to the shallow end about two feet. The work was done on rainy days or after “laying by time” when the work on the crops was finished for about two months of the year. The whole process took two or three years. When the pool was finished, it was about forty feet by seventy feet.

Since it was a dirt pond, it became muddy when used; therefore, after a time posts were placed around the sides of the pool and boards were nailed to the posts. Dirt was then filled behind the posts. I helped daddy remove the wood and wooden posts, and he laid concrete blocks around the outside of the pool. These were plastered over with concrete. We put concrete on the floor and a twelve inch lip on top of the upper concrete blocks. I was only about six years old at this time. All of the sand used in mixing the concrete to lay the blocks and the lip was hauled from the creek on a wagon pulled by mules. The sand was then shoveled through a wire screen to remove rocks and trash. Then it was mixed with cement and water using a hoe in a wooden mortar box.

A dressing room was built below the dam, and rock steps were laid leading down to it. A thirty gallon water tank was placed on a stand, and water was fed out to it through a pipe leading from the warm water on top. Water was piped from the tank to a shower head in the dressing room.

Wyatt Martin donated two two-inch by twelve boards which were sixteen feet long, and we anchored these for a diving board. Henry welded metal bars into the ladder used to climb out of the pool after diving. Concrete steps were built in the two corners. The story is told that my granddaddy, Will Fite, placed a half stick of dynamite in a drilled rock on the shallow end, but it never went off. It is still there.

A bench consisting of a board on concrete blocks was placed on the hill for spectators. A road was cut from the barn to the pool, and it had to be scraped occasionally with an old Martin ditcher pulled my mules and later with the tractor.

A wooden plug was driven into the outer end of a four inch drain pipe, and the pool could easily be drained by removing the plug. There was a shallow settling pool about twelve feet by fifteen feet just above the water inlet to the pool. The water going into the pool came from the creek. A tin water chute could be lifted up to divert water away from the pool, and this was done by cutting off the water when we saw a storm approaching. When the creek got up the pool became muddy.

About every two or three weeks, we drained the pool, cut off the water for a day, and then refilled it. This removed the algae that had built up, even though we put blue stone, copper sulfate, in the pool periodically. It took a day or two to refill.

The water in the pool was cool for a day or two coming from the stream, but daddy installed an overflow that was ingenious. He put a strip of ridge row – a tin strip used to cap the roof of a building – from the bottom of the pool to about three inches above the bottom of the overflow. Since warm water rises and seeks its own level, the cool water came up from the bottom of the pool and flowed out. The warmer water stayed in the pool.

Some of the people often seen at the pool:

• Jim and Bob Beason and family from Boiling Springs swam late in the afternoon and talked about how good they slept after a swim

• Miss Daisy Price really loved it, and although we never charged an admission for anything, if I was swimming when she came, she often gave me several quarters for no reason.

• The Blanton family came often. Ken, Lib, Bus, Bob and others came, and I remember teaching Kenny and Harrill how to cut a flip from the side of the pool.

• The Logans came from Mooresboro. Charles and his wife Dot often brought their seven children in a jeep.

• The Lattimore RAs would often camp across the creek beside the swimming pool. We cooked on an open fire for breakfast and went swimming about six a.m.