Swimming In the Crick: Part 2

Submitted by Dave Bartens

Fulton Playground was pretty big. It's ball field was big enough for major league baseball, in fact Babe Ruth and the Yankees had played several exhibition games against the semi-pro Wheeling Stogies at the Fulton ball field back in the 1930's.

The playground was also big enough for a traveling carnival show that used to come to Wheeling every summer. The carnival was a lot of fun with it's Ferris wheel, breathtaking rides, a house of mirrors, freak show which featured "live" monsters, burlesque shows and numerous counters with shifty looking men telling you to "step right up and win your lady friend a teddy bear". I think the carnival would set up in Wheeling for 7 to 10 days, during that time just about everyone in town would show up at the carnival at one time or another. It was always wall to wall people and everyone had a good time. I believe the carnival was another casualty of the Interstate 70 project because after they started building the highway through Fulton it went away. I think it got moved to a site over on Wheeling Island for a couple of summers but the atmosphere was never quite the same over there. I don't know exactly what happened but by the 70's the carnival never came back to Wheeling, a tidbit of Wheeling culture....GONE.



Hill above Berry's Hole



 Anyway, getting back to swimming at Berry's Hole in Fulton. When the carnival was in town a bunch of the "carnnies" had found their way from the playground down to the crick and Berry's Hole. They were watching us East Wheeling boys dive off the rope swing into the crick. These guys were really intrigued by it all and asked if they could come across the crick and join us swimming and diving off that knotted rope swing. A couple of them wanted to try the rope swing, so we told them how to do it.

Berry's Hole Today

Like I said earlier, the first trick is jumping onto the rope and getting perched on that knot as you started your swing from the starting point up on the hillside.  Once you were sitting on the knot and starting your swing you had to make sure that you cleared the crick bank and those big rock formations and made it to the crick before you pushed the knot away, let go of the rope and formed your dive. If you made a mistake you would do a swan dive right into the crick bank or worst land up on one of those big flat rocks that jetted out from the crick bank. You also had to make sure you didn't start swinging back towards the bank and then release too late on your return trip and dive into the bank that way. You always had plenty, I do mean "plenty" of time to release safely out over the water. We always warned those first timers about how important rope release was for a safe dive.

One of the "carnnies" asked to try the swing. On his first try he released too soon and smacked face-first into one of those big flat rocks that jetted out over the water from the crick bank. Boy....that was really ugly, it really banged the guy up pretty bad. He wasn't bleeding so much but it was obvious his face had some broken bones. We carried him across the crick to the Fulton side and called for an ambulance. They took him away and I never heard how he made out, but that little incident really put a damper on all the fun at Berry's Hole for quite some time. Eventually things got back to normal.



Goosetown Tunnel Green Train Viaduct

 After we mastered Berry's Hole we were off to find a new adventure and that was diving off the Goosetown train viaduct. The viaduct is located in Tunnel Green at the entrance to the Hempfield Tunnel.

What a challenge this was...first of all it's a fairly high dive. You had to climb up the side of the viaduct face to get to the ledge. This ledge was located about half way up the underside of the viaduct. Then you had to pull yourself up over the ledge and get seated on it with your back up against the viaduct wall. The curved "arc" of the viaduct was always trying to push you off. The whole thing of getting to this point where you were going to make your dive was pretty scary.



The Viaduct Ledge



Now for the dive itself. What made the dive more complicated there was a dry land area just below you that you had to clear in order to reach the water. To complicate things even more the first few feet of water was shallow with a bottom that was knee deep in mud. These two things prevented us from diving feet first. You had to standup on top of that edge and propel yourself forward so that you dove over the dry land area and the shallow water to get into the deeper water. It still gives me the hebegebees just thinking about it... You had to prove yourself to the other guys that you weren't afraid. The dive became a "rite of passage" for us East Wheeling boys.

Swimming in the Crick

Submitted by: Dave Bartens


Swimming in the creek or as they say in West Virginia "crick" was a big summertime aggravation for our 1950's & 60's mothers who had young boys and lived anywhere near Wheeling Creek. I can still hear my mom lecturing me about ruining all our underwear by wearing them in the crick. "What are you going to do if you get in an accident and have to go to the hospital? You don't want to be seen wearing brown underwear like that, do you?" Finally she just gave in like all East Wheeling moms did. By summer's end all our snow white BVD's and tee shirts would be a nice shade of "crick brown". When the new school year kicked off, you could definitely tell which boys were from East Wheeling by all those brown tee shirts. It was like showing off the East Wheeling "colors".

We really did spend a lot of time in the crick in the summertime. Whenever it would get hot that's where you'd find us during the hottest part of the day. It was what we did in Goosetown as little kids. We always had to sneak because our parents were afraid that we'd drown down there in the crick. It was just something that we did as teenagers living in Goosetown. It was something that I don't remember growing out of. We were still crick swimming and bridge diving right up to the time we were all drafted into the military. It was just a lot of fun.

We would swim the crick at a moments notice so swimming suits were out of the question. Just strip down to our skivies and jump into that cool water was how we would spend our afternoons. If the crick was running clear...we swam in it. If it was muddy....we still swam in it, it just didn't matter. Even if the crick was crystal clear when we "went in" we'd end up mudding it all up anyway by stirring up the sediment on the bottom, always came out with the same result: Brown Underwear.

I still remember all the places where we used to swim: The Goosetown Trussell, along the Goosetown dump, Berry's Hole, Lindsley Wall, The Mouth where Wheeling Crick met the Ohio RIver and the Ohio RIver itself. Most all the swimming holes were in very overgrown and secluded places. At Berry's Hole and along the Goosetown Crick, it was very wooded. What was not blocked off by trees was made totally private by the dense milkweed that grew 7 or 8 feet tall all along the crick during the summer. I remember we had to cut paths through it, sometimes for 40 or 50 yards or more just to get to the crick. We'd also cut paths to secret little hideaways back in amongst the milkweed when we wanted to hide especially if we were skipping school that day. Great memories.

There weren't many good swimmers or divers amongst us guys. I was definetely not one of the good ones. One of us was better than the rest, he could hold his own on the high dives at Wheeling Park and Oglebay and knew the proper technique, the rest of us had no technique at all. We could stay afloat and get where we wanted to go...but it wasn't pretty. This was also true of our diving ability, lots of sore heads and bellies and arms that almost flung out of their shoulder socket by hitting the water the wrong way.

Berry's Hole was probably the best swimming hole around. To get there from East Wheeling you had to walk the railroad tracks through Goosetown Tunnel. The hills and crick areas on both sides of the tunnel were wild and overgrown. It was like a jungle... especially on the Fulton side. Once you got through the tunnel, you turned left on a path that led over to the bank above the crick. There was an old and overgrown Blaw Knox railway spur that you had to follow a little way and cross to get to the hill above the crick. The railway hadn't been used in quite some time and had trees growing up in the middle of the tracks. Anyway, from there you followed a path that led down the bank to the crick and Berry's Hole.

Getting to Berry's Hole from Fulton was simple. Fulton Playround was located just off Fulton Street, across from Fulton School. It was a large ballfield and palyground that went almost to the crick. I think that there's a trucking company there now. Anyway, from the playground there was a path through the trees and milkweed that would get you to the crick. Berry's Hole was just across the crick, that's where the deep hole was located.

Berry's had a fairly deep swimming hole that was about 5 or 6 feet deep on the hill side of the crick. It was very shallow and muddly on the Fulton Playground side. If you walked in for the Fulton side you usually had to tread through some muck until the water got deep enough to swim in. On the deep side, the water was always clear because of all the springs that were feeding the crick on that side. Those springs were really cold and it was very refreshing during the hottest days of summer. Along the bank on the deep side was a big flat rock formation that extended a foot or two out into the deep water from the bank. The path from the railway track ran down the hill and dead-ended at that big rock. It was a great place to dive from. There was also an oblong rock formation that protruded out over one side of the big flat rock, a couple of feet up the hill, that too was a great diving platform.

Berry's Hole greatest claim to fame wasn't it's rock formations, it was the rope swing. It was awesome..a world class crick swing. Forty to fifty feet up the hill side, above the crick, were huge oak trees..with very large branches that extended partially out over the crick. Someone, in the past had climbed up one of those oaks and tied a large industrial strength rope around one of those big branches. I always wondered who had the courage to climb out on that limb to attach that rope. It was really scary. The end of the rope almost reached the crick and had a large know tied on the end that was used as a seat. The knot probably hung three to four feet above the waterline, just low enough to be able to reach up and grab it from the crick bank. The idea was to grab the knot and climb up the hill to a fairly level landing way up the bank. As you climbed up the path you got some slack in the rope, but not enough where you could actually sit on the knot from the landing. You had to grab the rope, Tarzan style, and start swinging, put your legs around the rope and sit on the knot. It was really exciting. The swing would take you way high and out over the middle of the crick. When you reached zero gravity at the swing's highest point, you pushed the knot from between your legs and kinda hung there for a second... and then formed your dive into the crick. Man, that was really a lot of fun.

Swimming the Ohio River

Submitted by Dave Bartens

This is what I call my Brown Underwear story. When you stripped down to your underwear and swam the Ohio River your white underwear would be stained brown by the muddy river water.


We had to put a lot of thought into our first attempt to swim across the Ohio River on the Wheeling side to Wheeling Island. None of us boys, all around 16 years old, had ever attempted to swim anywhere near that far before. We didn't know of any other person who had ever actually done it before. No one to get any advice from. We were mainly worried about running out of steam out there in the middle of the river or maybe getting a bad cramp or something. We decided to find a big river log along the bank that one of us would swim with as we crossed the river to act as a rescue floatation device if we needed it. If anyone got into any trouble along the way, he could hold on to the log and float for awhile.

We knew that there was a pretty good current out there, so we picked a target spot on The Island to shoot for. We decided that if we jumped into to river around the Wheeling Terminal Railway Bridge site we would land somewhere on the tip of the North Island area. We choose the northern tip of The Island as our target because it was pretty much uninhabited back then and still is. The swim was pretty tiring but uneventful, no one had to make use of the log. Our naviguessing the current was pretty good too. It took us right to our target spot on The Island. After we rested for a little while over there we started our swim back to the Wheeling side. We ended up coming ashore somewhere north of The Fort Henry Bridge...then walked the railroad tracks along the river back up to the Wheeling Terminal Railway Bridge site to get our clothes and of course we found that swimming that muddy river had stained our underwear a golden brown. All in all, our first swim across the river was a success.

The second time we decided to swim from the mouth of Wheeling Creek to The Island. This also went well, but a couple of friends of ours showed up and wanted to try the swim we had just finished. All three of us boys were pretty tired from our first swim to The Island but we gave in and said yes we would swim with our two other buddies to The Island and back, but we would use a log just in case we couldn't make it a second time. We got half way across the river when one of our friends who was not a very good swimmer had to turn back with the log. The rest of us made it to The Island but found that we were way too tired to swim back to the mouth of Wheeling Creek. We decided the best thing to do is to walk north to the Suspension Bridge and walk back to get our clothes. After sneaking in our underwear thru backyards of The Island we reached the Suspension Bridge. We were thinking that we would cross the bridge, run around the Capitol Theater and down that road where the Steel Bridge was once located, then down to the old railroad track and back to our clothes at the mouth of Wheeling Creek. We got half way across the bridge when a police car caught us in our brown underwear. They put us into the back seat and drove us back to our clothes. They laughed at us and told us they too had done the same thing when they were young, swimming that river in their brown underwear.

Dave Bartens

The 50's Sock Hop Dances.

By Dave Bartens

I remember the Sock Hop Dances in the late 1950's at the Capitol Theater Ballroom when Don Caldwell was spinning the platters. These dances lasted into the early 1960's but the name changed to "Close-in". I can remember those big columns around the perimeter of the 2nd floor Ballroom dance floor. The Ballroom was always packed with teenagers. There were the clean looking crew cut and flat top boys and there were us, the greasers with our duck tails from the East Wheeling neighborhood. The prettiest girls were a blend of Scot/Irish, Britt, German and Polish. Most of the boys would walk around the outside of those big columns on the dance floor in a counter clockwise circle. The girls danced the latest dances like the twist, the pony, mashed potatoes, etc. with each other out on the dance floor. The slow dances, strolls and cha chas would bring the boys out onto the dance floor. Picture that scene...with the boys walking in that big circle might seem stupid or corny, but it was a lot of fun. The dances weren't as innocent as it sounds, there were those occasional fights between boys. The dances were not chaperoned like the school dances. The fights were always over the girls and the sexual tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. If you could bottle and sell estrogen and testosterone, you could have made a fortune in there in just one weekend. In the early 60's after the name was changed to Close-in the Saturday night dances became so popular that sometimes you couldn't even get in. They had a maximum capacity for the Ballroom and once they had sold enough tickets that it maxed out, they had to stop the line trying to get in. There were times when you had to wait until the dance was half over and some of the couples started to leave before you could get into the dance. It was all worth the wait because the dances were so exciting. All in all, it was good clean fun. I'm so glad that I got the chance to experience it. The other dances that would follow in the 60's and 70's such as the Blue Caboose at the old train station, The Elbow Room downtown and The Swing Club in Fulton were all a lot of fun too but could never compare with the Sock Hop and Close-in dances with it's blend of 50's innocence and the excitement of the early 60's, what a great time period! Glad I was there.

The Wheeling Park dances at the White Palace were much like the Capitol Ballroom dances but they brought in more of the live stars that had the hit records at the time. I feel kind of sorry for those lost generations that grew up in the 70's and later they don't know what they missed. It was so simple when boys were boys and girls were girls. Today it seems like girls want to be like boys and the boys want to act like hip-hop artist and a whole sub-culture of both boys and girls are stuck in the middle and can't figure it out at all...with everything influenced by narcotics and goofy rap music. I like things a lot better the way they were in the 50's and 60's. It's really sad how far we've slid since those good old days. I know that we've been to the moon and the medical and technological advancements over the last decades have been amazing but overall I think that the atmosphere and culture that our parents and grandparents handed over to us was much, much better than what the baby boomers are passing on. These generations over the past 40 years so really got cheated. Give me that old Doo-Wop music and let me dance.

Submitted by Dave Bartens