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.