The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-08-02
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS
The old swimming hole-yours, every hndvla mine

6Sg elii 'lOl OAiAy NA 0@N0' but of several I used to dive into when I was a boy, and l dare say many hot, weary and overworked man who reads these lines will go back in memory to his boyhood when every summer after noon it was a race to the creek, river or pond to sec who would be the first one in, as the last got ducking.
 Now, some of my friends and few editors kid me about always ringing in Eufaula, my old home town. but what care I. for to mo it's the dearest place in all the world, and will be home to me as long as life lasts. And am not the only one who feels that way about It. Here in Birmingham We have whole colony of EufauIa people and whenever I meet one of them on the street the first thing they ask me is, when have you been down homer" meaning Eufaula, of course, and yet quarter of century. And they are not the only ones. It clings to the Eufau- Hans wherever they are.
 
 'I'Il bet there is not a better adver- tised town in the show world than Eu- faula," says Hugh Latimer Cordoza, the local manager of Loew's Bijou, and he ought to know what he is talking about when he says: You know the people of tho stage, the funny fellows, always ask upon arrival in city the name of place they can joke about, a sort of small town slam, but you never hear them knock" Eufaula. There is req team Mcintyre and Heath, who have been partners, doing the same blackface act for the last 40 years They are the highest paid comedians in present day vaudeville, and they have headed and do head one of the musical comedy organi- zations in regular season. They are the idols of the profession, and anything they say is sacred property. Other com edians may steal the funny sayings of other laugh winners, but they never re- peat Mcintyre and Heath joke or say ing. It would send them to coventry In a part of their act Tom Heath says to Jim Mcintyre: Niger, weher did you come from? and Jim, in his quaint, inimitable drawl, says .E U F A U I. A, A L A B A M A It's the way he says Many people at first thought it was place that he invented, but they have looked it up and found that Eufaula, Alabama, is a sure enough to goodness real lovely place and very much on the map"
 But let's quit the stage and get back to the water holes of our boyhood days. I will tell about mine, and you can call up the ones you lived in during the dog days. I learned to swim in Che walla creek just where 1t empties into the Chattahoochee. A band of us began going in when we were around 10 years without knowing how to swim.
 
 How did I learn to swim2 I do not know. Did someone teach me?" If so do not remember 1t. Of course, 1t was risky kind of thing, but lot of us just went in and began to paddle around and soon one of the bunch would yell: T can swim" and gradually everybody was swimming around the hole
 
 do not know who taught me to swim, to Geath after I had learned to swim across the big creek. Bill Carter, one of the big boys, who was having his fun in the river. saw me do 1t, and grabbing me up In his arms in spite of my kick ing, biting and yelling swan with me out into the Chattahoochee and turning me adrift said: Now swim, you little rascal or drown.'' I felt sure that mine would be a watery grave but dog fash ion lit out for shore and after a bit landed, and after that I had confidence and soon learned other strokes and be- came proficient swimmer.
 A word about the beautiful Chatta- hoochee which has been celebrated in song, but which is said to be the swift est navigable stream in America. swan it when I was Il years old, and my brother, Paul, at the age of nine. But the first afternoon I tried 1t, I swan alongside of my chum, John Carter, who was swimming overhande,l. and in turn ing his head from one side to the other finally got confused and lost his bearing before he got across, and would have drowned had not some men in boat picked him up. It was great scare to me.
 Speaking about the swiftness of the current, even the strongest of the swim mers had to point up stream to keep from being carried away below where they wanted to land, and none of them could make 1t anything like straight some of the biggest packets on the river have been caught in the current and ! broken against the bridge piers. I had graphic description of such a mishap from one of the pilots, Charles Wingate, whose boat went against the bridge at ! Fort Gaines down the river below Eu- faula
 1 I came along in the days before there l was so much talk about sanitation germs, microbes, and .sich' like; but as look back on my boyhood days 1t al- most gives me chlls and fever to think about the chances we took in going in