Where did you learn to swim?

[Les Sherwood]

Where/when did you learn to swim?
Normally this would be a pretty mundane subject but it could be an interesting one! At the time of our youth learning to swim could be an adventure, many times not a good one. How many friends of yours did not learn to swim or were afraid of the water?
Today most kids learn to swim at the YMCA or at a local pool.
In our time I don’t think that was the case.
We had a lot of places to swim including: Orchard Beach, Nichols and Georges Beaches, Bronx Pool and Beach, probably the most common. But there were many other places, especially if your family had a car, like Jones Beach, Tibbets Brook, The Rockaways Greenwood Lake, and other close by lakes. Some of us even swam in Bronx Park above the dam where people could rent a row boat. To see a “few local urchins” jumping bared-ass off the rocks and enjoying their swim on a hot summer day might have been a bit disconcerting to some. Unfortunately, not many girls (any?) partook of this enjoyment, at least to my knowledge (please refute this).
Also in the summertime the community center organized trips to Monroe high school to go for a swim. Of course you had to be a boy and you had to swim naked. Why did they always discriminate against girls? It would have been great to see some girls at the pool “au naturale”. But unfortunately…
Do you remember how you learned to swim and where? Also how about adventures or misadventures you had when first learning to swim.
I recall a few misadventures I had in learning to swim.
At Orchard Beach when I was real young( maybe 7-8) I fell in a big hole and I was sruggling. Luckily, Dutch Learnard, one of the older guys, saw me go under and he pulled me out. There were usually a lot of neighborhood people there in section 13.Another time I was at the Jersey Shore when I was older and got caught away from the beach in a rough surf and I had a bad experience in a rip tide and could not swim back to shore.. I was fighting it and soon I was, exhausted and I didn’t think I would make it. Somehow I was able to reach the beach, probably with a lot of help from prayers. After that I learned not to swim against the rip but to swim perpendicular to it and once away from it then swim to the beach.
Another experience, but a good one, was when I was swimming in the Bronx River where a girl showed me how to swim. It was a great adventure, as she was 13-14 and I was ~9 and she was showing how to swim, clad in only in her bra and panties. Yes, by you must know that I am suffering a case of arrested development due more likely to strict Catholic education. Oh well. Well I hope I have at least 50 years to work this out.
Now I swim with the seniors at the Y.

[Eddie Acunzo]

Les,

I think we all shared some of the same watering holes learning to swim. I earned my water wings at Orchard Beach, Castle Hill Pool, Ball Pond in Connecticut, and let us not forget most of all, the Stratton Park Riviera, Rockaway. When I was really young our family used to rent a bungalow in Rockaway for a week or more every summer. My father would commute into work at the fire department, and the rest of the family would play beach bums with other people from Stratton Park while their fathers worked.

One of my most "memorable" experiences of summertime swimming was in the Bronx River near the waterfalls. I used to swim in sneakers to protect from broken bottle glass, etc. A bunch of us were sloshing around in the water and someone kept bumping up against me from behind. I ignored it for a minute and continued what I was doing. I finally got annoyed , spun around to express my displeasure, and was greeted by a water rat the size of an alley cat. In the blink of an eye I did my Jesus impersonation and was walking on water as quickly as those Converse sneakers could get me to the banks. Ah, fond memories of the Bronx!

Eddie Acunzo

[Les Sherwood]

Eddie,
Great story.
I believe the size of the rat. When I felt something strange in the Bx River I learned to swim a lot faster.
Les