Never did the dye ditch swing because I lived across the tracks. However, we would go to the bamboo patch across from Walco Grocery and cut us a big cane and us it to pole vault across the ditch between Walco and the bridge on Seminole on the box mill road. We got pretty good at it and could get across any place on the ditch regardless of the distance from one side to the other. Too bad B.B.C. did not have a track team with a pole vault pit.
Don, I hope you meant there's you a song Lathan and not there's you a son. The first time I fished with a Zebco ( I had always just had a cane pole ) in the lake behind Walco Grocery I got lucky and hung a rather large bass. I did not have a clue as to how to handle the rod and reel. Lathan happened to be fishing near by and came running over hollering " You're gonna lose him ". He was so sure I would never get it in that he had already jumped in the lake to help but I finally landed it. I am sure I would not gotten that fish to the bank without Lathan's instructions.
YOU BET,I MEANT SONG!! Please know I am old and in a hurry writing..don't know if I have time to finish a post. Besides,have you ever looked at some of the text messages...MBF,IOU,UFO and SICK-EM..just to ment a fw.
I would never go on Wheel of Fortune without Vanna White. And,yes,I'd text her if I could. I love to watch her turn the letters. That might beat swinging on a rope over the dye ditch or pole vaulting over the railroad tracks.
This post might make more sense if you read the earlier ones on this subject or maybe not.
Actually Mike it was about 1952, Coach Barton and Hugh Morrow tried to get all of us involved in Track and Field and Soccer....and remember all those intramural tag football teams with names like...well the only one I can remember is The Skunks...anyway they put in a Pole Vaulting pit right in back of the Ag building complete with fresh sawdust, a high jump bar and tried to help us learn to throw the discus. A few years earlier I can recall Robert Trussell winding around and throwing that thing what seem to me to be a country mile. Their success was short lived.
Horace, I wish y'all had left it there. Several kids over the last few years have wanted to try the pole vault but it is not something you can do without a lot of practice. Actually, they do not even have a track to practice on but use the front lawn of the school. Just not the same as running the curves on a real track. However, I think they have done a great job over the past few years in spite of not having practice facilities.