The Mile Swim

Mr. Ashby was keen about helping me plan for my mile swim. He jokingly told me that he was assisting me so I would agree to do another sports interview with him after I beat all the men and won. Taking that the way he said it, I went along with it as a joke, but Burnie kept insisting that Ted was not kidding. Burnie was convinced I could win, too. I just wanted to see how long it would take me in a competitive situation, because I learned a long time ago that the best way for me to improve my skills in anything was to challenge myself to personal goals along the way. Twenty-seven minutes or less was my target time. I think I was also secretly hoping that they would make it a women’s sport in the Olympics, that I would be the first woman to win it, and that my time would be twenty-four minutes or less. Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?

Mr. Ashby helped us determine the stretch of the Des Moines River where they were going to hold the race. It would start just south of the Birdland Pool area and would end near the Grand Avenue bridge downtown. Naturally, it was the straightest part, but we decided to practice in another stretch of the river that was almost as straight. Burnie seemed to think it would be bad luck to practice in the same leg of the river as the real race would be held. I didn’t think it would be fair. I suppose anyone could guess the planners of the event would use the straightest part, but as long as I didn’t see anyone else practicing there, I felt like it would be a fair race.

Mother was excited about our summer river race project. She suggested we could borrow one of those distance measuring wheels the men at the Water Works used to lay out pipe lengths. We did just that and rolled through it through the weeds along the bank to measure out a mile. Burnie drove a stake in the ground at each end of the distance. Then all we had to do was figure out how to time my swim trials. Burnie thought he could just start the stopwatch when I started swimming, run along the bank faster than I was swimming, and meet me when I went past the ending stake. That sounded ridiculous to me, but I couldn’t think of a better idea. It certainly wouldn’t take him twenty-seven minutes to run a mile, so I had to concede that it would probably work.

One morning while I was giving swimming lessons, Burnie went down the bank with a scythe, or as I called it, a weed knife, and cut himself a crude running path along the bank. He said it was to make sure he didn’t stumble and fall while he was timing me. I kept teasing him that he just wanted to make sure that he could run faster than I could swim!

My swimming lessons kept me busy in the mornings and lifeguarding at the pool occupied my afternoons. Fortunately, it stayed light so long in the evening that there was a lot of time to swim in the river before we went home for dinner. Burnie would meet me after I finished at the pool, we would go to our starting stake, and I would swim halfway out from the shore. It was too shallow near the shore for me to dive in. For the race, Mr. Ashby said they would have us diving off anchored pontoons out in the middle. We didn’t have a boat, so I would swim out to the middle, Burnie would holler “Go!” and then start running down the bank with his stopwatch in his hand.

Twenty-eight minutes and forty-five seconds was my first time. Ugh! I knew I could do better than that! Even though I wanted to swim it again right then, Burnie convinced me that I should only swim it once a day. It was June 19th, and the Tribune’s Mile Swim was on July 3rd. It was going to be part of the Fourth of July festivities in Des Moines. I was kind of excited that the race might get a little more attention because of that. It’s not that I felt I needed publicity; it was because I wanted to make Mother and all the other supportive people in my life proud of me. It mattered to me what Burnie, Mr. Ashby, my aunt and uncle, my grandmother, and my coaches thought about me. I owed them a lot for all the help they had given me.

Burnie helped me practice almost every day until July 2nd, except when he had to go out of town three times for baseball games. I went to several of his home games on days when I didn’t lifeguard. Those were good resting days for me. I still had lessons and lifeguarding, but no long swims. I didn’t practice on July 1st either.

Watching Burnie’s baseball games was like sitting in an oven. I think I picked the hottest days of the summer to attend them. Mother insisted I wear a wide-brimmed hat and take a fan with me. At first, I thought that made no sense at all, since I sat for hours in the hot sun when I was a lifeguard. She reminded me that most of the time I sat under an umbrella beside the pool, so I guess she had a point.

At two of the games I attended there was a coach from Purdue visiting with Burnie afterwards. They were busy talking baseball stuff and making plans for Burnie being on the team at Purdue. They were giving him a partial scholarship like the one I hoped for at the University of Iowa. I was proud of him, just like he was proud of me. I knew we would be friends forever, even though he was a goofy fella and decided not to go to the same college I was.

Each day my mile swim time went down. My last swim on June 30th took me twenty-six minutes and ten seconds. The main thing I was trying to do was learn to pace myself so that I would start out quickly, hopefully get ahead, keep swimming steadily, and then have some push left over for a sprint at the end of the race. I was so glad I was practicing. Burnie and I never saw other swimmers anywhere else in the river, but then we were only there in that one space for just a short time every day. Someone else could have been practicing anywhere. Burnie also said that he took some time off his weedy mile run time; it went from fourteen minutes down to twelve minutes. I had to take his word for it; after all, he was the one with the stopwatch. I razzed him about it all the time and we laughed like hyenas out there on the riverbank.

As July 3rd approached, Mother kept trying to get me to eat more. We had daily discussions about it.

“Mable, you should try to eat a bigger breakfast. You are going to have a busy day. You need energy,” is what I had to listen to every morning.

It didn’t matter that I gave her the same answer every time, “Mother, I am going to be swimming. If I eat that much food, I will get stomach cramps and sink like a rock.”

She would reply, “Well, then make sure you get a good lunch.” She would offer to pack me a lunch. She would spend way too much time in a hot kitchen those summer days to make sure there was a hearty meal waiting for me when I came home in the evening. I was pretty sure she missed cooking those kinds of meals for Dad. He had been a hard-working man, so he managed to stay pretty fit in spite of those daily feasts. At least he appeared fit on the outside. No one knew about his heart, until it was too late. I liked to think that he was rooting for me to win this mile swim race. He had always been my best cheerleader.

July 3rd finally arrived. Mr. Ashby said no one at the Tribune had mentioned that there was a girl registered for the race. He thought there were about twenty-five swimmers registered. The race would start at 6:00 P.M. so if there were fellas working during the day who wanted to participate, they could come after work. I arranged it so I had swimming lessons that day, but no lifeguard duty. Burnie insisted on that.

There was no baseball game that day either, so we just sat around in the shade on his back porch when I got back from giving lessons. He had offered to mow the grass in his yard and in ours, but it was so hot lately and nobody wanted their lawn cut any shorter. It was certain to turn brown later in July; there was no need to hurry it along.

“So, Burnie,” I ventured, “how do you think they will line us up to start the race? I hope they have something sturdy for us to dive from.”

He replied, “I asked Mr. Ashby. He said they were anchoring five pontoons across the river and each one would have five divers on it. They had a crew of men from the jail cleaning up as much junk and branches from the edges as they could. The water has been looking really good, don’t you think?”

“I want to swim kind of in the middle of the group. I mean, dive off the center pontoon. It will be easier to see where the other swimmers are from the center,” I told him.

“You don’t think you’ll feel surrounded or something like that?” Burnie asked.

“Oh no, I have always liked being in the center lane in the pool swims. It really makes me feel the whole competition more intensely,” I confessed. “Besides that, they won’t be surrounding me. They are going to all be behind me!”

“Hmmm, never knew that about you.” He was attempting sarcasm, but I ignored that. “Do you think you can win?”

“I need to get the time down to under twenty-six minutes, I know that. I am counting on the competition to help me with that. You have to remember how competitive I am, buddy. I want to win. I want to beat my best time by a lot. An actual race is so exciting. I intend to get my fastest time and I intend to win!”

“What do you win, anyway? Do you know? Is it a trophy, or a ribbon, or what?” Burnie wondered.

“I don’t really care, although it would be nice if there was some cash involved.” I laughed, and then added, “How about all three? Cash, a ribbon, and a trophy? I mean, a mile is a long way! There had better be some good prizes!”

“And then,” Burnie suggested, “Mr. Ashby can take a picture of you with your ribbon in your teeth, and you holding the trophy with all the cash sticking up out of it. Like they do at the horse races!”

We both laughed hysterically at the thought of a photograph like that. At the same time I was silently thinking, ‘Yep, that would make a good picture!’

We ate around 2:00 P.M. Somehow, I convinced Mother that I should eat lightly, since it was a late lunch, so she made some ham salad tea sandwiches and cut up some celery and carrots. I ate two of the small triangular sandwiches and Burnie ate six. We thanked Mother and then decided to walk down to the spot on the river where the race would start, just to see if they were setting up the race yet.

There were big banners on both sides of the river. City workers had mowed a wide strip of the brush and grass on both sides, so that spectators could bring blankets and watch. There were actually some places where folks could have pulled cars up to the bank to sit in and watch. I had not given much thought lately to the fact that they were promoting this as part of the Fourth of July festivities in Des Moines. I began to wonder how many people would actually turn out to see it.

“Burnie,” I wondered aloud, “how many people do you think will be here?”

He played it down pretty much. “I don’t suppose there will be throngs of people lined up ten-deep on both sides, kiddo. It’s a hot day. Some people are off of work. Some may bring their kids, although this isn’t a really exciting thing.”

“Not exciting? Are you nuts? How often can you watch someone swim a mile?”

Burnie was more sensible about this than I was, I guess. He observed, “No one is going to jog the whole mile, like I’ve been doing for you. I would think most people will be closer to the finish line.”

“Should we go look down there? How are they going to end the race? What does the finish line look like?” I started thinking that these were questions I should have thought about earlier. I had just been so busy working my two jobs and practicing, too.

“I asked Mr. Ashby about this stuff a long time ago. I was wondering when you were going to ask.” Burnie was chuckling a little.

“Really? What did he know? What did he say?”

“They are going to have a two-inch rope stretched all the way across the river, attached to buoys. You finish the race when you touch the rope. He’s going to be there with his camera to try to photograph the winner touching the rope. That’s what he told me, anyway.”

Okay, those were all the details I really needed. The rest of the information was just going to distract me. I had to dive off the pontoon, swim faster than all the men, and touch the rope first. Now I had a specific goal. Oh, and I intended to do it in less time that I had ever done it. That seemed like the easy part. I knew I could beat my own best time. What I didn’t know was if I could I beat all the other best times. Suddenly, some of Dad’s best advice came back to me, “Whenever you’re in a race,” he would say, “always bet on yourself.”

We headed back to the house. I was going to wear the swimsuit I wore in the state competition when I set my two state records. Mother called it my “lucky suit”, even though I knew the religion in her heart didn’t let her believe in luck. She had made arrangements with Burnie’s mother to watch the finish together. It was nearly ninety degrees on the porch thermometer when Burnie and I left at 5:00P.M., and Mother said they were taking umbrellas and fans. They assured us they would find some shade and they would be just fine.

We arrived at the registration at 5:30 P.M. as directed. I walked up to the table with Burnie and the man sitting there said, “May I have your name, sir?” Burnie was dressed in a summer shirt and trousers. I was standing there in a swimsuit with a towel over my shoulders! Finally, the man looked up, when Burnie cleared his throat loudly, but didn’t answer.

“Miss? Are you registering for the Mile Swim?” He sounded and looked totally incredulous. It was a little comical.

I replied, in a confident voice, “I am already registered, sir. Mr. Ted Ashby turned it in for me a couple of weeks ago. I’m certain you have it. My name is Mable Hall. Is my name there on your list?”

He looked at me, then looked at the list, and then looked at me again, replying, “Well, yes, it is on the list, Miss Hall. I guess I never really looked that closely before.” He continued, “So you think you can swim a mile, huh? You must fancy yourself to be quite the little swimmer?”

“I have two state swimming records for North High, sir. I will be swimming for the University of Iowa next fall. Yes, I am quite a swimmer!” By now, there were fellas lining up behind me to sign in for the race. Burnie stood between me and them, but I was pretty sure most of them had looked around and figured out there was a female in the registration line.

“Well, let’s get you signed in and move this line along,” the man suggested, this time with a big smile on his face. I smiled back and signed my name. To me, that smile looked like one of amusement, rather than a friendly smile. “We’ll see who will be amused after the race,” I thought to myself.

“Come on over here with me, Mable.” It was Mr. Ashby’s voice. “May I get a picture of you before the race?”

He had that nifty Leica camera with him again. We went over by the riverbank, so he could get the pontoons in the background of the picture.

“I understand you have been practicing. How has that been going?” he asked.

“Well, Mr. Ashby, I have cut almost two minutes off my time in the last two weeks. I have been focusing on getting the right pace, so I can start and finish the race strong,” I replied. “I am planning on swimming my fastest time yet in the race today.”

“I sure hope you do. I would love to see you win this,” he said to me.

Then he turned and asked Burnie, “Do you think she can, young man?”

Burnie answered so enthusiastically, it caught me a little bit by surprise. “Oh, yes sir! I’m sure she’ll win. You might as well just bet a pile of money on it!”

They started discussing the possibility that there would be some friendly wagering along the riverbank, among men whose friends or co-workers were competing. Both Mr. Ashby and Burnie doubted any of them would be betting on me winning. As I listened to their conversation, I kept wondering if any of them would be betting if “that girl” could even finish. It was that kind of internal competition within my head that motivated me even more. I was going to beat all their favored swimmers, and they would all feel foolish! The last thing I did before I left them was hand Burnie my hearing aid and towel, to give to my mother, so I could get them after the race.

We all lined up to get into boats, to be taken out to the pontoons. The pontoons were all in a row, roped together, and anchored securely. It was the hottest part of the day. Diving into the river water was going to be so refreshing.

Mr. Ashby had parked his car nearby and offered to drive Burnie down to the finish line after the race started. Burnie was going to start his stopwatch when I dove in, then they would get in the car and go. Burnie would clock my finish and Mr. Ashby would be able to get himself set up for taking pictures of the finish of the race. I was so determined to be the first swimmer to grab that rope!

The way the other swimmers reacted to me was interesting. Some tapped their foreheads, like they were tipping their hats to me, like a gentleman would do to a lady if he were wearing a hat. A few of them looked like they were saying something to me, but without my hearing aid, I couldn’t make out what they were saying, so I just smiled and nodded. Just a couple of them stared, or glared. Most just gave me a puzzled smile.

We had all received numbers to pin to our swimsuits when we registered, but no one apparently cared in which order we lined up on the pontoons. The only expectation was that there were five on each pontoon. There was a starter on the middle pontoon, who cautioned us to not jostle each other in the water; to try to steer clear of each other. I did not laugh, even though I wanted to. I was pretty sure none of them would be close enough to me for any jostling to take place.

They must have been trying to make this look official, because the starter had on a referee shirt, with black and white stripes. First, they rang a bell to get everyone’s attention. Then another man on the pontoon next to me hollered through a megaphone that we would be starting in one minute and that we should ready ourselves. I was ready. Boy, was I ready!

A minute later, the starter shouted, “Swimmers, take your marks. Get ready. Get set. GO!” He waved a starting flag and fired his gun.

Fortunately, there was no false start. That was encouraging. To me, that meant that none of them were really in very much of a hurry. I was grateful that even with my hearing aid off and a swim cap on, I could hear that megaphone and the starter clearly.

I had a smooth dive, and just started my strokes as soon as I came to the surface. It was a great dive, even though I had not practiced that much at all lately. I had to self-correct when I realized I was swimming much harder at the beginning than I had during my practice swims. Being in the lead was important to my plan, but I also needed to save some energy for the sprint at the end.

When I turned my head opposite ways each time I took a breath, about every three strokes, I could tell I definitely had one of the smoothest strokes. Some of these men were pretty large. Not heavy fellas, but above average height and fairly muscular. I was one of the first ten swimmers in the front of the pack. We were surprisingly even, with not more than about ten yards difference between the first one and the tenth one.

I just kept stroking, and for a few minutes, I really didn’t pay attention to where I was. I just felt like I was swimming at the right pace to stay with the leaders. When I looked again, I was in fifth place! That was okay for now, because we had a great deal of the race left.

Being sure that Burnie and Mr. Ashby were probably already at the finish line, and perhaps even settling in with Mother and Mrs. Orwig, I started to realize that this race was mine to win or lose. “Whoa, girl,” I thought to myself, “the word lose is not in your vocabulary.” The mental gymnastics going on in my brain was crazy. I never thought this much when I was practicing. It was like I was extra alert; aware of everything going on. I was also totally focused on my stroke, my breathing, and my kick, all at the same time. This was different than any other race I had been in. I was swimming against adult men and I was on my way to having the lead.

I suddenly noticed that the other swimmers appeared to be slowing down. I checked my stroke to make sure that I had not started swimming faster and not realized it. That could rob me of my energy at the end. It became obvious to me that I was swimming at the steady pace I had practiced, and that the men around me were truly swimming slower.

Ha! They were adults, but they were not athletes. They might have been fit in their high school years, but most of them were probably not in peak shape now, like I was. These men were getting tired already, and I was just cruising along. I had been building up even more endurance for this longer swim in the past couple of weeks. I had been worried about making my time lower, but it was now obvious to me that some of them might have to start worrying if they were even going to be able to make it to the finish line! My confidence surged, but I was careful to stay measured in my strokes and steady in my pace.

As I swam along, I reached a point where I could tell that there were only two swimmers in front of me. Without my hearing aids and with the swim cap covering my ears, I couldn’t hear anything, but as I turned my head when I breathed, I could see there were more people on both banks of the river. I felt like it had been at least ten minutes into the race, so I surmised that the banners and the people who appeared to be cheering were at the halfway point in the race. I thought I saw a large hand-lettered sign the said, ‘You are ½ way there!’ I just kept swimming.

I was in the middle of two men. Neither one was very close to me, so I was still confident that no ‘jostling’ would be happening. The water was the perfect temperature. There were only a few gradual curves where I felt like I was not swimming in a straight line and had to make adjustment in direction. This was so different that swimming in a pool. It was also different from the competition to which I was accustomed. Pool competition seemed so personal and close-up, because we were, well, close-up. This river swimming was like being a pioneer out in the wide-open spaces. Your nearest neighbor seemed miles away, instead of right there next to you in an adjacent lane. Also, there were no lanes. I could have swum anywhere. It was just strange, thinking of these things that I had not even imagined when I had been practicing for this.

I checked, again where those two men were. Now, I could see only one of them! We were almost dead even and I knew we were well over halfway to the finish line. It was time to depend on the internal pace I had worked on for the past two weeks. It was hard to tell exactly how much distance was actually left, but I could tell by my energy level that I had the push left inside me that would be necessary for a hard sprint against this fella if I needed it. I tried to tell by his strokes if he was getting more tired, but I just couldn’t. I would have to count on my own strength to finish the best I could and not worry about what he had left in him. I was still burning with the competitive fire that pushed me to those state records. I knew that those records were nice to have, but I also knew that they were not going to be my greatest swimming achievements. I had more left in me!

The crowd on both banks started to get thicker. I could see them jumping up and down and waving their arms. We must be very close to the end. They could probably see it, which meant there had to be less than 100 yards left in the race. This was my sprint! I just let it kick in.

I cut the water with my fastest strokes, and my kick was controlled, but furious. I felt I was literally pulling myself through the river water. Of course, that’s what swimming is; pulling yourself through water. I was not paying attention to that other swimmer anymore. I started looking for the buoys and rope. I just kept swimming, all the while, every third stroke of my arms I would try to look ahead instead to the side. Finally, I saw the buoys! They were probably fifty yards away from me, so I was really close to the end of this and I was going to win it. I swam faster than I ever had before. Maybe it just seemed like it, but I truly believe that it was the fastest. It wasn’t like swimming in an indoor pool. In a pool you can see the end of the pool coming. In this river water, with the rope floating between the buoys, I had to just keep going until my hand hit the rope.

Then my hand actually did hit the rope! I grabbed it with both hands and hung on. I looked for a buoy; one was only about ten feet away from me. I pulled myself over to the buoy just as the second swimmer reached the rope. He was about ten feet on the other side of the buoy. He came up from the water and looked around. People were clapping and he started waving one arm at people on the west side of the river, while hanging onto the rope with the other hand. I realized that he thought he was the winner. When he turned to wave at the people on the east riverbank, he saw me hanging onto the buoy.

“When did you get here?” he shouted over the cheering.

“Right before you did,” I shouted back.

“You won?” He sounded genuinely astonished.

“I got here before you did.” Then I added, “Sorry.”

Don’t ask me why I told him I was sorry. I guess it was because he had thought he won, and I just informed him that he didn’t.

He swam over right next to me. “How is that possible? You’re a girl!” he said quite loudly; it was probably just his adrenaline.

“Don’t feel bad. I’m a high school swim champion. I’m probably in better shape than you are.” It felt like bragging and Mother would be very disappointed to hear me talking like that, especially to a complete stranger.t