Riverside Park in Miles City: A Highway 12 Memory

***
If you’re new here or haven’t visited recently, first scroll down & read the 1/30/2017 post “Introduction to Highway 12 Stories.” Recent stories and memories will make more sense if you do. I haven’t figured out a way to bump that post so that it stays on top.
***

**This story has been updated to fix present/past tense problems. They'll all be better in the book. Collecting the stories and memories into a book is the reason more hasn't appeared here. Oh, well.**

Anxious to get off the Interstate, Barb and I take the first exit to Miles City. Arriving from the west, the route takes us through a couple miles of open country before we reach town, but this business route is old highway 12, two lane blacktop with narrow grassy shoulders taking us away from I-94/US10 & 12. We pass the fish hatchery and the agricultural research station at Fort Keogh. We reach town where the first big thing is the Range Riders Museum spread wide on the north side of Main Street. We cross the Tongue River bridge and come immediately to our favorite Miles City summer hangout. On the south side of the street is Riverside Park and the Natural Oasis. We’ll stop here for a bit.
Yes! Let’s refresh and relax. We have swimsuits along, so why not? This is our favorite park because of the pond—especially the pond. The Miles City Swimming Pool is a pond, a diversion reservoir filled from the Tongue River. It is large enough and river water flowing through keeps it fairly clean—with a boost of chlorine tossed in now and then for appearance’s sake.
From the car we pull our sports duffels with our swimming gear out of the pile of travel stuff. We pay the fee and sign in. The young lifeguard at the desk looks as if she could be related to the family that ran things back when we spent many summer hours at Riverside Park. The family who ran things. Hmm, I remember the grandpa’s name, but not his daughter who had been manager. Grandpa Dave, as retired manager back then, focused on two issues: Keeping Amateur Athletic Union programs alive and the politics involved in preserving this outdoor swimming pond. The large pond was great for summer, but his advocacy also kept the town from building a year-round facility.
Well, that’s old politics. Let’s enjoy the water and sun on this summer visit. We’re far from the good physical shape we brought to the pool our first summer here, many years ago. Let’s just see how far we can swim between the docks, fifty meters each way.
Swimming back and forth, I stop to rest more often than I care to admit. In the rhythm of strokes and breaths I drift into a reverie of memories: Of our kids competing on the swim team, of helping at meets, of finger Jello at the team parents’ concession stand. It all comes back to mind. Especially I recall our first AAU competition weekend a month after we’d moved to town.
In my daydream state I’ve managed four slow laps since my last breather, so I deserve a rest. It’s easy to convince myself of this. I paddle down to shallower water, pull myself up onto the dock, and sit looking out over the pond. A voice behind me has me turn around.  I see a vaguely familiar looking tanned face (but deeply wrinkled now) under pure white hair cut short. She’s wearing shorts and t-shirt over her black tank suit and a whistle hung from a lanyard around her neck. She says, “Not like the old days for us, I guess. You’re not doing the poles like you used to. I don’t manage it very often anymore myself.” She has to repeat all of this because, of course, I’m not wearing my hearing aids in the water. I mumble something inane about being out of shape and eventually admit,  “I don’t remember your name.”
She tells me her name. I don’t hear, but I’d promptly forget it regardless.
I do hear her say, “I only know who you are because your wife and I were just talking about old times. How long has it been?”
“It’s been a long time. We moved away from here in what? ’89? I think that’s right.”
Her attention suddenly turns to some roughhousing kids and I slide back into the water and my reverie.
With soreness in my muscles returning before I reach the other dock, my daydream takes me back in time to the long swim. “Doing the poles” as Wussername the senior-citizen lifeguard or pool manager put it. Not between docks, no pushing off every fifty meters, but around the poles, out beyond the docks and diving boards.
Three large white painted steel posts stand in a line poking through the water of the larger pond area, one hundred meters apart, two hundred meters end to end. The center pole is easiest to reach from the swimming area marked by the docks, so we’d start there. One circuit is four hundred meters. Four times around is about a mile. Sixteen circuits is a long way. That was our goal on that day so long ago.
We’d been swimming a mile every morning since the new indoor pool in our former town opened six months earlier. In the best physical shape of my life, or close enough to it, I was ready to try. Now I’m a fat old man, pushing off from the dock and panting before I reach the other side at a sluggish pace.
On that warm, sunny Sunday in July 1984, I was doubtful I could do it, but intent on trying to accomplish the marathon swim. We bunched up at the center pole. Dave, the  AAU’s top promoter, signaled the start and we were off. I swam the first mile at my usual early morning pace, and maintained pretty well for the next half mile. Every twenty-five meters I recalled the clear pool in Baker and longed for the chance to push off and coast for a couple meters. Still, I plugged along.
More than two hours later there were only two or three of us in the pond. I came past the center pole and heard the yelling and cheering. I had completed the four mile swim. Barb came in a couple minutes later. We had both done it! The whole shebang. A marathon in murky water.
Exhausted and sunburnt (Oh my gawd, the sunburn.) I hung on the end of the dock just breathing until some helpful hands pulled me up and out. Most swimmers had given up before the three mile mark, but I wasn’t the first to finish the full race. Even so, I was in for another surprise. Dave presented me with a gilded medal. First place Junior Champion. Not only first in Miles City, I was national marathon swim champ in the men’s junior division. I told Dave I was too old to be junior. He reasoned that I won in that division because I’d never competed before. Barb won the Women’s Junior. We had matching medals. National champions – because Miles City did the USA’s only AAU marathon swim contest. I’d show you the medal but it was attached to my sports duffle that was stolen a few years later.
The next year, without access to year round swimming, I only made two and a half miles. Only? Hey I did doggone well that time, too.
Now, back for a visit at the Natural Oasis, I swim and remember. With a right arm stroke I turn my head, breathe in, then a left arm stroke and breathe out. I begin to ease into a sustainable pace. Maybe I’ll go once around the poles for old times’ sake, if Ms. Wussername will allow it.
Soon we’ll be back out on Highway 12 crossing open country, full of life but empty of people. As we reach the Strawberry Hills a road sign warns us, “Next gas 83 miles.” Next public pool, where our daily swim built us up to marathon shape, is also 83 miles; for some reason that information is not on the sign.