“I’m Dorothy Butts, and I’ve been here a long time,” the lady said as she tested the sound on the cassette recorder.

There was laughter in her voice and a twinkle in her eye. She had stories to tell.

This is the first of those stories, based on an interview with Mrs. Butts, who lives at Eagle Lake.

It didn’t take a feasibility study, approval from environmentalists, an engineer or a government permit when the late Lawrence Graham decided to build a swimming pool on his property in 1934.

All it took was a mule and a dirt slip and one helper to turn Graham’s idea into reality, and that was building a dam across the spring at Milldale to create the Redwood Swimming Pool which, for about 35 years, was one of the most popular spots in Warren County.

Graham lived at Milldale, east of Redwood just a few miles, and his daughter, Dorothy Butts, remembers that there was a bank of dirt in front of their house – there’s a lawn there now – and “he started taking dirt off that bank and filling up that hollow” where a natural spring of cool water flowed.

The swimming pool wasn’t just a hole in the ground. There were four diving boards, one at each corner, and a tower you could climb and jump off into the water. There was also a cable stretched across the pool with a wheel pulley on it. You could grab hold of the pulley on one side and ride the cable all the way to the other, kind of like swinging on a grapevine in the woods, Mrs. Butts said. There were also two water slides, a concession stand, bath houses and toilets and, after improvements were made to the road, concrete steps were built along the side.

Electricity didn’t come to the Redwood area until 1938, so Graham illuminated the pool with gas lights for nighttime swimming. Of course, in colder months, the pool was closed; it was also closed during World War II.

Though the pool had a dirt bottom, sand and gravel in it made the water clean and clear, and Graham kept the grass around it cut. In addition to the swimming area, there was also a pool for children.

There were often from 50 to 75 people – sometimes more – at the swimming pool on Sunday afternoons, and Robbie Roberts Whitaker remembers the crowds who would go to the baseball games played nearby and then go swimming.

“I learned to swim there when the Red Cross gave lessons 70 years ago,” she said. “Just about everybody at Redwood learned to swim.”

Mrs. Butts already knew how to swim when her father built the pool, but she learned in Skillikalia Creek near the Graham home only to dog paddle and never got far beyond that.

She remembers the man, Mr. Williams, who helped her father build the pool. It was the height of the depression when many people would work just for a place to stay, and such was the case with Williams. Two things she remembers about him: “He had false teeth but only wore them for Sunday dinner,” and “He wasn’t great on bathing.”

“Of course, you had to bathe in a wash tub, and only when he got a little smelly, my mother or grandmother, who didn’t feel it was proper for them to tell him, would put me up to it,” Mrs. Butts said. “I have this talent of speaking first and thinking later, and it didn’t bother me to say, ‘Mr. Williams, its time for you to take a bath.'”

Mrs. Butts also said that her parents debated about what to call the swimming pool. Should it be named for Milldale, a historic site where the pool was located, or Redwood, which was better known? Though Graham decided on Redwood, Mrs. Butts said, ” My mother always called it Milldale.”

There was a fee to swim. Mrs. Butts remembers it being a quarter, but Mrs. Whitaker thinks that, at first, it was only a nickle or a dime. Regardless, it was a lucrative venture and affordable recreation.

When Graham began to experience health problems, he leased the pool to Karl Keen and, in later years, it was leased to Jimmy Faye Biedenharn. Graham died in 1956, and the pool was closed about 1959 or 1960

“It was such a fun place,” remembers Ann Sherard, a niece of Mrs. Butts. She would visit her grandmother, “and I could go out the front door and go swimming.”

In an era when there were no private pools and few public ones in Warren County, “it was a special place in my teenage years. Folks came out from town, and cars filled the roadside. It was a regular meeting place on Sunday afternoons.”

Ann Sherard laughs about the scene when the old bath houses were torn down, leaving the concrete “thrones” from the toilets very visible. “They really stuck out, because they hadn’t been exposed to the elements,” she said, adding that they were an embarrassment to her grandmother, who was an immaculate housekeeper. She debated what to do with them when Ann’s husband, Randy Sherard made a suggestion: “Plant geraniums in ’em.”

Today the pool is still there, but only fish swim in it. The property is posted.

Next Sunday: Mrs. Butts’ career in farming

Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.