Monday, January 7, 2013

Campus Lake: Carbondale, Illinois

After my father graduated with his Masters in Library Science, we moved to Illinois where my dad would work as a catalogue librarian for the University of Illinois.  I went to fifth and sixth grades in Illinois; 1966-1968.
The first week we lived there we were introduced to  campus lake.  This was a public lake, with lifeguards and rules.  You had to pass a test to be able to swim to the platform they had in deeper water.  You could jump off the platform and have lots of fun.

It was quite a bike ride/ walk to the lake.  I remember once sharing a bike with one of my siblings.  We would ride a ways, get off and walk, leaving the bike behind, then whoever was next when he walked to the bike, would get on and ride, passing the first rider by a ways, and then do the same trick, leaving the bike behind.  It was worth the struggle to get to the lake. The lake was very large, but the swimming area was much smaller.  They had a place for boating, but we never went to that part of the lake.  Campus Lake made Southern Illinois University distinct.

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