One of our summer past times was to head south of town to swim in the canals and take a cold dip in the pump basins. The well water came up cold,clean and clear into a small concrete basin before it dumped in to the canal. George Rundle, Greg Campbell, Doug Yount and a few others would load up the car with watermelon and cantaloupe ( that we bought from the Ethington brothers) and spend the afternoon under the shade of a big old mature cottonwood. The watermelon and cantaloupe would bob in the pump basin cooling down as we swam and tubed the canal. We even tried water skiing in the canal behind Georges Fairlane. The water was cleaner then. Today SRP would arrest you for trespassing. There was a place where 3 canals came together and created somewhat of a whirlpool. The idea was to jump in get tossed around and hopefully shot out the other end. Some how no one broke any bones or got dead. Good times. Fond memories.
Surfing in the canal behind a truck. Used a sheet of plywood with a rounded front as our surfboard, had to flip the tow rope over the headgates on the bank otherwise bad,bad wreck. Cant imagine doing that now days, your right, SRP would have your butt.
Butch Bennett and I used to ride our bikes to the flumes near Papago Park, above the SRP power plant located on Washington St. If we stayed too long however, we would have to ride all the way home sitting on our bycycle seats, as the seats of our cutoffs would be gone. The canal east of the Kyrene power house was a good place to water ski. Sometimes we could ski several trips before anyone would discover our mischief and chase us off.
Butch Bennett and I used to ride our bikes to the flumes near Papago Park, above the SRP power plant located on Washington St. If we stayed too long however, we would have to ride all the way home sitting on our bycycle seats, as the seats of our cutoffs would be gone. The canal east of the Kyrene power house was a good place to water ski. Sometimes we could ski several trips before anyone would discover our mischief and chase us off.
that was a neat section of canal just east of the plant. nice and wide with a good bank and only one or two houses to worry about. nobody seemed to care if you used the canals back then. we used to try to catch the big gold fish(carp)
