But we were not done swimming for the day, after the lessons we, including the Yawn’s, headed to Magnesia Springs where we planned to have a picnic lunch and spend the afternoon. Both Dad and Billy took a half day off work to go with us. Magnesia Springs is a fourth-magnitude spring lying down a dirt country road just east of Gainesville. We lived on the opposite side of town from Magnesia Springs and had drive the full length of University Avenue to go there, past the University where Dad worked, through old downtown and past the library that when passing I thought of its nice cool air conditioning, then continued out the east side of town toward Hawthorne.  “We better leave early, you never know what traffic is like.” Dad said as he always did when we went somewhere. This was 1959, there was no traffic, “traffic hour” was only lasted about fifteen minutes when the workday for the University ended at five PM.  But Dad was always early, he thought if you weren’t at least fifteen minutes early, you were late. We were usually the first ones at family events.

Like Glen Springs, Magnesia Springs has a large Olympic size swimming pool and a smaller children’s pool, both fed by the spring which was about fifty feet away. Again, no swimming was allowed in the actual spring, which was just as well because the spring basin was rather creepy looking, filled with eel grass, algae floating on top and probably more than a few snakes. One nice thing about both Glen and Magnesia springs is there was no chlorine or chemicals in the water, just pure natural spring water, which was refreshing to swim on a hot day.

The Magnesia Springs basen

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