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My six year old grandson called to tell me he is taking swimming lessons. “KK, I put my head ALL THE WAY UNDER…”
The overpowering smell of chlorine kept me from hearing the rest. My eyes instinctively squinted from a relentless sun of fifty-six years ago. My skin turned two shades darker. The Coasters “Fe fe, fi fi, fo fo, fum, I smell smoke in the auditorium…” filtered in over Max’s little voice.
It has always been like this.
Any mention of swim, swimming, swimminest…and quicker than Scotty can beam you up—I am transported back to the old swimming pool that was strategically (for me anyway) located out towards our end of Stonewall Street.
Twin Pools was the official name. Roe and Belle Alexander owned and operated it for years. It was an old fashion pool to say the least. There was no fancy filtering system with built in water purification stations.
If the water looked a little dark or if some green appeared on the concrete walls, we just poured in a little more chlorine. There were actually two pools divided by a ten inch concrete wall. Roe had a 150 foot deep well drilled out in the north side yard, and I’m telling you, that thing could pump out some of the coldest water in the universe.
When one side of the pool got so dark the chlorine wouldn’t work, we drained it late in the evening, cleaned it at first light the next morning and had that cold water pumping in before we opened at 9:00. Roe bragged he always had a warm pool…and a cold pool. He aimed to please.
We were draining and cleaning one side of the pool every three or four days. And I say “we” because I spent my growing up years working for Roe and Miss Belle. I picked up trash when I was ten to “get in swimming” free. I started working in the little concession stand Miss Belle ran when I was twelve.
I became a life guard a couple of years later.
Let me tell you something about Roe and Miss Belle. They could be a little demanding. They wanted “things” a certain way. Roe played those stacks of 45 RPM records in a pre-determined order. You didn’t mess with that.
Miss Belle didn’t want the candy colors to clash in her little stand. You kept the yellow and brown Sugar Babies separated from the reddish wrapped Zagnuts. She liked the dark blue Hollywood bars next to the silver wrapped Zeros.