Coffee Break [24/7/23]

Your mid morning pick me up

24/7/23 Hannibal 34

I have fond childhood memories of summer days at the local pool. My parents donated enough money to the fundraising to buy us a lifetime family pass. Being a simpler time, there were no rules about unsupervised children, and it served as the unofficial daycare for the community. One of my parents or neighbors would drop us off in the morning and we’d be picked up on the way home from work. Sometimes my aunt would cram an illegal amount of us into her candy apple red convertible, and we’d arrive like stars at a premiere, all eyes on us. Partly because it was a beautiful car, but mostly because she drove like a maniac, screaming into the parking lot with the radio blaring. We’d spend the entire day splashing with our friends, enjoying the combination of hot sun and cold water. So I hate that public pools are vanishing in America due to racism and lifeguard shortages. We have six public pools in my small city of 320,000+ people. That seems like a reasonable amount. And on dangerously hot days, they waive entry fees. How do people keep cool where you live, Deadsplinters?

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34 Comments

  1. We lived near the shoreline of Lake Huron when I was a kid. We would ride our bikes down to the beach and play in the freezing cold water once a week. I didn’t think much of it, but now I’d rather sit in an AC room without my skin being roasted by UV rays. Despite being Asian, I have a lot of moles and my doctor told me that I should treat myself if I were a fair skinned red headed Irishman (he was one himself) so I avoid the sun.

    I used to be a lifeguard (a side effect of being a semi competitive swimmer.)

    Earned a decent amount (for a kid and paying for my school expenses -food, beer and video games) yelling at kids to stop running on wet pool decks.

    Although I will say that being 17-20 years old is awfully young for serious responsibility.

    I “only” rescued two people. Both were pretty easy to do because both were kids who thought they could swim.

      • It was, but it wasn’t as scary if you took it seriously (which a lot of my coworkers didn’t.) To be “fair” a lot of kids that age were made squad leaders during the Vietnam War, but that was a lot different than dealing with asshole teens and idiot adults.

        I get why professional life guards on oceanfront areas are actual seasoned experienced pros and not bouncy slow motion hotties like the tv show Babewatch.

      • I didn’t see Titanic until the summer after it was released and it was nice not only because the hype and counter hype had all died down, but it was a long time to sit in a cold theater at the height of summer.

        The icy blast of the AC helped make it seem like being in the cold North Atlantic weather.

  3. We biked by the only outdoor pool in our area last weekend and were surprised it was full of dirty water and looks like it will never open again.  We don’t have that many super hot days but people will go to the lakes or jump in the Sound (which is way too cold even on hottest days).  Our hottest days I always tell my wife, “how many people will drown today on the rivers?”  Idiots that can’t swim or aren’t wearing life jackets will try to float the rivers with major snow melt causing serious rapids and they die!

    • Another advantage of public pools and s the affordable swimming classes. That’s not a guarantee that you’ll be safe in rivers, creeks, or the ocean but you’ll have a better chance 

  4. I lived at the town pool in the summer.  Never mind being dropped off, I rode my bike halfway across town to get there.

    Where I live, on school half-days the kids like to walk around the downtown area for the afternoon.  Locals get themselves all worked up about all of these middle-school hooligans running around unsupervised.  When I was a kid, that was called “every day of the summer.”

  5. We actually had a pool when I was growing up. Good thing, too, since we didn’t have air conditioning. Now a lack of AC would be lethal. We didn’t have much money, but my parents bought a house that once belonged to a contractor, and he’d built a pool out of odds and ends, basically. It was a big square concrete box (literally square) set in the ground and it was six feet deep at the “deep” end, and a small slope brought it up to about five feet deep at the “shallow” end. But it was a pool. Learning to swim was crucial, since a kid couldn’t touch the bottom at all.

    After we moved away from that house, we didn’t have a pool, so high school was trips to the beach. Like Manchu, I’m paying the price for that sun exposure now. But not as bad as most of my siblings.

      • Now? Yes. When I was a kid, it was significantly cooler. We actually had winters and hard freezes and even snow a couple of times (didn’t quite hit the ground, but it was snow). Seriously, we didn’t have air conditioning. That’s not even possible now. Which is pretty bizarre if you think about it.

        • Yeah the apartment complex I grew up in had a pool as part of it, and as a kid my mom wouldn’t take me there unless it was above 85 because otherwise the water would be too cold. I remember a few summers where it felt like I never got to go to the pool and now 85 is a cool day here in the summer.

          And we’re not old.

          • We didn’t have a choice. It was literally our  summer daycare. And we went unless it was storming. Until MS when we could safely be left at home by ourselves. Then we still went but snuck off to the adjacent park to smoke cigarettes and get high. By HS most of us had summer jobs and couldn’t go daily.

  6. lots of lakes for me to swim in up here in the north…some safer than others… gotta be careful in the abandoned quarries…. plenty pools around too….but gotta pay for those and im a cheapskate for that kinda thing

    aaaand if i decide its just too much effort to get to one of the nearby lakes…i can always throw myself into a canal…which are safe to swim in up here…. but i’d seriously think twice trying it somewhere like amsterdam

  7. I lived near a park with a couple of diving boards including a pretty high one.  That high board was my white whale growing up.  I can’t tell you how many times I climbed the ladder only to climb back down in shame and self-loathing.

    There was a lifeguard there and she was fine as frog hair.  She was a strawberry blonde with freckles on her shoulders and gave off wafts of coconut-pineapple sun screen when she walked by.

    • I loved diving. The high board is really easier than the low board. You have more time to flip or twist, whatever trick you’re performing. I spent so much time on the boards.

  8. Swimming pools when I was a kid — very similar to your experience. I have to watch every mole on my body now.

    Rivers and lakes now. We have “water parks” in Boise that are just parks built along the Boise River that have ponds with beaches, as well as ramps that allow folks to launch non-motorized watercraft. We went early to hit the ponds on our SUPs on Saturday before it got crazy crowded and crazy hot.

    • I fully understand the feelings about pond water, but I should point out that these particular ones are fed by the river, and then also drain back into the river. So the water is circulated to a degree that keeps algae and other issues to a minimum.

      We’ve had other local (closed) ponds that have had issues, but the ones on the river have not had any. That said, I don’t swim in them.

      I will dunk my head under a high mountain lake or river, like Brooklyn Lake or the Popo Agie in Wyoming, which are fed largely by snow-melt.

    • Growing up spending way too much time in the sun & water pre-waterproof sunscreen that actually worked, I too have to deal with skin cancer check ups.  My Derm just told me I need to do the precancer Efudex cream again which lights up all your precancerous areas and makes them peel.  You end up looking like a leper after a week or two of it.  Then she gets to check me out again and see what she wants to biopsy.  I can’t do it right now as I am working in the sun & then going to Tahoe for a week but when I get back, it begins.  You definitely don’t want to be out in the sun doing this as your skin gets thinner and more sensitive with the cream.

      • Our public pools are owned and run by the city Parks and Rec department. And I’m now thinking six is a lot because we’re much smaller than you are. There are dozens of private aquatic centers and private neighborhood pools. But they’re very expensive. I don’t even know what it costs to go to the city pools. But I am grateful that they let people cool off for free in these dangerous temperatures we get nowadays. And we’re getting a new park downtown that has water features like splash pads that will be free. Even a separate dog area I was told. Kentucky is a shit state but Lexington is a very nice place to live.

  9. I actually had to stop and think a lot about this post. I don’t know exactly how you define public pools? St Louis County (population close to 1 million) has 4 county pools, I had to google though because I don’t recall any public pools as a kid.

    Many of the local municipalities have an aquatic center or a pool that residents can use for a daily rate or membership rate, with rather expensive nonresident rates. But daily passes are like $8-10 each person, so not affordable for a family.

    I’ve also never heard of pools being free on hot days to help people out. That sounds way too considerate.

    We also have some areas along the Meramec River where people swim, including Huzzah Creek and Big River tributaries. But the Meramec (confluence with the Mississippi River in south St Louis) has a lot of spots with dangerous currents. So every year there are a lot of drownings because people can’t swim well or are intoxicated. Or both. And there’s no lifeguards since a lot of it is informal access and people swimming while out on float trips or boating.

  10. Growing up, it was biking out to the campground to swim with my cousins at the lake, if they were out there, or if they *weren’t*, then biking out just the distance of a couple blocks more, to get to the public beach.

    Otherwise, it was going out to the backyard, digging up some worms, and then going down the lake road (same direction as getting to the bike path leading to the campground), and heading *over* the bike path, instead of turning onto it, and going down to the boat landing–or if we were feeling *really* adventurous–biking out on the bike trail *past* the public beach to the (then) end of the bike trail to “the culvert”/highway Bridge over the creek between the two lakes, and fishing all day.

    Nowadays, it’s trying to keep a bunch of K-5th graders hydrated & from overheating…

    This week I expect we’ll see lots of fussiness, because we’re supposed to be in the high 90’s temp-wise, with dewpoints (the temp when water settles *out* of the air) in the 80’s–so STICKY, hot, & *miserable*… I suspect we’re gonna be doing LOTS of water buckets, “water beads,” & ice-play to cool down!

  11. Ugh you guys are stoking my fear and anxiety about that brain eating amoeba. We swim in Lake Washington as there are no easily accessible public pools nearby. I do check the feces bacteria index every week. That just tells me whether there is shit in the water or too much shit in the water.

     

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