I am employed by the City in one of it’s many swimming pools. Last week we had a maintenance situation that required us to drain two feet of water. The repair was done quickly and the pool refilled. The thing that took the longest was reheating the water. The temperature is normally 29 degrees C, anything less and guests complain. For three days we had signs posted, warning patrons of the chill.
Let me take you back to the mid 1950’s, when Oliver had an unheated, outdoor swimming pool. It was that pool where I took lessons.
Even though the Smith family had a perfectly good body of ice cold water, in the form of Park Rill, Auntie Kay felt that I needed a skilled instructor to teach me properly at the village pool.
I suppose I was 7 or 8 years of age on that July day, when I darkened the doorway of the pool change room. I changed into my trunks and headed for the pool deck to join the other children anxiously awaiting their lessons. Our instructor joined us, matched our names to our faces, marched us to the shallow end, and ordered us into the water. Up to that point, the water looked very inviting. Being in it was another story for it was freezing to my skinny body!
I shivered my way through the instructions. Put your face in the water, blow bubbles, and so forth, we obeyed. The lesson ended after an eternity and I got out of the ice water. The change room was no warmer. Auntie Kay said that my lips were blue when I got into the car for the trip home. On that hot day, she forsook her own comfort and closed all the vehicle windows to hasten my warmup.
From that day forward, Auntie Kay left all the windows up in the car so it would be hot for her frozen son after the swim lesson.
I don’t know how many lessons I endured, but I did learn to swim enough to save myself from drowning which has come in handy at least three times so far, but those are stories for another day.