My dad, in our tiny Iowa town ~1965, helped Pleasantville plan and raise money for a city pool. Farm towns were hot and dusty. What better way for kids and families to find some relief, with far greater safety and sobriety than the off-limits gravel pit. Audacious: $350,000, in a town of 1,000 people. The fund drive, which I remember clearly from the big thermometer illustration in the town square, stalled at around 2/3. Dad reluctantly endorsed the alternate solution: a members-only "country club" of pool, bar, and 9-hole golf course, at the edge of town, on land donated by a farmer. I was too young to know the membership complexities, but the pool was available to non-members on certain days, and I expect that he had a hand in designing the sliding-scale membership fees. My brother and I were founding members of the high school golf team, but the pool mattered far more. Red Cross and Boy Scout lifeguard training created one of my earliest teenage job opportunities. And time with girls in the pool was richer than with girls at church. My Mom dutifully endured adult swim lessons, but it didn't take. John, thank you for sharing your family story about community-building. This is a good model for anywhere: how to build commonality and cooperation around simple shared neighborhood values and pleasures.
One of my favorite adventure stories is The Life of Pi, about a boy and a tiger in a lifeboat. But his name is not the number, it's picene, like fish. Swimming is how his early life is framed in the tale, in a British swim facility just like this post describes, only in colonial India. Thanks, John, for confirming its reality.
The town I grew up in didn't have a pool. I learned to swim a bit at the pool in the bigger town about 10 miles away, though my dad couldn't take me often. Later, my sister and I took lessons on a lake in the different town we moved to. I never got very good at it, and have also taken adult swimming lessons. I can swim quite a long way but not *well.*
The pool I first learned in was built with funds from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is made up of oil and gas royalties given to the federal government, if I remember correctly. It was only recently fully funded! A lot of small playgrounds and pools across the U.S. were built with those funds. Now that LWCF is more fully funded, I wonder if we'll see more small-scale recreational facilities like those.
My dad, in our tiny Iowa town ~1965, helped Pleasantville plan and raise money for a city pool. Farm towns were hot and dusty. What better way for kids and families to find some relief, with far greater safety and sobriety than the off-limits gravel pit. Audacious: $350,000, in a town of 1,000 people. The fund drive, which I remember clearly from the big thermometer illustration in the town square, stalled at around 2/3. Dad reluctantly endorsed the alternate solution: a members-only "country club" of pool, bar, and 9-hole golf course, at the edge of town, on land donated by a farmer. I was too young to know the membership complexities, but the pool was available to non-members on certain days, and I expect that he had a hand in designing the sliding-scale membership fees. My brother and I were founding members of the high school golf team, but the pool mattered far more. Red Cross and Boy Scout lifeguard training created one of my earliest teenage job opportunities. And time with girls in the pool was richer than with girls at church. My Mom dutifully endured adult swim lessons, but it didn't take. John, thank you for sharing your family story about community-building. This is a good model for anywhere: how to build commonality and cooperation around simple shared neighborhood values and pleasures.
One of my favorite adventure stories is The Life of Pi, about a boy and a tiger in a lifeboat. But his name is not the number, it's picene, like fish. Swimming is how his early life is framed in the tale, in a British swim facility just like this post describes, only in colonial India. Thanks, John, for confirming its reality.
Thank you John! Rachael, from WOWS
The town I grew up in didn't have a pool. I learned to swim a bit at the pool in the bigger town about 10 miles away, though my dad couldn't take me often. Later, my sister and I took lessons on a lake in the different town we moved to. I never got very good at it, and have also taken adult swimming lessons. I can swim quite a long way but not *well.*
The pool I first learned in was built with funds from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is made up of oil and gas royalties given to the federal government, if I remember correctly. It was only recently fully funded! A lot of small playgrounds and pools across the U.S. were built with those funds. Now that LWCF is more fully funded, I wonder if we'll see more small-scale recreational facilities like those.