Pooling Our Resources

I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. When I was a boy, we lived in a rented house in a lovely neighborhood of families directly southeast of the elementary school, right behind the playing fields. Our neighbors had a pool with a slide, but I can recall using it just once. Mostly we did without any kind of private pool, and it will not surprise you that it grows rather hot during the summers of that city, and honestly remains warm most of the year. The dead of winter is a bit brisk, but lacking a pool of our own, we depended rather heavily on the public pool.

I can't think of any better way to know the people than to swim in the public pool. It was quite an experience. You first of all had to enter and pay. As a child, I was not party to that exchange. We then went through the locker rooms, changing and emerging into the sun-drenched pool area. There was the main pool, which was complete with a low dive and the vaunted high dive, and an adjacent kiddie pool, which lay by the concessions stand. I recall being fond of the candy, but seldom was granted funds to buy any. Having food also meant having to stay away from the pools.

Much of my time was indeed spent in the kiddie pool. One didn't have to expend much effort to have a good time there. Many fantasies were enacted and games carried out. It was all in the shadow of the big pool, however. The challenge that faced us all was the aforementioned high dive, and you eventually had to answer the call. Naturally we didn't have much form as we dived- the cannonball and the belly flop were the only planned dives which could be carried out.

We eventually moved to a house which did have a pool, which freed us of many restrictions and unpleasantnesses, but also denied us those things which you can't duplicated at home. It was a means of connecting to my community such as exists in no other way. It was for us in arid, landlocked Phoenix what the beach might be in California or the slopes in Colorado (or, for that matter, northern Arizona). I'm glad to have had the experience and glad to be done with it. That's how one describes character-building experiences.