Waiting For Walk-In Temperature

My swimming pool reached walk-in temperature this week. Walk-in is not a precise measurement but it’s easy to identify. If you walk into the pool and wince, shriek or balk after the second step then the pool is not ready. If you walk straight and say ahhh – you have reached it.

Living in Texas has certainly spoiled me. Only hot tubs reach walk-in temperatures “up north.” Swimming pools are reserved for the hopeful, the hearty and the foolish. For the first month of summer the hopeful owners clean out the dirt, leaves and occasional dead animals before filling their pools with icy cold tap water. The hearty ones then jump into the chilly but invigorating waters while the foolish ones wait until late August for the water to reach 75 degrees. The hopeful ones then drain the pool after Labor Day determined to use the pool more than five times next season and so on.

Growing up I never would have imagined that I would someday have a pool in the yard. Above ground pools were a luxury that only two of my friends had. The rest of us just waited and hoped we get an invite on hot summer afternoons.

The biggest obstacle wasn’t parents, it was older siblings. We would ride bikes across town to my friend Jack Granger’s house only to find an older brother and friends settled in. Like lions at the kill, sharing was not an option. We just hung around until they finished.

My other friend Steven only had younger sisters so the chances of getting a dip were better. The problem with Steven’s pool was the gang of kids who hung out there. They often combined my two biggest fears –diving and heights into an even more dangerous activity. Using a ladder, the kids would climb onto the garage roof and then leap from the roof into the 5’ swimming pool. The cannonball dive was the preferred technique although a few good ones would quickly drop the pool down to 4’ making it riskier for the last few kids. Most of our time though was spent playing Marco Polo or beach ball baseball.

Our family’s cooling off destination was called the East Hanover (NJ) Swim Club. It was modest 100 yards by 200 yards and could hold about 5,000 people on a busy day. The smell of crinkle cut French fries, chlorine and Coppertone permeated the air while sixties rock and roll thumped out of the jukebox. Today, a corporate park sits where we used to swim with no historical signs to mark the spot.

I never intended to own a pool in Allen but it sort of came with the house. For years our pool resembled a water amusement park with furious games of water basketball, diving competitions and underwater aerobics. Inflatable toys and diving sticks littered our yard and noodles surrounded the pool. Those years of “look at me-look at me” have now mellowed into the afternoon float and the evening dip.

I was reminded of those more hectic afternoons in the pool last week when the LeForte family of five came to visit. Out came the inflatables and the pool toys and I even heard “look at me” a few times. They only had to be reminded of a few pool rules: no running, no potato chips in the pool and please stay off of the garage roof.