The photo showed Lynne and three other friends: Pam, Sharon, and Jenny. I wasn’t in the photo but I certainly remember the day, or at least that particular moment in time on that day. I was the one who snapped the picture. It’s a black & white photo. In it, Pam and Lynne are wearing bathing suits while Sharon and Jenny are wearing swim cover-ups. Behind them, a ways behind them, is a chain link fence. Ok, that might make it sound prison-like but not in the least: the fence is to keep people out, not to keep these bathing beauties in. The location? Middletown Swim Club.
I really had to search to find a photo of the swim club. Really search. And of course, all of the photos were recent ones, pictures that include a massive slide structure:
When we — my friends and I — swam there, there were three diving boards (low, medium, and high) and a straight slide (which was installed when we were teenagers). There was a simple concession stand at the entrance, a small bathroom structure at the other side of the main pool, a baby pool, an L-shaped pool, two lifeguard stands, some benches, a swing set, and grass. There were also tennis courts, but really? We went there to swim.
This was not the first place that I remember swimming. I don’t remember exactly when the Swim Club opened, but I think we (our family) joined right away. My parents went there, my grandparents, great-aunts, etc. We spent most of our summers there. But I think that was only from the time that I was five or six years old. I could be wrong, but that seems right to me. I do remember doggy-paddling around that pool with my dad, which was how I first learned to swim.
The first place I remember swimming? I remember my aunts, Goldie and Kaye, taking me swimming with them at Hershey Pool. At this time Hershey Park’s rides were paid by tickets, admission was free, and there was no Chocolate World because if you wanted to find out how chocolate was made, you visited the factory. But more on that later. Today’s subject is swimming, and in Hershey that meant the pool directly across the street from Hershey Park:
This place seemed huge and from the photo, I guess it was. We had to go through a locker room, then duck through a shower and wading pool to enter the actual pool area. No avoiding that shower because there was no other way to get in. And the diving boards — tall, tall, tall! I couldn’t find a photo of them but I remember trying to climb up the ladder once — stupid idea considering my fear of heights. We didn’t go there often, but I remember swimming there. Until they tore it down, or dug it up, or whatever they needed to do to expand the park. They left the lighthouse, but that’s it.
Back to the Swim Club. I learned to swim there, to doggy-paddle first and then to swim under water, using hands and feet to make my way like a fish. Although the club offered swim lessons, I didn’t take advantage of them. We had one car and I had two younger siblings: driving me there for lessons wasn’t on the schedule. In fact, I didn’t have formal lessons until I was eleven or twelve years old. For those I went to Olmsted Air Force Base. My grandmother was an official chaperon. We (all of the kids taking lessons) met each morning across the street from the entrance to the base. A blue air force bus would arrive and we would board for the trip onto base and to the pool, my grandmother accompanying us. When we arrived at the pool, our instructors were already there. We’d have our hour or so of lessons while Gammy knitted while sitting in a chair in the shade. Then back onto the bus and off base again.
I also swam during the summers that I went away to church camp. I’ll tell more about Camp Yolijwa some other time, but this time, just the pool.
I swam there and enjoyed swimming there. But my biggest memory of this pool is that it was a frog magnet. Always frogs. After all, it was in the middle of the woods and the largest body of water on that side of the road (Colonel Denning Park was on the other side — again, more about that later). I didn’t like the idea of swimming with frogs, and maybe it was only once or twice that frogs found their way there, but I do remember them.
Back to the Swim Club. I remember “Midnight Swims.” They didn’t actually last until midnight, at least I don’t think so. What the term meant was that the pool stayed open later than usual — always on a weekend night — and there was either a dj or a live band. Live bands were especially exciting: each time I heard one, I was sure that this one would some day achieve national fame and I’d have been there in the beginning. Ah yes, the American dream.
But even though I enjoyed the evening events, there were things that were more important to me. The smell of chlorine. Getting dropped off at the pool as a teenager, spending the entire afternoon there, and then walking home, friends together but peeling off at different streets as each headed for her own home. The routines we did in the pool, sometimes jumping or diving from the boards into the deep end, racing each other in laps across near the corner of the “L,” or our “water ballet synchronized swimming” routines that we made up and thought were wonderful. The little things besides swimming: One of my friends (and I won’t mention which since this could be embarrassing) had a designated spot in the pool, next to the ladder by the corner, where she would go to pee so that she didn’t have to leave the pool, figuring that if she always went at the same spot and we all avoided it, we’d not be swimming in urine (and we all bought that idea). Or the spot on the far side of the pool, next to and slightly behind the bench, where we could often find four-leaved clovers.
Is it any wonder that this was where we spent our summer afternoons?
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