Another Day, Another Swimming Hole

Holiday Inn: Holiday Hill was a forerunner of Six Flags. About five miles from my family's first house in the suburban area of Bel-Ridge, the acreage offered an amusement park rides, food vendors, and a giant swimming pool for the district's residents. Aunt Thelma, my father's sister, and her husband with their three children lived across the street from my house and whenever a car was available, their eldest son, my cousin Bobby, and I were driven to Holiday Hill where we were each given a quarter for entry to the pool and were left there for most of the day. I was no more than eight and my cousin eleven, and yet, our parents deemed it safe enough to allow us the day to ourselves at a public swimming pool. After all, there were lifeguards, both my cousin and I knew how to swim, and no one required us to be accompanied by an adult. Only two mishaps caused some apprehension. One summer a child drowned and that is when "do not swim in the deep end if you are tired" and "do not drown" were added to the Things That Are A Good Idea list. The other mishap was when several large turds were found floating across the water and everyone had to get out of the pool while the lifeguards fished them out. Watching the lifeguard fish for poop caused quite a ruckus and Bobby and I held our stomachs, punched each other on the arm, and pointed to the brown logs being pulled from the water while we laughed. However, once the pool was feces-free, everyone was allowed to jump right back into it. No one seemed to worry about E Coli or polio contaminating the water. I suppose whoever managed the pool believed if everyone splashed and moved the water around enough any detritus from the fecal matter would be dissipated making additional sanitation was unnecessary. Besides, with the poop gone, the water looked crystal clear to me! What did I know? I just wanted to swim; St. Louis was hot in the summer and we did not yet have an air-conditioner at our house.

Johnson's Shut-in, Missouri: In high school, I was allowed to venture out on occasion with my friends. Although my parents most likely believed I was old enough to enjoy some independence, this probably wasn't quite the case because at fifteen or sixteen, my brain was so underdeveloped as well as contaminated with hormones I had no sense of reason beyond basic life skills and I even shirked those whenever possible, preferring to sleep all day, eat only carbohydrates, and spend my leisure time dreaming about the fifteen-year-old boy that lived behind me who thought walking around his backyard and smoking a cigar made him appear successful and cool. I was the only person who bought into that performance and remember his name to this day - Dale Stolte. The cigar-wielding kid finally kissed me on my sixteenth birthday, but his Stolte-stale cigar breath made me gag and that promptly ended our budding romance. I suppose he was insulted because he never spoke to me afterwards.

Not learning much from that experience, that same summer I was invited by some friends to go to Johnson's Shut-in, an 8,500-acre public recreation area where the Black River empties into gorges and potholes carved from volcanic rock a billion years old, creating a natural water park. It is an incredibly beautiufl place. One large swimming area is surrounded by bluffs, some of which are 50-feet high. The rocks are ancient, and they are so ungodly big. I recall standing atop one of the bluffs with my friends and a few boys who had come to dive. We watched in awe as one boy after another dove the long way down into the water below, making sure to spring outward to miss the boulders at the base of the bluff. It was dangerous and unbeknownst to me, over the years teenagers had died slipping and falling below onto the boulders or miscalculating a dive and plunging into them. When all the boys had completed their dives, I - feeling starved for attention (I guess that was my problem; who knows what the hell was wrong with me.) - took my place at the edge of the bluff and positioned myself to take the dive. The look of shock on my friends' faces kept me from second-guessing my decision and the boys below yelling and whooping at me only hardened my resolve. I simultaneously felt like a rock star and wretchedly terrified. I knew I had to clear the boulders below or die. I was too stupid to think a third option might exist, such as turning away and refusing to take the plunge. Laugh it off, make it a joke. Of course, what idiot would dive from this bluff? But no, at sixteen, I would rather smash my face on the rocks below than turn away. That, my friends, is the mind of a sixteen-year-old and a good reason no kid should drive, date, or leave the confines of their home until they have reached a more reasonable age - like thirty, or maybe forty. I obviously lived to tell this story but also lived with a sprained lower back the remainder of the summer. You can Google: Missouri Johnson's Shut-in . . . the Big Jump to see a video of the cliff-jumping - only I did not jump, I dove. Duh.

The Bellerive Country Club: The iconic golf club was built in 1910 and its 125 acres were sold to the Normandy school district in 1957. During the three years that the ultimate purpose for the property was being determined, the pool and club house opened in the summers to Normandy High School students until the building was eventually renovated and became the University of Missouri-St. Louis. I literally went from hanging out at a country club and swimming in its pool to attending classes there after graduating from high school in 1964, eventually earning a B.A. in Literature in 1969. The old club house is now a student center and the campus sprawls over 400 acres, with a faculty of 1,500, enrolls nearly 20,000 students and is a Tier 1 research university. I have fond memories of my time spent there as a student, but must admit, I am more likely to reminisce about the summers spent by the pool before the grounds were frequented by students and the beautiful Georgian style clubhouse was turned into crowded classrooms. The club house was a great place to attend classes, however. While there, I always felt as if I were a student at some private boarding school in England or "up East." The old hardwood floors creaked, and the windows allowed a flood of light into the classrooms. I even recall sitting in a classroom with a gorgeous fireplace and French doors, the space obviously originally having served as a dining or meeting room. But my mind's eye usually travels back to those summer days when as a teenager in high school the best place in the world was at the clubhouse swimming pool with other teens where the only visible supervision was a lifeguard, the transistor radios blared the latest hits, and my girlfriends and I were free to giggle, gossip, and gasp at the newest cute guy on the high dive.

Built in 1932, the perimeter of the large rectangular pool was trimmed with Art Deco tile, the water was pristine, always smelling delightfully of chlorine, and chilly. As a sunbather positioned to best show off my latest two-piece swimsuit, I enjoyed the heat of the concrete seeping through the terry cloth. I never went to the pool without my hair perfectly coiffed and sprayed and my make-up carefully applied. For the first hour or so I focused on my appearance, fearful of ruining my Sandra Dee image. To completely submerge myself in the water might result in the deflation of my hair's six-inch billowed halo I had spent so much time teasing and spraying. Worse, my black eyeliner could wash off and the cheap mascara smeared on my lashes would surely run beneath my eyes turning me into Ty Coon the racoon character from Deputy Dawg. What if a boy wanted to talk to me? I had no history of having many, indeed any, potential suitors seeking my attention during my entire career as Sandra Dee at the country club pool, but I never gave up hope. And yet, after nearly two hours of waiting for my nautical prince charming, I inevitably tired of the posturing to finally succumb to temptation and would climb the steps of the high dive, step out onto the diving board, and allow myself to jump into the blast of cold water below. To heck with the make-up and sprayed hair. Girls just want to have fun. At the end of the day, I was nothing but a kid.