I loved pools – until I saw my fave

In my recurring dream, I walk into a room attached to my house and jump into the glorious indoor swimming pool at Shadle Park. I still dream of Shadle pool because almost every summer day throughout the 1960s, I met up with my North Side Spokane buddies and played in the pool for hours. We’d hold pretend tea parties underwater. We’d compete in hold-your-breath-the-longest contests. We’d stand in line for the high dive, shivering, then climb the steps to the high dive, nervous, then jump off and relish our victories over fear.

When I read about the Spokane Park Board members’ proposal to replace the city’s seven aging pools with modern water parks, I felt outrage. How could they take away this summer pleasure enjoyed by generations? Then I visited Shadle pool last week and swam once again in a pool I hadn’t seen since 1969.

Readers, it’s a dump. We need to let these aging municipal pools go. It’s time.

This wasn’t the conclusion I expected, believe me. All week I talked up Shadle pool to my great-nephew Max, a 5-year-old who relishes the water, too. He and his cousins have grown up swimming in modern pools and visiting water parks. They have birthday parties at the state-of-the-art pool at Mirabeau Point’s YMCA. Just a few weeks ago, my great-nephew Adam, 4, calmed my nerves as I screamed my way down a giant water slide for the first time at Splash Down in the Valley. These little dudes fearlessly float the lazy river at Silverwood without inner tubes.

On our drive to Shadle pool Thursday, I told Max about the old way we did pools. I told him how fun it would be to jump off the high dive again, to walk back and forth between Shadle’s indoor and outdoor pool, just as I did as a child.

Then we arrived. The locker room and showers appeared not to have changed in 30 years. The glass on the door leading out of the locker room was cracked. We walked to the indoor pool and no one was in it, because it’s closed in the summer. Blue paint was peeling off the walls, and the high dive was gone.

Memory met reality. Nostalgia shock ensued. One time my dad, who grew up in Syracuse, talked to us kids all the way cross country about the coney hot dog stand he’d take us to when we arrived in New York. His mouth watered remembering the biggest and best hot dogs ever eaten. When we finally found the stand, it appeared dirty and rundown. The coneys looked so tiny. My dad looked so sad. Now I understand.

Max and I jumped into the outdoor pool, which was crowded, just as I remembered. Max wasn’t as bored as I thought he’d be, despite no slides, no lazy river, no giant frog toy in the middle of the pool spouting water. He showed me his underwater handstand. He showed me how he swims a full circle beneath the surface while holding his breath. He deemed the pool “kind of good and kind of bad.”

We swam across the length of the pool together. When I did this as a child, I daydreamed about the future. When I did it Thursday, I daydreamed about the past.

These municipal pools belong to the past now. Recreational swimming is on the decline everywhere. National Sporting Goods Association surveys show that 47 million people ages 7 and older swam more than once in 2003. Sounds like a lot of folks until you compare it with 1988, when 71 million enjoyed a swim.

The $35 million water-parks proposal promises to be controversial. And it’s just a proposal at this point. But we must begin a community dialogue on how best to provide water recreation to the Max-and-Adam generation. If built, the water parks will charge admission. Free swimming, a decades-old community tradition, will die. We must make certain that low-income children can use the water parks for free or at a reduced rate.

Just as summer is now transitioning to fall, our municipal pools are in the autumn of their long and decent lives. They have provided memories for thousands of us, young and old. But I am ready now to say goodbye. It’s time to catch the new wave.