Ode to the Swimming Pool

As all of the kids know in Shelbina, the pool did not open this season due to its bad condition. The town did pass a recreation tax this spring to build a new pool so the private group voted to turn the pool grounds over to the city and they have taken it over. Some of the pool board members who were on the board have started tearing down the facility. I was curious last night and walked down by there to see, and they have taken down the pump house facility and started taking the tin off the bath house and some of the interior fencing inside the pool facility. The paper did say that the contract had been awarded so they should start construction this fall and we will have a pool next near. (even us adults miss it !!!)

Here is what the pool looks like now.

I have so many memories of the pool. From my very first one...going in for swimming lessons at about age 5 and the "adults" telling me if you go down the slide we "promise" we will catch you. Yeah right, 5 gallons of water in my lungs later I came up for air and I wasn't going back!! Well, it's just like riding a horse, you get bucked off, you get right back on. My mom went out and bought a membership later that day and back at the pool she had me.

Can't say that it was a bad idea because I love the water and went on to spend many a hours growing up at the pool including lifeguarding and teaching swimming lessons myself. One difference as a swim teacher...I never promised kids I would catch them and then let them go under like I did. I made them gain their own confidence. I think I was pretty good at it. Both of my kids are pretty good swimmers and have been before they could ever touch the bottom.

Back when I was a kid the pool was a social hub as it was the only pool in the county. It was sort of funny, because the north shelby kids would congregate one side of the deck and the south shelby people on the other. I honestly dont' remember many kids from clarence having a membership but surely there were some. Then in the mid 80's both clarence and shelbyville builts their own pools and slowy that is when our pool started going down. It takes alot of money for upkeep.

It won't be the same pool and it won't have the same rules, but the new pool will be just that, new... and it will be wet and I can't wait for it to get built. (I sound like a little kid, lol.)