The Pool

 Our house on Eagle Street did not start out with a swimming pool. It was built on the edge of a canyon.  We had a nice little patio which was accessed by a door in what was originally the sunroom.  After our family bought the house in 1954, the sunroom became Tim, Skippy and Darwin's room.  As the years passed and kids started leaving, it became Darwin's room, and later, Jeff's room. The door provided access to a rickety, termite-ridden wood landing, with about 10 rotting wooden steps that took you down to the patio.  My faintest memory tells me that the patio had fancy light pink cement paving. Another faint memory is of a high school party for big sister Lynda on that patio when I was about four years old.  

The back of the house was to the west of the patio, the neighbor's garage was to the north, and our garage was to the south.  There was a short brick wall facing the east. The canyon was beyond that wall, and the view was that of a sloping hillside, overgrown with foxtails, Pepper trees, wild daisies, weeds, and rocks. 

The older kids spent many happy days stomping through that canyon during the 50s.  They were permitted to wander all the way down the hill to the canyon floor, where a seasonal creek flowed and if you were lucky, you might see the white deer and hear frogs croaking.  If you were unlucky, you were eaten alive by mosquitoes, and after you climbed a couple hundred feet back up to our patio to get away from them, you had to spend an hour pulling all the foxtails out of your socks and shoes.  My brothers got into quite a bit of mischief in that canyon, and by the time I came along, that backyard wilderness was listed as off-limits to me and my younger siblings.

 I don't remember Mom spending any time on the backyard patio.  There were rare occasions when we kids spent time out there.  One summer we set up our plastic kiddie pool in the backyard.  I think the last time any of us kids played on the patio was the day that little brother Jeff, who was just a toddler, fell and cut his head open on the short brick landscaping wall.  Once my parents brought him home from the emergency room with stitches in his head, the patio also became off limits.  

          1963:  Darwin, Tammy and Fudder cat in our first backyard pool.  A few years later, little Jeff fell against that low brick wall and cut his forehead open.  

                                

Mom loved to swim.  She took us kids down to the Frontier area, now called the Midway district, to a Diver's Supply store.  There was a huge swimming pool inside the building, and I guess there were many types of lessons that went on there, from basic swimming, to scuba training.  I remember going there in 1966 to get my Tadpole swimmer certificate.  Darwin went too, and I remember him whining about the water hurting him.  He ended up getting a face mask or goggles so the chlorine wouldn't sting his sensitive eyes.  Mom taught  youngest siblings Jeff and Tabatha how to swim there.  Her swimming babies were featured on the local news.  The pool was not too cold and not too hot, and I always loved going there to swim.  But Mom wanted her own personal pool.

                                      1966: Mom taught baby Jeff to swim at San Diego Diver's Supply

Mom and Dad started researching the various pool companies.  There were lots of them back in the mid sixties.  We went to visit these businesses to look at their sample pools, which were up and operational.  I always made sure to wear my swim suit under my clothes, so I could try out the pool if the salesman gave me permission.  Mom was very specific about what she wanted.  It couldn't be too deep.  She hated kidney shaped pools and black-bottom pools.  Diving boards were out, but a curved slide was okay. And it had to be heated and completely enclosed.  After many months of looking, Mom and Dad settled on Universal Pools, and the construction of our backyard pool began. 

                                  Newspaper ads from 1968 and 1969 for the company that built our pool

Work began sometime in late1968. It was scheduled to be finished by the summer of 1969.  The interesting thing about our pool construction was that it wasn't a completely inground pool.  It was more like half above, half below ground.  The deck was built up so high that there was no need for 10 steps to get from Jeff's room down to the swimming pool.  This new design was an engineering specialty called cantilever decking.  The pool was hand-dug by a bunch of young guys.  At the beginning, it seemed like things were moving along quickly.  Then everything just stopped in its tracks halfway through.  

                                There was a huge mountain of soft sandy dirt in front of our house for weeks.                                            We three kids played king of the mountain on it.

                                   The pool was built right on the edge of the deep canyon.

                                            There was lots of rebar and gunite, then things stopped.

 When work had stalled, Dad sometimes let us run up and down the big unfinished shell.  That's Dad, me, Jeff, and Tabatha. I bet the stress of this project helped send Dad to an early grave two years later.

Mom called and called, trying to figure out why the work stopped.  There was no answer.  After a few frustrating days, Mom put us in the car and drove out to La Mesa, where I had tried out their sparkling sample pool.  But the doors were locked.  Universal Pools had gone out of business. Now we were stuck with a big unfinished hole, rebar, and gunite. Rainwater collected in the deep end. Dad, who worked nights and slept days, had no energy or patience to deal with this problem.                                            

Mom became a terror and put unnamed people through hell with her fury. It took months of daily calls to someone named Billy Joe before work started up again.  After awhile, little Tabatha, who was not even three years old, took to dialing her rolling Playscool phone and parroting Mom's sarcastic phone voice, "Hello Billy Joe," over and over again.  I don't know who finished the work, but everything was finally finished by Christmas.

                          After many months of delay, the guys finally came back to finish

Although it took way too long, we at last had our pool.  An aluminum structure with lots of windows was built to shelter the pool from canyon animals and falling leaves.  It took all weekend to fill it with water, then another few days to heat the pool to Mom's preferred 90 degrees.  Dad put the chemicals in, and we all waited anxiously to be able to finally jump in.  

                                  A nighttime pool party, with too many kids on the slide at one time.

Jeff and I, in our life belts. The pool room was always very foggy 

                             because the water was so warm. The aluminum ceiling was always 

                              covered with huge drops of condensation.

Mom and us kids swam every single day.  Mom made sure we wore nice formfitting life vests until she was certain we wouldn't drown.  Dad, who was totally terrified of the water and never learned to swim, was not interested at all in trying it out.  He only went in the pool once, in the shallow "Jacuzzi" side, in a huge life jacket.  It is ironic that Mom, who taught people from 3 months to 90 years of age how to swim, was never able to teach Dad.  

Dad took full responsibility for the care of the pool.  Every night before bed, he would go out to the deep end, kneel down with the little plastic test tube kit in his hand and dip it into the water to fill the tubes. Then he would add drops of chemicals to each test tube and then add chlorine to the pool if necessary.   He made sure the pump was working, and did something called a backflush every so often. After he died, we found detailed meticulously handwritten instructions that Dad had taped on the pump in the garage, so that we would know how to maintain the care of the pool.  About 2 weeks after he passed away in September of 1971, I was practicing my piano, which was in the pool room.  For some reason, I turned around and looked out the sliding glass door and there, in his usual spot, I saw Dad, kneeling down and scooping pool water into his test kit.  He looked up at me, and then he disappeared.

                                 Mom skinny dipped every day for years.  In the 80s, she had a little                                                           Poodle named Gigi, who stayed with her constantly, even in the pool.  

After Dad died, Mom supplemented the household income by teaching people how to swim.  She taught babies, kids, and old people.  She quit teaching when she married Paris Young, and never really got back into it after the marriage failed. In the 80s, Mom had solar power installed, in an attempt to save on her utility bill.  It never worked.  Her pool remained freezing cold, and then the filter quit working.  By the final year of Mom's life, the pool had devolved into filthy green swamp.  Mom passed away in 1986, and the house. which had degraded as badly as the pool had, was sold as-is.  The new owners tore out the garage, dismantled the aluminum pool room and drained the pool.  Although it is long gone, that pool will always remain one of the happiest things to remember about life on Eagle Street.