Historical pleasures: Mourning the outdoor pool by Ann Morrison

During these dog days of summer, I really miss the Viroqua Municipal Swimming Pool. Built in the 1930s as a make-work project for the Works Progress Administration, it served as a cooling off and community gathering spot for more than 70 years before it closed in 2003.
It provided generations of children with routine. Not the ultra-structured routine of organized sports, but the routine of knowing what you were going to do every day. In the winter there was school. But in the summer there was the pool, with its own rites of passage.
Little kids started out at the north end, in the roped-off, three-feet-deep section. These kids usually had a parent or older sibling accompanying them, but not in the pool itself—outside, behind the fence.

Swimming lessons took place in the morning; fun was reserved for the afternoon. At age 5, I was placed in the “advanced beginners” group, in the 3.5 feet area—just beyond the rope. The beginners group hogged the entire 3 feet section. I was 3 feet 2 inches tall and had to tread water during the entire lesson. When the lifeguard finally spotted this, she demoted me to beginners, the obvious reason being that I was too short. My sister Kay, who was forced to babysit me, got mad and told her off. “Too bad,” the lifeguard replied, so I went back home and spent the year trying to grow.

The following summer I could touch the bottom in 3.5 feet. Mr. Harris had started running the pool and he was a strict, but ultimately benevolent leader—despite the rumors that if a kid was too chicken to jump off the high dive, he would throw her off. I never saw it happen, anyway.

I had grown tall enough for advanced beginners, but the lessons were too early and too cold to suit me. I was forced to go anyway, but at age 6, I went unaccompanied. On one particularly cold morning, I asked Mr. Harris if I could get out and use the restroom. It was a lie. I stood under the changing room’s hot shower, then took off for home on my bike, hoping he couldn’t see through the fence and would forget I had been there. The following morning, filled with guilt and fear, I tiptoed back into 3.5 feet. All Mr. Harris said was, “I hope you’re planning on sticking around for the entire lesson today, Ann.” I assured him I was. That was it. He didn’t throw me off the high dive or anything. Years later, when a friend and I were in our thirties, Mr. Harris asked us to refer to him as Ted, not Mr. Harris, now that we were supposedly grown up. We managed to call him Ted to his face, but referred to him as Mr. Harris behind his back. I still can’t call old high school teachers by their first names; it just feels wrong.

As the summers progressed, my friends and I all passed many pool milestones. Swimming the length of the pool provided access to the deep end, followed by the first jump, and then the first dive off the high board. I was the first in our group to dive off the high board, but not for long. It took less than an hour before half of my group had accomplished it as well—nobody could stand to be outdone.
As a teenager, I completed the lifesaving course at the pool, but despite my young childhood dreams and lifeguard hero worship, my ambition to be a lifeguard was not to be realized. I sold popcorn at the Temple Theater, which was probably more fun, but certainly less glamorous.

It’s 90 degrees out today, and my one wish is that I could submerge my body, right now, into the pool’s cool, turquoise water. I still miss the Viroqua Municipal Pool.

Ann works as a long-term crisis counselor for Lutheran Social Services and has a landscaping business, Designscapes.