THE POOL

My parents had several houses. My dad loved the country life with its quiet, fresh vegetable garden and fruit orchard. They also owned business buildings and other rentals both next door and across town, for income. They had their house in town on Lester Street and after they retired they moved into the back house [that used to be used by their teen-age boys]. They added on some rooms and fixed it up. Then they rented out the front house. They also had a 6 house Court on Forgeus Avenue. It was located about a block away from their Tucson home. They rented out the Court, which had a separate laundry facility and a big pool.

This pool was built by my Dad. He wanted a pool that was different that any other pool in town. He had ideas and he wanted to invent or bring them into fruition. I saw the re-bar that he put into the sides of the pool for strength. It was an official lap swimming pool. It didn't have a diving board because it was not deep enough. It was totally fenced with a 6' concrete block wall. It was about 6 1/2 feet deep at the drain. Dad installed a pre-shower facility and a huge filter system. Yes, I was one of the lucky ones to 'get to' skim the pool of leaves and so forth. I also put in the chemicals for many years to keep it sparkling blue and not green with mossy stuff floating around. Yuck!

So far it doesn't seem unusual, right? Well, it got written up in the newspapers, as a dynamic idea. This idea was later used in places like Sea World, Disney Land and Disney World.

He investigated the weight of water on glass. He had many tests done to get the perfect math quotient. Finally, he got a special glass forged to hold the weight of the water on a 4' x 4' size glass. He had this installed in the south side of the swimming pool. Literally in the wall of the pool. He added stairs from the top of the pool to go down under the ground for people to look through the window at the swimmers. Around the stairs he built an enclosure of brick with a roof and door to protect the glass from too much heat. Out front of the enclosure he made a cute Irish Leprechaun that was fishing and had water shooting into the pool. There was also a 'huge light' installed under the water, on the east side of the pool, to see the swimmers at night.

I remember one night I invited some girl friends over for a sleep over and to go swimming . I knew we could see well in the pool and around the pool were also a set of bright lights. It was winter and although Tucson doesn't have cold winter weather, it was slightly misty on top of the water. It was so cool! It was like swimming in the Scottish lake with the Lockness monster lurking somewhere, eek! We had a great time and it was safe. We walked back to my parents house to finish the sleep-over. Aren't week-ends fun, when you are with friends?