Short Story: The Pool. We were lucky enough to have one of the biggest pools in the entire country located in our little town. It was nearly a football field long and almost a half football field wide. It had two islands, one in the deep end, the other in the shallow end, each capable of holding dozens of teenagers. Each island had a crow’s nest that was sometimes occupied by a lifeguard. There were two-ten feet high diving boards, two-three feet high diving boards, and a slide in the shallow end that had to be at least 30 feet tall. The water was 10 feet deep around the tallest diving boards. There were volleyball courts, tennis courts, basketball courts, and plenty of grassy areas around the pool. The sky-blue and white, three-story pavilion ran the entire length of the pool. The top floor was a covered deck where our parents had danced to Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey and listened to Frank Sinatra. The main floor had lockers and showers, a restaurant, pinball machines, and a large balcony that swung out over part of the pool. When the owner, Mr. Kramer, was not looking, we always liked to jump off the balcony into the water below. Of course, you had to be careful because the water was only about five feet deep at that point. You could reach pool level via a wide stairway that led you underneath the balcony or by the long tunnels at each end of the pavilion.
We were at the pool every day in the summer. There was no other place to be. Our Little League baseball coaches tried to keep us out of the pool on game days, but it only worked on the days that you were pitching. We almost always came to games with our faces red from the sun and tired from swimming. Our favorite game at the pool was corner tag. We played it in the corner of the deep end of the pool. The goal of the game was to jump in the water from one side and try to get up on the other side of the corner without being tagged by the person who was “it” who was in the water. We got very good at jumping into the water at the other side of the corner close enough to catch the top of the pool wall and pull ourselves up very quickly.
If we were not in the water, we were usually at our towels in the grass listening to rock-n-roll on our transistor radios or over the speakers that were placed throughout the complex. We had all become fans of the Beatles and many British invasion bands the previous year. The local radio station, WKEE, played them all. Most of my friends were either the same age as I was or a year older or younger. We were just beginning to take notice of girls. The pool was heaven for teenagers and, later on, it was where we would sneak in at night and go skinny dipping, where I got my first kiss, where I first touched a girl’s breast, where I first fell in love, and where we learned some of the lessons of life.
It was June and I had come early to the pool because I was helping Sue, one of the lifeguards, to teach six to eight year olds how to swim. Sue was 17 and lived a few houses down from me. Despite being only 11 years old, Sue knew I was a good swimmer, so she had recruited me to help. Lessons were held before the pool opened to the public. The lessons ended early that day and I went up to play the pinball machines before the pool opened to the public. Rather than the British invasion songs that dominated our local radio station, Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” had just come on the radio over the speakers. I noticed that a small group of college kids were lying down in front of the entrance. Most of them were black. No one could get to the entrance of the pool without stepping on them. Mr. Kramer called the police and they were all picked up after a couple of hours.
I didn’t know what to think or say about what I had just witnessed. Jimmy, one of the older lifeguards, said that Mr. Kramer would never allow blacks to swim in his pool. Because of the protest, the pool opened late that day. When I got home, my neighbor, Mr. Frazier, was cutting his grass. I told him what had happened. He said they were college kids just causing trouble. He believed that since Mr. Kramer owned the pool, he had a right to stop anyone he didn’t like from coming on his property.
That night on the evening news, Walter Cronkite was talking about Martin Luther King's march from Selma to Montgomery in March, the Voting Rights Act that Congress was currently debating, and Civil Rights Act that had been passed last year. Dad and Mom listened closely as we all did when Walter Cronkite was speaking. I told my parents what had happened at the pool that day. Dad told me not to go back to the pool until all the protests were over. I wanted to go to the pool tomorrow to help Sue, but I sensed I better not challenge Dad on this. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t go to the pool the next day. Very few, if any, people went. That day more college kids were lying down in front of the entrance. The local television stations and newspaper reporters were covering the protest. It was all over the news. After two days of black and white college students being arrested by the local police, Mr. Kramer suddenly decided to allow all of them into the pool, even the black students. I wasn’t sure why he had changed his mind. Was it the new law on voting rights that Congress was debating or the Civil Rightrs Act that was passed last year? That night at supper I decided to talk to Mom and Dad about it.
“Dad, why do you think Mr. Kramer decided to allow the black students into his pool?”
“Money. He was losing money because no one was swimming while the protests were going on. He made a decision to open his pool to everyone because he was losing money. It is the same thing that happened in the bus boycotts. The bus companies were losing money, so they changed their policies about where blacks could ride on the busses.”
“But is it right for him to allow some people in and keep others out because of the color of their skin?”
Dad thought a minute and said, “No, it isn’t right, but that’s the way it has been in this country since the beginning. Change comes very slowly unless you threaten the rich man’s pocketbook. The students threatened Mr. Kramer's pocketbook. You know that’s why I belong to a union and why unions are important. Unions threaten the rich man's pocket."
I laughed as I had heard Dad's union talk many times. Mom chimed in, “Maybe Mr. Kramer had a change of heart about what was right and what was wrong. I believe that it is simply wrong to discriminate based on the color of somebody's skin. It's not fair.”
Dad mumbled, “I really doubt that he had a change of heart about right and wrong. This was about money.”
And there were my two life-long teachers. Dad was always a practical, show me the evidence person and Mom was an idealist with a strong sense of fairness and right and wrong. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would learn so very much from these two, very different teachers.
The next morning, I was once again helping Sue give swimming lessons and later that day, I was playing corner tag. The pool was still the place to be in the summer in our little town, but the pool and I had somehow changed.
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