Taking the waters

June 2, 2011

Dear Pat,

During much of the last half of the 20th century, the Capaha Park Pool was the epicenter of summer fun for much of Cape Girardeau's youth. Now the deteriorated pool is being torn down. The bulldozer is leaving a hole in the middle of the park and excavating lots of memories.

Memories of shivering during 8 a.m. swimming lessons, of your first daring leap off the high dive, which didn't look that high until you got up there. Of eating pink taffy from the concession stand and feeling superior to the little kids and their mothers stuck in the wading pool. Of staying in the pool so long your fingers crinkled.

Donna was the most popular girl in my third-grade class. That summer she was at the pool one day with some girlfriends and invited me to play a game with them. The game was simply to swim underwater between another person's widespread legs. Nothing sexual was knocking about in our heads at that age, but in my memory that was a good day at the pool.

Having fun was simple. Sometimes we threw a penny in the deep end and raced to see who could retrieve it first. Years later, rock 'n' roll bands played for swim parties at night, when the underwater lights turned the pool into a mystical and magical world where laughter skipped across the water and the organ solo on the Doors' "Light My Fire" reverberated throughout the park. The burnished lifeguards were like rock stars themselves, all sunglasses and cock-of-the-walk strolls around the deck.

Although the city's new water park offers ways to splish and splash my generation never imagined, the joy of being immersed in water will never change. Water is where we come from, composes 70 percent of our bodies, rejuvenates our souls.

In our living room hangs a reproduction from a Thomas Hart Benton mural. A man on his back lies on a carpet of thick grass at a bend in a stream beside a bluff. One leg crosses over the other. His eyes may or may not be closed. It doesn't matter. He is afloat in an aquamarine world where time has no meaning.

In past years DC sometimes went to the Capaha Pool to cool off. This year she decided we need a backyard pool of our own. My anti-pool argument has always been that our backyard is too shady for a pool. Where a pool will go is a mystery. DC is undaunted.

Thankfully, her dream of a pool isn't Olympic-sized. In fact, it's a kiddie pool 13 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep. Just enough room for an air mattress. Just enough room to float.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.