Posted by Lynn Dudley on April 8, 2016
It has occurred to me that we’ve never used the DeLorean’s radio, and with 1.21 gigawatts, it ought to be pretty good. While you’re at the Plutonium station, punch up CCR’s “Green River.” Ask your significant other to do the fueling and take their time. The song has a certain “sassiness” to it, I’d bet everyone in the station stops what they’re doing to watch her shake what her Momma gave her!
Let’s head back to 1965, mid April. Destination: 204 Stanley. I was 13, and wishing I wasn’t. Seventh grade at Roosevelt, playing cymbals in band, and a mouth full-o-braces, I was every babe’s desire! Not!
There is a time in every young man’s life, when they need to visit Lewis Drug. Lewis carried some different stuff than Gillen Crow; canes, walkers, stuff for people just out of the hospital, and some other items. The walk down there, gave me time to think. Cynthia Lewis’s Dad owned the place, and the last thing I needed, was her finding out I’d been in to get an athletic supporter.
Cruising the Hallmark and Gibson cards, pondering the cough drops, Hum…How many flavors of Lifesavers were there? At least you didn’t have to ask the pharmacist. These overgrown slingshots were right out in the open, and I wasn’t going to just waltz up and grab one that easily.
Mom saved me the grief. These strings & straps were supposed to do what? “It’s a thong! You know what a thong is? It’s what Frank Thinatra things!” Such went my Mother’s sense of humor. She’d been to Broadway shows on trips with Dad, so she’d seen skimpy costumes.
Pop “The Game of Love” by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders in the radio. I love the rhythm guitar. It reminds me of a South Seas island girl, dancing a seductive hula type dance.
Well, it’s on to Sunset Pool, and there wasn’t going to be any island girls there. Swimsuits for guys were boxer shorts with a nylon or cotton “pouch,” and a cotton yarn you tied at the front. No elastic. Not a whole lotta support without the slingshot. Girls/women’s suits had made some progress since the “thigh-to-shoulder” suits of the 20’s, 30’s & 40’s. Tan lines were starting to exist, as two piece suits became popular, but boy, was it slow. Straps were wide, bottoms were like boys briefs. Nothin’ to get worked up about, but in a few years, spaghetti straps and a couple of triangles were becoming the norm.
Walking down Bellemonte, past Danny’s Train Shop and the beauty shop next to it, you started hearing the noise of the bathers. Down at the corner, was a big metal box with the water meter’s face sticking out of it. Swimming was fun, unless brother Dale was there. His hobby was dunking me, and swimming off with his swim fins.
Having taken lessons at the YMCA, we had to do a dive off the 1 meter board. I never mastered them very well. I found the 3 meter board an awkward place to change my mind, and usually solved the issue of kibitzers on the ground, by doing a one and a half pike position jack knife belly flop that left me bright red for 3 days. My voice changed back to second soprano. It made it easier to sing along with “Help me Rhonda,” even though the Stones were saying (This will be ) “The Last Time.” Pet Clark “knew a place,” and I survived to do cannonballs off the lower board.
I miss the old pool, with its shady areas at the deep end and around the kiddy pool. Sometimes, the lifeguards would stop diving on one of the 1 meter boards, so we could indulge in retrieving stuff tossed in…coins, keys, little brothers. Once I was ahead of Paul on a ladder, and I took my foot and dunked him. He wasn’t expecting it, and chipped a front tooth on the ladder, and he never let me forget it. Well, the chip is gone, the pool is gone, and so are the times of girl watching, going down those slides, and sunning on the hill. But the smell of the suntan lotions, the changing fashion in swimwear, and the abundance of friends and cute girls made those times golden. Marco! (Polo!)
Middletown Ohio Memories 