SUMMERS OF AGO/SWIMMING LESSONS!

      Learning to swim as a kid all revolved around the fact that my mother did not know how to swim and was deathly afraid of water. She always said that she we would go to Europe if they built a bridge. She didn't make it!

       She arranged for my sister Doris and I to take, initially, private lessons. The place was the Riverview swimming pool in Marshalltown. It was placed in the northeast part of the park at the time and is no longer there. It was huge and had like most public pools of the time, a shallow end and then slowly moved to a deep end with two small diving boards with a high board in the middle.

      The first time of our private lesson, I remember the instructor guy taking me right down to the deep end and saying"Get In!" I did take to swimming very well and learned most all the swimming strokes before we were enrolled for the Red Cross lessons that I believe were free later on. The biggest thing I remember about those first Red Cross lessons was just how cold the water was. Keep in mind, we started very early in the morning and at the start of the summer season. The water didn't have a chance to warm up yet and besides pools didn't warm the water like today. Plus there was no hot tub to go to warm up. If you were sleepy eyed going in you weren't going out! Swimming well is something one never forgets. Thank You Mom!