In all the debate about building a new swimming pool at Oak Park-River Forest High School, I haven’t heard anyone mention an important negative of the current pool.
Namely that the pool is unlucky.
The high school pool is 87 years old and obsolete in many ways. The School Board is wrestling with the questions of whether the school must have a new pool, and if so, how to pay for it.
Replace the pool, I say. It always brought me bad luck.
I used to swim in that pool. I then was an enemy alien.
As a member of the Proviso East High School swimming team, I would frequently compete in meets at OPRF, which was in the same conference as Proviso.
We were the Proviso Pirate Mermen. And we were about as ferocious as the appellation “mermen” would indicate.
Of course, there were other advantages to being mermen besides ferocity. All swimmers (me, too, amazingly,) have great bodies. We liked to strut poolside before meets and show off to our audience of young female admirers. And those tight, low-slung blue swim suits showed us off to best advantage.
Oh, yes, we were there to compete, too. And we had some good swimmers. There was Al in freestyle, Craig in butterfly and Claude in the backstroke.
But three fast guys do not a winning swimming team make.
The rest of us were just OK. I was fast over short distances, so I was a freestyle sprinter and often the anchor in medley relays. But I never was quite fast enough. I always was just a few seconds shy. Most of the other guys were about in my league, perhaps a bit better.
Consequently, we would win some races, but generally lose the meet.
The Huskies usually defeated us.
Not trounced.
That was New Trier’s job. New Trier always was one of the best swimming teams in the United States. Whenever we swam against them they would leave us panting with despair, envy and admiration.
The Huskies didn’t beat us that badly. But they usually beat us.
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If I fared particularly badly in a race I sometimes would blame the pool – too much chlorine, certain lanes (my lanes) were slower than others. It was all a matter of bad physics at the OPRF pool.
It was an unlucky pool and should be replaced.
Not for me. That’s long gone. But think of future generations of mermen. Without a good pool, what is there for mermen?
Mostly the strutting.