Our first wading pool, summer afternoon relief for my sister, brother and me, must have been acquired around 1954, when my youngest sibling would have been three, almost four. Over the years we went through a series of these water-filled havens, eventually enjoying one that was deep enough to be submerged in, big enough to play with inflatable toys. The earlier ones were set up on a bit of lawn behind a hedge so every kid in the neighborhood wouldn't see us and so there was a bit of shade. The last, biggest pool had to stand on a paved area, including the driveway, at the side of the house. As the lot - and driveway - sloped rather sharply, we had a deep end and a shallow end
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| Pinterest photo, but it was just like this at our house. |
The smoggy heat of L.A.'s San Gabriel Valley was also relieved by the Good Humor man (truck), from whom we did not purchase every day but regularly enough to feel abundant, and the year-round
favorite, Helms Bakery truck. The sound of its sliding wooden drawers remains unique, as familiar as the rhythm of tap shoes leading up to a recital.
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| Learn about the Helms Bakery and its trucks here. |
At some point, another date lost in the mist, our family added a window air conditioner in the living room, which I don't remember our running all that much. I'm sure it was costly. It was not humid then as July and August have become. The phrase "monsoonal flow" was unknown. We had one state and that was hot. We went to the library in the cool of the morning, sometimes went downtown to movies in the afternoon. We languished like beached whales reading on our beds while our dad took his daily nap, during which no noise could be made. When he drove back to work, we at least got to speak with indoor voices and may have actually made some noise as we splashed in the water.
After I had left home, the family moved to a house with what we used to call a "built-in" pool. What a dream that would have been. The next best thing was the interval when our grandparents lived in an apartment building with a pool in which we got to swim at least weekly. Generally it was hotter than ever when school started, always the cue for a significant warm up which I suspected was to keep us from being able to wear our new school clothes, better suited to autumn days.
