I've been married for 35 years. I'm very happy. I asked my wife if I was happy. She told me I am.
That's good enough for me. But I got married. Our relationship changed immediately, not gradually,
but immediately. My wife started to share knowledge with me. Knowledge, I had no idea she had
before we got married. Tremendous amounts of knowledge. She must have stored throughout the
years waiting to share with her future husband. Not all at one time, just pissing pieces here and
there on an ongoing basis. And at one time, I thought it would end. No, I know it never will.
I never know what's going to trigger her desire to share additional knowledge. One day,
it just opened our back door. That's all I did simply open the back door. Look at me, people,
just opened the back door. Perhaps slightly too long. I don't know what the exact time
parameter is. I only know I must have went over because my wife, we're all then yelled,
shut the door, you just let 800 mosquitoes into the house. I had no idea that mosquitoes fly
and swarms of 800. I would think that many in a swarm, you'd see something come through the door.
I saw nothing but my wife with her keen eyesight and wealth of knowledge.
knew that 800 got into our house. God bless her, we could have been bitten a death that night.
We'll double you our team. It's summertime, summertime, summertime...
...some, summertime, summertime, summertime, summertime, summertime, summertime...
We'll show samples and throw away...
...stake their positive thoughts today...
...but so I can't enjoy it, it's summertime...
It was at its secrets, it's TV, we all opened up and keeping...
...that she wore a fall of first time every day...
Hot clowns, somewhere in the city, back on my neck, second-hand, and printed...
...and now there's never been it...
...doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city...
I bought a 34-wagon, and we call it a woody...
...search city, here we come...
You know it's not very charity, it's an only butter-goodty...
...search city, here we come...
Yeah, everybody's gonna serve you...
...serving you as a...
Yeah, everybody's gonna serve you...
Here, we're talking about summertime, the pools, the water...
...the fun, the splashing, the crying babies, the everything...
...from summertime, and...
...Jimmy Caroller, Jimmissier, Carol, Gianforte...
...these are the resident-receined people who...
...just look back at our past in the 50s and the 60s...
...and remind us how great it was...
...the funny people remember the good times...
...they never remember the bad times...
...where they stubbed their toe at the Washington Park pool...
...where they slipped and fell and cracked their kneecap...
...but they don't remember that point.
I don't know anything about bad times, never heard any of that.
Now, these are the...
...the show we're gonna do today is...
...one you put on at the Golden Rendell Theater.
Now, with that, we had pictures, we had slides, you had guest speakers...
...you had people who were there at the time, you had all that...
...this is the radio version of that.
Short and radio version, which is still good.
So, Carol, Gianforte is here.
Now, you grew up in...
...I'm reading your book now, so I know you grew up in Carlisle, I haven't you.
So, this is your town.
You even gone by it, I understand.
We traced your route from your house to the schools...
...to the naughty things you did in town...
...that you should have been doing.
We tracked everything.
You know, it's to me, I guess I've had a very exciting life...
...but I didn't realize it.
No, you had a fun childhood.
I did.
You had a very fun childhood.
So, you grew up here, this is your town.
Jim, who?
Well, we're gonna get to Jim as a citizen.
Right now, I'm interested in you.
Jim's coming, he's not going anywhere, he's here.
So, you grew up here and you went to the Washington Park pool...
Yes, yes.
I'm gonna talk about that experience.
Jim, do you see your local yoke as well?
Absolutely.
And raised here.
Yep.
So, where'd you grow up?
What street?
Carney Avenue.
And where's that?
Just south of Cristiano's.
Everybody knows we're Cristiano.
It's still there, as a matter of fact.
But if you're close to Mitchell's school.
Is your house still there?
Oh, yes.
Yeah, drove by there a couple days ago.
You ever go in and say, excuse me, I wrote something on the wall.
I want to go back here.
Like a growth chart.
It was the combination to my high school locker.
And I need to know that combination.
All right, so the Washington Park pool, this is Washington Park High School.
Now, after you did the show, my wife and I actually went back there.
And of course, it's not there.
There's buildings in there and where the building where the pool was.
And it's kind of sad because you guys had the pictures of all the fun.
Let's talk about that.
Yes, we had the Washington Park pool done from 1939 to 1968.
I know it holds a lot of precious memories for Carol and I.
And it's a big place in Racine's history as well as our memories.
I know some of my fondest memories are of swimming in the old Park pool.
I remember how magnificent it was.
And you know, like the Venetian theater, we didn't appreciate it back then as we do right now.
Well, Jim, you're right.
We probably didn't.
We did recognize, I think, that there was space.
There was the sun shining on this blue water.
And we had an island in the middle to swim to.
But by and large, we loved it.
And yes, we wanted to get there.
Now, just like our music that Don played is our opener.
I think we look back and most of those summer days, there was blue sky.
It was 95 degrees.
And yes, we were going to go to the pool.
And I know, Jim, that you've said on retro Racine and other Facebook sites that you definitely study.
People still remember actually the part of the day going to the pool.
And I said at the rendezvous, we had a destination.
Of course, we had a destination.
But yes, we were used to walking everywhere in town and Racine was safe.
I came from the north side, walking totally across town, walking back.
It was worth it.
We had our bikes.
And then we often refer, I think, with smiles to our bus system.
Because why this worked just perfectly?
The blue line, the orange line, the green line, that told us everything.
All we had to do was say, yeah, I'm waiting for the green line.
And we all had an idea of where these lines were going to take us.
So we took the bus to the pool, too.
So Valley Drive, I'm thinking of over by the pool.
Huge hill.
Well, going up or down, it was worth it.
And that's part of our memory of just getting there.
And arriving to see especially the island.
Where was it exactly, not Jim?
Well, actually, it was just behind the old Washington Park Community Center.
It has a different name now, which I forgot.
But it was just west of Park High School.
And I noticed when we were preparing this for our visuals,
we even took a picture of the door you went through, which is still there.
Yeah, buildings still there.
And that door, even, was not ordinary, just a beat up old wooden door, anything.
It was an art deco door.
So now, we're leading into saying this destination, this pool,
and even the community building right down to its front door, were all very unique.
Yeah.
But who do we give most of the credit to for making this fantastic pool possible?
Our mayor at the time, Mayor Roy Spencer, was a visionary who wanted to provide
Racine with a superb outdoor pool.
He even traveled to Vincent's Indiana upon hearing about that gorgeous pool.
And I think we can all agree, Carol, that the Washington Park pool was actually much better
than the Vincent's pool based on old photos that we've seen.
Now, it was built in 1939.
Mayor Roy Spencer was successful in getting his dream fulfilled with the WPA,
that's the Works Progress Administration, agreeing to pay for it.
The cost was $150,000, a huge amount back then.
I think we want to say, too, that this mayor, we learned, too, as a brief aside,
that he was responsible also for bringing in an era of Racine problems between business and labor.
He envisioned also the Goodwill Parade, our Fourth of July Parade, to bring the community together,
which it did and still does.
Let me ask you, Sammy, that you said at $150,000, what is it?
What is it?
Today's dollars.
I'll be fortunate.
It probably is.
We look at $150,000 and say, that's not a lot of money.
It was back then.
Yeah.
It is to me today.
Yeah.
It was quite a good one, Jim.
Well, yeah.
I'm wondering, today's dollars, I'm going to look that up during the break and see what that comes to.
Yeah.
Well, we need that research.
Thank you.
That's what I'm here for.
Yes.
To back us up.
Well, yes, when you got there and saw how unique it was.
Well, what was it?
It was supposed to, according to the Racine Journal Times, give us a state-of-the-art pool
and it was supposed to provide a seashore atmosphere in the heart of the city.
It was described as a thing of beauty.
Of course, we had fun at this place, but it was quite beautiful.
It was a round in shape, but it had many amenities.
Of course, it was surrounded by areas of beautiful sand and tables and umbrellas.
The four slides were unique in themselves.
They were interspersed equally around the pool.
And these were not ordinary slides.
They were high, but they also had running water.
At all times, going down them to make the descent super fast.
So we have pictures of the steps being mounted by 25 kids waiting to go to the top.
You have to wait.
And then you went down in what, 20 seconds?
Yeah.
10 seconds.
Yeah.
Cold water.
And into cold water.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
That island, myself, pictures, it looked very dangerous.
Jim is going to describe now.
Hold on and say, what is that quick break?
I want you to describe how dangerous that was.
It was.
And when we come back, I looked it up.
I'll tell you how much $150,000 in the 50s was in today's dollars.
Okay.
It's going to surprise you.
We'll have to guess.
No, nothing else.
I'll tell you.
Okay.
You can guess if you will.
We'll tell you.
You can tell us.
All right.
That's coming up at just a moment here.
Local news, tablets.
It's Jim and Carol are here.
We're talking about the Washington Park pool at WRJN.
More straight ahead for you.
Carol are here.
Jim.
Jim, Jim, Jim Fortay.
Carol, Jim Fortay, Jim is here.
We're talking about the history of receiving the fun history from the 1950s and 60s, the
Washington Park pool, where I've seen pictures and it looks like every kid in town was there.
It was just packed with people.
It's amazing when people jumped off the, whatever that thing was, the town.
Riding boards.
Yeah.
They didn't hit people on the way down.
I mean, I can't see any of them standing by for further instructions.
Get the spinal, we got the spinal cord snapped again, we got the neck broken, we got feet
broken.
It's amazing how they, you said they did hit people on the way down.
Oh, I've seen a few, but yeah, first of all, you got to be an idiot to stand up under
a diving board when people are, I mean, I can't believe how people say, oh, this is the
perfect spot.
Oh, look, someone's coming out.
Be a hundred miles an hour.
By the way, before we started in again, I looked up, you said the pool cost $150,000 to
the world.
Mayor, who was that?
Spencer.
Ray Spencer.
Okay.
In today's dollars, that's just under $2 million.
I was going to say a million.
It was $1,940,000.
Really?
Thank you for this.
Just under $2 million.
Oh.
Research.
I asked Google, what is my, what is $150,000, that was a 1950s money with inflation and all
the stuff.
It came out just under $2 million.
Yeah.
That's a lot of money.
The paper pool.
Oh my gosh.
And they had the money.
I went away.
WPA.
WPA.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
OPM, other people's money.
But.
Yep.
We had, again, we're going to give credit to this Mayor Spencer, who wanted something unique.
And so he went all the way to Vincent's Indiana, he took pictures of that, but we surpassed
it.
Stay with the story because it doesn't have a happy ending.
It's a sad ending to the story, but you know, time moves on.
But while the pool was here, there were many happy stories.
Oh, yeah.
So let's go on with the stories.
Well, I think the most distinctive part of that pool was the island.
It had a fence around it for swim or protection, and it provided diving boards for the thrill
of jumping into 16 feet of deep water.
But like Don said, yeah, that was very dangerous because when you're swimming out to the island
in a deep water, you're not looking up, obviously, and those jumping, you know, they could
care less.
They just jump.
So if you're underneath it, that's your tough luck.
And it was so crowded on that island, it was just unbelievable.
But when you were on that island, you were somebody special.
You were a somebody.
You were king at a hill, and I remember being on that island myself.
And it was like shoulder to shoulder kids.
But when you jumped into that deep water, I mean, you took your life in your hands along
with those trying to swim out to the island.
Now when I posted on Retro Racine and somebody other sites, so many people wrote in that
their main memory of the island was just the crowds out there.
Everybody was standing on there, and of course, when they wanted to leave, they would jump
off the diving board.
But yeah, there were just kids everywhere.
It was really an interesting place to be, unless you get hit.
It was like incoming missiles coming on you, that's how it was.
It was very, very dangerous.
Oh, by the way, the original plans for the park pool included ice skating in a winter
time.
Obviously, that never happened.
What the, that was on the way.
Why didn't it happen?
I don't know.
They just maybe thought it wasn't.
I can't imagine that being good to the concrete and everything else.
Yeah, the ice in there, you have to throw a water out, yeah, that's right.
Well we really had a goal to get to the island.
Now we're going to talk about swimming lessons coming up, but imagine what a teacher, how
good it was for a teacher, because every kid wanted to eventually get to the island.
So it was, it was quite, quite something.
And all this for about 10 cents a day.
I understand when you were 16, it went up to a quarter, but in romanticizing about summers
and the temperature and the blue sky, there would be days.
I don't know how often, but it would be free.
And then we kind of coined or remembered a phrase, capacity.
It would be, it would reach full capacity.
And there would be really long lines waiting outside the building.
So you had to wait till somebody got out of the pool with a full capacity.
And certain times.
Oh, that's it.
You can wait all day.
Especially if you were at the end of the line, that's right.
That's right.
So they, they did keep a limit on the number of people.
Yeah.
They did.
Yeah.
You know, I'm reminded too of, and as a side here, we talked a couple months ago, or last
time I think when we talked about downtown and scooping the loop, the dance venue routines,
the nitty gritty on a hot summer night, which is now the Main Street Bakery in that small
place.
We can't even imagine shoulder to shoulder.
So Dan, you probably asked us about the fire codes.
Well, we don't know.
We were never interrupted.
And we were interrupted with the island.
We didn't need any stink and fire codes.
Back up ways, like sardines.
We can't breathe it so crowded.
Quite amazing.
Well, you can imagine when you were, especially if, if you were in a long line, but we would
get into that building, and the idea was, okay, I'm here now.
Now I want to get in the water.
Well, now this takes a lot of explanation, because no, we could not just get in the water.
We had to walk through that building, and then we had to get a wire basket with a metal
tag for our clothes.
And of course, boys on one side, girls on the other.
And even in the early morning, it was already, you started to feel a chill, because the floors
were wet and cold.
So you're now changing clothes.
You got your clothes in the basket, and you're going to get that turned in.
But now this next part was something that everybody seems to remember with the biggest
amusement smile.
And this happened to be the disinfecting area, because-
Would they just spring it down with a disinfectant?
Well, just, just wait.
In the meantime, all girls also had to put on a swimming cap, white swimming cap.
I can say, especially now, if you were a teen, and you were already using hairspray, unless
you had thought to wash your hair before going to the pool, hairspray hair with a leaking
swimming cap led to a matted, matted sticky hair by the end of the day.
But you had to have the swimming cap on.
I remember them.
My sister had one.
Yeah.
Next, like Carol said-
This disinfecting?
Yes.
Yes.
We walked through a pan of disinfecting water.
Finally, we lined up for inspection with the toe checker.
Yes, there was actually a toe checker.
Don is laughing.
This is like being drafted in the military.
You have to go for your physical before they'll get your draft number.
We had the rather disgusting job of separating our toes.
Oh, toe checker.
For athletes' feet.
And a good friend of mine, Vince Angel.
And what if you had it?
Would they make an announcement there, would you?
No.
No, you just followed 42.
How would you have fun?
Fun just told.
She's not alone.
Maybe I'll just get out.
Yeah, that's right.
That's rejection.
But a friend of mine, Vince Angel had one of those jobs.
And of course, we had to endure passing through a shower of cold spray if the toe checking
wasn't bad enough.
This is like when astronauts have to go through.
Right?
Before they're allowed back into a world, they have to go through all this stuff on a ship.
Hold the thoughts there.
We're talking to Carol G and 14 Jim Bessier, talking about the strange things they had to
go through to get to the Washington Park pool here in Racine.
More with Jim and Carol coming up at the moment.
It's 730 at WRJN.
You've ever been sitting in a railroad train in a station and there's another train
sitting right next to you.
And one of them starts to move and you can't tell which one it is.
Don't try to pick up a suitcase, your thought was full, but it wasn't.
And you go, dude.
And for just a split second, you feel really strong.
How about when you're looking through a chain link fence?
Do you ever notice if you're just the right distance from a chain link fence, sometimes
it seems to go, what is that?
How do they do that?
Do you ever try to tell somebody to have a little bit of dirt on their face?
They can never get them to rub the right spot, can you?
Say, you've got a little bit of dirt right here.
They always go, where are you?
Yeah, she won't fall at first, I'll have a day.
I found somewhere in the city, back on my neck, sitting there to print it.
And down is never better, doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city.
I bought a 34, wagon, and we called it a woody.
Search city, here we come.
You know, it's not very scary, isn't only butter goodies.
Search city, here we come.
Yeah, everybody's got something.
Yeah, everybody's got something.
I'm Don Rosen, 736, to make it 737 at WRGN, local news, timeless hits.
And now we're reminiscing about growing up in the 50s and 60s in recene at the Washington
Park pool on a day like today, everybody went down there.
And I guess they were too young to bring their hot rods down.
I forgot that you said, by bus, by walking, by bicycle, anyway, you can get down there.
What we left off was you were telling us the process, like immigrants coming into Ellis
Island, how they had to go through the process.
I think Ellis Island was a lot easier than getting into the Washington Park pool, inspecting
toes, inspecting hair, inspecting everything.
It was like going through a draft, you know, when the guys got drafted, they'd go through
a physical before they can get into the army.
Yeah.
So let's, where we leave off here.
Well, one thing I want to say real fast when you played those songs.
One of those songs you played, yellow polka dot bikini.
If you were a teenage boy when that song came off, that was your favorite song.
That was so, so much fun to listen to.
Well, now we're getting a little insight into Jim Messier.
Oh, well, back to that toe procedure.
That's disgusting.
Those memories, now some people, I, I to be totally accurate, some people remember that,
like it was yesterday, some people say sometimes your toes were not checked just to be honest
here.
There was that solution, but maybe not the toe checker present.
However, like Jim knew Vince Angel, and here, one of our rescindians who lived near the
pool, Vito Capocius, he wrote to me that his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Doris Johnson,
was a toe checker.
So, so that is a position that some people definitely want.
Why would you be what that job?
I mean, if you have a dope fetish, maybe.
I mean, why would Doris Johnson want that?
This is Johnson.
Maybe the pay.
She was, she was not enough money, has her pay.
Let's say she was really a civil servant.
Today, they checked those in a hazmat suit.
I can't imagine wanting that job to check people's toes.
This is definitely part of the story, isn't it?
It really is.
Well, a very, another part that is more, what would you say, above board,
even romantic, were the lifeguards.
Now, as we got to be teenagers, they were all guys.
And, physically fit.
Some of the teachers, like we know Marsha Connett,
she was a young girl's teaching swimming.
She dated a lifeguard one summer.
Can you imagine how romantic that would have been?
That we're getting inside of the carol in the Marsha.
The lifeguards kind of went around like gods.
And then that reminds us, too,
for most of us, we were unaware of skin problems.
I mean, copper tone, or I don't think there was anything in the rules
about sunscreens on or off.
They were nonexistent.
Did a lot of people use sunscreens back in the 50s and 60s?
No, no, no.
They're paying the price today.
I can vouch for that.
You can definitely vouch for that.
But even starting with lessons, I think we're there.
Well, the pool was the place for summer swimming lessons done.
Perhaps thousands of us learned to swim there.
And for just a small amount, like I think it was 35 cents.
Now, most of us baby boomers, of course,
like I just said, learned to swim here.
The Red Cross offered swimming lessons for children,
at age eight, all the way through to adults for 35 cents per lesson.
What a bargain, huh?
Our friend Marsha Khanat, who I mentioned,
she was with us at the overall summer program at the Randell,
and since then, a bit too.
She said, even at 12 years old,
she had learned and loved to swim so much that she was entrusted
as a teacher of the smallest children,
and then stayed with the pool for a while as she was a teen.
And she said, she can still remember looking out at that gorgeous pool.
But then, as we're going to touch on before long,
how the pool came to an end.
Oh, please, no, no, no.
She said she tried to lifeguard elsewhere
afterwards.
I teach swimming, I mean.
But she couldn't.
She couldn't after teaching her kids at this outdoor wonderful pool.
Looking at people that have wanted to say extra stories,
I know I talked to my friend Rose Freitag Kirkorean,
and I had to mention her because of all places to live in Racine.
Can you imagine?
She lived across from the pool.
I mean, can you imagine about her own person?
Yeah, she like them.
Sure, her parents didn't like it.
Well, they could have her at the pool every day of the day.
Yeah, but they had screaming kids, dang it.
No, she didn't mention that.
It would have been on the other side of the community building,
but still, yes, there might have been some noise.
You want peace and quiet on the weekend,
then you got screaming people on the pool.
You know, I'm not done.
Yeah, maybe she's just looking at this.
Like living across a street from an elementary school or a high school.
She's probably looking at this through roles.
Right.
Tinted glasses.
Right, you remember the good times,
you don't remember the bad ones then.
Well, she revealed her address to me,
2014, 12th Street.
And so this was her day, especially with all the neighbor kids,
but her best friend for the swimming,
Genie Buttonhoff Miller, the two gals.
So when the pool opened, they would go across the street.
They were there.
They could go home for lunch.
And her mother, being a homemaker, was at home.
And her mother liked to watch two soap operas,
General Hospital, and one life to live.
So Rose would watch the soap operas with her mother.
And then go right back to the pool.
And Rose, with the lessons and everything by nine years old,
she was out to the island.
Now, we have some personal stories that I've,
I've heard on a retro recene, of course,
and some of the other Facebook sites.
And, you know, most of them are, are in four categories,
getting there, like Carol talked about,
the island, swimming lessons, which we talked about.
And, of course, the snack bar.
Now, at the end of the day, when you were swimming,
you needed energy to get home.
Whether you were walking, whether you took the bus
or whatever, parents picked you up, took your bike,
you needed energy.
And the park pool supplied that by having a snack bar open.
And you could get the popcorn, candy, ice cream.
If it was really hot, that's the first thing you'd get.
Oh, they also had one thing called a,
a slowpoke taffy bar, which was chilled,
which was very, very good.
I remember somebody, old candy bars back then, Don,
you probably remember too.
Oh Henry, Clark bar, chicken dinner, Denver sandwich.
You know, I had a few more.
You know, it's funny, you mentioned the Clark bar.
I was at the recene county various today,
and they had camels there.
And all I remember was, I want a clock bar.
Remember the camel?
Absolutely.
I want a clock bar.
Yes.
That's right.
Yeah.
That's right.
Now, getting back to the swimming lessons,
I remember we had small groups of kids,
maybe about a dozen with one instructor,
and they were scattered around the whole pool.
And the first thing we learned how to do was the dog paddle.
Remember the dog paddle, Carol?
That was our very, very first lesson.
And we had to do that when the water was quite chilly.
Yes.
We haven't emphasized that, Jim.
Right.
Yeah.
The water was, should we say cold?
Well, not made chilly.
Chili, we'll go cold.
It was Lake Michigan.
Oh, good boy.
We had that too.
Yes.
We had cold Michigan.
Right.
Yeah.
However, like Don, I was talking about all good things
must come to an end eventually.
Don't do it.
Don, get your handkerchief out.
Before you do, before you get to the end.
There was an A&W root for your place that far away.
The building is still there.
Yes, it is.
It's abandoned now.
Yes.
It's going to abandon like for 30 years, maybe?
I know.
If somebody owns the property,
I think a church does.
Yes, I do too.
Yeah.
Did you go to the NW on the way home?
You know, if we do a program next summer,
like on drive-ins, that was the drive-in.
No.
Again, no matter where you lived,
that was the place.
And here's a cute little story about Rose in her neighborhood.
I was just saying, Rose, living in this ideal spot,
not because she said the pool and the A&W drive-in.
She would be sent by her mother to get a gallon glass container
of their root beer.
Root beer.
Oh, yeah.
Get other stuff.
Root beer.
Once she dropped it, and she felt terrible.
Hold on a second here.
We're talking to Jim and Carol.
We're reminiscing about the old, I had to say it like that.
The old Washington Park pool growing up at the pool.
And in just a moment, we're going to get back
and talk about the end.
Everything's got to come to an end.
So we'll talk about that coming up at just a moment.
It had 747.
Local news, panelists hits at WRJN.
Okay.
We're talking to Jim and Carol.
We're talking to reminiscing about the Washington Park pool.
And all good things must come to an end.
And so did the Washington Park pool.
Well, yes.
It began to be talked about that the pool now had had deferred maintenance.
And this is a sad part of things.
Yes.
In 1965, it was estimated that the cost to repair it would be 165,000.
To remake it would be 250,000.
And you're talking about we said 150,000 was 2 million in fairly small.
Yeah.
This is even more than that, right?
Yeah.
And so the mayor who was buyer at the time.
Yeah, you're right.
Was of the opinion that it did need to be replaced.
Now, at the same time, the city and school district
realized that Park High School needed to expand its facilities.
And needed more land, of course.
All things considered in 1967.
It seemed advisable for the city to turn over the pool to the Racine Unified.
What was happening, too.
And we don't really know why.
The attendance was going down.
And it's the last five years from 1964 to 1968.
The attendance went from 73,000 down to 27,000.
And why was that?
Why?
Yeah, the hippies.
Well, what happened?
What are the beetles?
What went on?
Maybe the baby boomers were just getting past that stage or something.
So where did you go to go have fun in the water?
Just went to North Beach?
North Beach.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wasn't too much of them swimming in there.
What was happening, too, is Jim going to touch on what the trend became.
The indoor.
Oh, yes, yes.
Well, park high school tennis courts and part of the running track were eventually built on the old pool site.
Now, there was a move to build indoor pools at our three local public high schools.
And eventually that did happen.
Well, that took some of the pressure away of closing the old park pool.
But the pool was actually demolished, filled in late 1968.
And this goes along with the pictures of the Venetian Oriolto coming down.
The mid-city and the Westgate coming down.
There are pictures of the pool being graded down and graded in.
So what's there now?
You're asking.
Well, unfortunately, not much.
We took some drone photos and they show an outline of the old tennis courts that once occupied the pool site.
Yeah, the tennis courts eventually began to sink, making them unusable.
Ever tried playing tennis on a sinking tennis court?
Not very, not very fun.
I took a drive there a week or two ago.
And right behind the old community center, of course, that's where the pool was.
Not much there.
There's some raised flower beds, but it looks abandoned like an old garden or whatever.
The snack bar window was bricked up, so that's not there anymore.
But there's just nothing left of it.
Well, the building is still there.
The building is there.
My wife and I went there.
Now, of course, I don't know what it looked like, and it's hey day other than photographs.
Yeah.
And yeah, the flower beds are there.
The tennis courts are still there.
They're there, but they're not used.
Oh, no, you can't even see a tennis court.
It's just completely gone.
Right.
Where they were.
And we just parked our car there and we're just looking around and saying,
so this is where all the action was.
Yeah.
This is where thousands and thousands of people spent their summer.
Yes.
And look at it now.
Yes.
Yeah, even 73,000.
That would have been used for anything today.
No, nothing.
It's like, to me, it's like an eye sore.
There's not much, not much there.
Except the building.
Except the building.
That's being used.
Yeah.
That's right.
But like Carolina.
It was, it was a sad.
It was a sad time when they tore it down.
And like I mentioned before, we didn't appreciate the pool back then,
but we do now.
We give anything to go back one more time.
We don't appreciate it till it's gone.
That's right.
It's like your parents.
You don't appreciate them till they're not there.
Yeah.
You don't appreciate anything until it's not there anymore.
So how many years was the pool around?
Well, from 39 to 68.
I can't think that fast with the math.
29 years.
29 years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
29 years.
Yeah.
I mean, I could do that in my head.
Yeah.
Okay.
I can carry the one divided by five.
Yeah.
Yeah, I got it.
It's 29 years.
Yeah.
Well, and now we have one run.
Now we have to.
We can keep in mind that Racine does have an outside pool again.
Yeah.
As of the last few years.
I don't hyal straight.
Yeah.
And maybe those kids.
I'll get right down the block here for my son.
Yeah.
Maybe those kids.
50 years from now.
Oh, don't say it.
But I don't know if they're going to have a Hollywood style with an island so we can
hold on to that.
Well, that little pool plan they have over there on Ohio at a Richard Park is looks like
a lot of fun.
They have the water slides.
Yeah.
They've got everything down there.
I don't think they're inspecting toes.
I think those days are gone.
I'm looking for toes.
Yeah.
Now Kenosha has a Washington Park pool, which is still you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But different shape, of course, it wasn't round.
So like Carol and I said, we only have our fond memories left that of our one's favorite
swimming pool.
Next time next summer, we'll probably have to turn to the beach.
We love the beach, but both were very unique.
The beach was its own entity in Washington, dark pool was its special place.
Next time we get together next month, we're going to still do another summer activity,
which we all enjoyed.
And that was Kittyland, another depressing story.
They're all depressing.
You and your wife are like archaeologists.
You go to these former sites, we like, we like to see the rubble, we did go to Kittyland
where it was.
There's a sign there.
I couldn't find the sign at first, because somebody was having a picnic.
And you know, they're looking at us like we're, you know, some kind of stalkers.
When we come back, when the pic thinks that, and then we found the sign, where it said
we're Kittyland used to be.
But the whole Washington Park pool thing going back, they're not again, I didn't grow up
here.
So, but I know the pictures, the photographs we were looking at, and I heard your story.
And it was just like I was there, because everybody had their own pool, and I grew up
on the Atlantic Ocean.
But the thing with me is, the ocean's still there.
The beach is still there.
I mean, thousands and thousands of people still go to the beach where I went as a kid,
because it's there.
The only thing that isn't, when I used to go to in Queens, Rockaway Beach, every summer
we had a bungalow there at Rockaway Beach, and my grandparents did, it was just a half
a block to walk to the ocean, but they had the boardwalk or all the games and all the
conditions used to get all the hot dogs and stuff.
The boardwalk people, they're gone.
The boardwalk is there in parts, but you don't want to walk on it, you know, pranks falling
out.
So that part's all dilapidated.
The ocean is there.
They can't get rid of that and the beach and the sand, but yeah, the pool they have when
I was a kid in my hometown, I think it's still there.
I'm not sure the pool is there, the park is still there.
You know, I'm going to look it up and see if it's still there and get depressed.
That's the problem of looking back.
You remember everything, but when you see it gone, it's like, oh, we had so much fun
here.
But at least you got the memories.
Oh, that's so powerful.
Yeah, it furnished many years of enjoyment to every kid in town and the memories will
never go.
Right.
And I guess that's what Jim and I early on, Jim coined the goal for us of simply sharing
our pleasant memories.
Mm-hmm.
That's it.
And people love going to the shows at the Golden Rindell.
We went to one of the church recently, but the Golden Rindell, when you do those shows,
of the full-blown, extravagances with big visuals on the screen, because the Golden
Rindell's got access to all these projectors and everything, and you have a panel of experts
who come up and remind me, I remember when, yeah, we used to jump on people, break their
decks and spines.
Also, the gold days.
You know, I'm going to stand and buy others, we're great.
You know, we almost did it in June, when we were brainstorming about that last summer
in the city program at the Golden Rindell.
Now, unfortunately, Vince Angel, Jim's friend that he mentioned, who had been a toe-checker.
He was thinking of joining us, and we were going to do, what's my line?
And have a few people guess what this man's teenage job had been.
No, you're not bringing it up.
Get sick right here.
Time's not going to forget that one.
No.
Well, you two are just great.
I love having you there every month.
The next month, we're talking about Kittyland, a lot of people grew up going to Kittyland,
but what's interesting is the ownership of Kittyland and the family that used to run it.
And we're going to talk about it.
I can't believe we're in a 10-year-old kid that run the Ferris wheel.
I mean, we've said the nitty gritty was packed.
We jumped off the island.
We had 10-year-old people running rides.
We didn't have a lot of rules and regulations around here.
And we're still here.
We just were careful of our feet, though.
Yeah.
Do you want to get that fungus in the pool?
Jim Rossier, Carol, Jim Forty, thank you guys for coming in.
All you want.
Love having you here.
Hey, it's 8 o'clock at WRJN.
It's news time.
We're going to go to the WRJN Radio Park Newsroom in just a moment.
But first, we've got news from CBS.
