Archives for posts with tag: Tulsa Oklahoma

Pool Ponderings

August 2, 2020 //
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Lazy summer days are meant for meandering thoughts. Mine came while squinting into the sun, looking for signs of my youngest granddaughter in the vast swimming pool. She’s almost 11, but I automatically check to see where she is. She’s past the age where she delighted in playing with me and is content to be by herself or interacting with other kids, even though it’s 2020 and we’re trying to socially distance even in the water. That leaves me free to remember the years that explode in my mind as I listen to the sounds of happy people in the pool, cooling off on a hot summer day.

I go back over 70 years with this particular pool. Well, it wasn’t this exact pool, but it was this place. We moved to Tulsa when I was about 2 1/2 and my parents immediately joined Tulsa Country Club, the oldest country club in town, having opened in 1908. Daddy was a champion golfer and needed a place to play. He had come back from World War II and married at the age of 32 and rejoined the family business, moving to Tulsa to open a new branch in 1948. At what age they started bringing me to the pool, I have no idea, but we were certainly around the club in one way or another.

My first memories of the pool are of taking swimming lessons. The old pool, opened in 1935, was by the old clubhouse and this was back in the 1950s, my olden days. The pool was a large rectangle with a shallow end and a deep end that had both a low and high diving board. There were dressing rooms at the end of the pool and a grassy area to one side and an area with tables and chairs on the other end. Our swimming lessons were taught by Coach Charvoz, a coach at Central High School, who also managed the pool in the summers. I remember him so well, standing in the pool with a floppy hat to shield him from the sun, demonstrating the different strokes for us. He would stand in front of us and have us swim towards him, stepping back the closer we got until we could make it all the way across the pool. He was an excellent teacher as I can still remember everything he taught me about swimming the backstroke, sidestroke, breaststroke and crawl. I’m still pretty good, although the pool today isn’t as conducive to swimming laps as it was then.

My favorite thing to do for many years was to try and swim the length of the pool in one breath. I don’t know how long the pool was, but I could do it. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the boards, although I could dive off the small one. I’m sure my lifelong fear of heights comes from climbing up the ladder onto the high board and jumping off. It wasn’t a thrill for me – more likely something I did to show I could. Once or twice.

There were so many games we played in the pool, from racing to diving for objects to Marco Polo (why won’t that game go away?). The lifeguards constantly told us not to run around the pool, but we were kids and the pavement was scorching our feet. So many rules back then that have gone away. We were living in the age of polio, so we were constantly reminded to be careful of water. We couldn’t get in the pool for an hour after eating for fear of getting stomach cramps and drowning. This was proven not to be true, but we spent many an hour waiting impatiently for the pool clock to tick to our hour when we could jump back in. We also had to shower before we entered the pool. I still think this is a rule, although few follow it.

Another rule was that the girls had to wear swim caps. This was to keep the hair out of the pool filters, but it was pretty annoying. The guys kept their hair cut in buzz cuts for the summer so they didn’t have to worry. I kept my hair short, but still had to wear that cap. It was no fun squeezing your hair into that piece of rubber, although I guess it did keep it dry. The chin strap was just as irritating as the cap. I still cringe when I think of having to wear those darned things. By the time I was a teenager, it was even more annoying as we were striving to be bathing beauties as we laid in the sun, trying to attract the attention of whatever boys were around.

The sunbathing area was a large patch of lovely grass between the pool area and the clubhouse. To get refreshments, you went to the clubhouse, where there were steps to a window on the side where you could order hamburgers, drinks, ice cream and whatever. Those are the things I remember- cold Grapettes, hamburgers, ice cream bars. We spread our towels on the grass and slathered our bodies with tanning creams, including the all time favorite of baby oil and iodine. Those were the days when all we wanted was a good tan and knew nothing of skin cancers or the dangers of too much sun. We put lemon juice in our hair to bleach it in the sun and worked on getting that coveted beach look of tan skin and sun lightened hair. No wonder so many of us have skin cancers in our old age.

And those summers of my youth melted into the summers when I returned as a young mother. By then, the clubhouse had been moved from the site where it had stood in a wonderful old three story brick building since 1917 to the other side of the golf course into a “modern building,” a move that caused much grumbling among many of the members. The old building burned to the ground in 1986, leaving those of us who were fortunate enough to experience it with only fond memories, which leads me into other memories to be shared another time.

The new pool was a rectangle that flowed  into a smaller rectangle that was the diving area. There was a separate wading pool for the little ones. If I spent many hours of my childhood and youth at the old pool, I spent so many more at this one as a parent. My husband and I were able to get a junior membership and my summers as a stay at home mom were marked by the days we spent in the sun, moving from the baby pool to the main pool in what now seems like a flash. There was golf and tennis, but it was mainly the pool. My kids learned to swim there, taking lessons much as I had, and learning strokes that eventually led them onto swim teams in the winter months. They were genuine “pool brats” that I could leave to swim while I ran errands, went to meetings or played golf. They have their own memories of those days, but mine are of sitting with other moms, trying to talk over the constant cries of “Mommy, watch me.” To this day, I can hear those calls and hear the sounds of play that became the background of so many lovely days.

One of our favorite days in the summer has always been the Fourth of July, when there were swim games and races and fireworks. This has been a tradition that continues into the next generation. Here are my two oldest daughters waiting for a race to start:IMG_4802 2and my youngest daughter catching goldfish in the wading pool. IMG_4805Here is my husband playing with our son in the wading pool:IMG_4804and my middle daughter feeding her brother the wonderful pool water (yikes!)Scan 4and my oldest daughter diving from the board. IMG_4807Life went on and the kids grew up and I probably didn’t spend as many days poolside until the next generation appeared and we were once again gathering there in the summers. Here are my daughters and the oldest five grandsons at the wading pool:Scan 10and then there were a couple of more grandkids at the pool.Kids at TCC PoolAnd before I knew it,  they were growing up.

And then they were in the races and diving competitions. I will note (with a little bit of a grin) that our family is pretty competitive and we have won a lot of club races through the years.

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd then there were improvements at the club and by 2012, the old pool was gone and the new pool was in. This time, it is a spa design with a diving area, a slide, and a beach type area for wading, complete with fountains. My grandkids were bigger

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAand still doing races in the new pool.DSC_0253By this time, we had lost my son, who was the kid that hung around the pool and knew everyone behind the scenes and everyone knew him by name. We are lucky to have his daughter, who has now grown up at the pool, following her cousins, aunts and father. And me, of course.DSC_0046

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1 1/2 years oldMy three daughters are now the mothers of grown children, but still like to hang out at the pool together.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMy grandchildren are growing up, with seven of them in college or beyond. In 2020, it’s just my last granddaughter, turning 11 soon, and me by the pool on this sunny day. Some things are the same. The lifeguards are watching the kids, who are calling to their mothers to see what they can do. Kiddos are asking for snacks, running when they should be walking, doing belly flops off the board, diving for objects, making up fun pool games and making new pool friends. The parents are more diverse and have their electronics with them to read books or check their messages. Now they have their drinks delivered to poolside, where they visit and relax. They look younger all the time to me, as they should.

Sometimes I wonder what my parents would think of the changes around the pool. Not the activities or the pool itself, but the people. From the time I was a child until I was too far into adulthood, the country club was segregated. Now you see a diversity of races in the families, which is nice. It’s more of a slice of our community.

The parents are not as uptight as they used to be and this summer of quarantine, there are more fathers around during the week. I can picture my mother making funny comments about their various tattoos. She wouldn’t have been shocked, but she would have found it as amusing as I do. Since I have so much time to observe, I think about why each tattoo was chosen. Why does this young mother have “Gone Fishing” on her middle right back? What does that woman have a slice of pie on her arm? What was this man thinking when he asked for all those interesting pictures of ships and animals to be inked into his chest? My husband used to amuse me with stories of the tattoos he saw when he was in the Navy back in the sixties. I’m sure he would be rolling his eyes at me. I take it all in when I sit by the pool these days. My mind is full with images of all those decades.

It’s a vault full of memories that flash by with each splash of the water, each squeal of a child, each kid jumping wildly off the board or each girl parading by with her suntanned body glowing with youth and health. It’s just one tiny piece of my life really, but it’s all tied together at this pool in the summer. There are so many places like this for remembering all the good people and things that I have been lucky enough to have in my life. It’s a reminder that I have more good memories than bad ones, more family and friends and love in my life than so many. It’s a good thing to be reminded of on a hot summer day.

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Categories Family, History, Memories, Places, Reflections, Uncategorized

The Human Zoo

May 24, 2016 //
2

During the past exciting week, I have had two grandsons graduate from high school and have been keeping my 6 year old granddaughter while her mother is on a nursing trip to Nicaragua. The flurry of activities has been a welcome relief from the incessant yammering of politicians and pundits talking through our craziest election year ever. It’s the craziest because we have to hear about it all the time unless we have wonderful distractions to clear our brains.

I grew up very white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, smack in the middle of the country in what is now the reddest of red states as far as voting conservatively. I’m not sure why that is because I used to do some work for the American Red Cross in this area, out in the rural counties, where I found the population to be very diverse and very blended. Anyway, I grew up in the 50s and 60s, mid-century they are calling it now. My high school had one African-American student out of thousands and I think he was the son of the janitor. He was very well liked, but I realize now how hard it must have been for him. Our other ethnic students were from the foreign exchange program, so they were well accepted.

It was college before I began to meet kids who were different from me and that was still rare at Oklahoma State University, where I was excited to meet real cowboys at a school where our mascot was a real cowboy. I had one African-American friend, from Arkansas, and she was pretty open with us about her experiences. I also made some Lebanese friends, male and female, who had come to America to flee the terror in their country or as exchange students. One of them was in our wedding and lives near me today. My husband loved this guy and they could tease each other with affection, “camel jock” never being used other than as a joke that made them both laugh. I’m sure our friend had never been on a camel just as we had never lived in a teepee, as most people thought we did in Oklahoma.

It’s been a gradual change through the years as I helped enroll Vietnamese refugee children at my children’s elementary school, wondering if we could ever pronounce their names correctly. I remember meeting little Thuy, Hung, and Fa as kindergarteners, shy little children in a strange place. My children’s most beloved teachers in elementary school were African American and Middle Eastern and we didn’t really even think about it.

When I worked at the American Red Cross, I worked with a diversity program since the Red Cross serves all people and we were trained to respect their cultures in order to help them in times of disaster. It was an education in all the cultures who lived in our area at the time, turn of the century (21st century). There were Russians, Muslims, Native Americans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics and many others living in our city at the time. I had no idea there were so many cultures right here where I grew up.

When I’d served on the Board of the American Red Cross many years before, I’d been one of the first to distribute information about AIDS to the community since the Red Cross is a leading supplier of blood products. The information consisted of a pamphlet explaining the disease. When I came back as a staff member, this area had grown and I became an HIV/AIDS educator, learning how to take the information into the Native American population. One of my dearest friends was the diversity expert at the time and I learned of her childhood as a half Native American child growing up poor in Tulsa, the side of Tulsa I didn’t know about as I grew up. Now she’s a PhD, a far cry from her struggles earlier.

All of these things have grown in my mind through the years as I’ve been exposed through volunteer work and the time at Red Cross to the diversity in our community. I never felt threatened by it and welcomed the different cultures. I’ve been fortunate to travel to many countries, the best way to realize that people are as alike as they are different on this planet.

This past week, watching my beloved grandchildren with their friends and out in the community, I realized how very far we have come. At the school where I graduated in such a white class, seven of my grandchildren have friends who don’t match them in color, but they don’t seem to care too much. If they like them, they accept them. Here’s a random photo I took of my grandson running onto the field with his football team  DSC_0081   In this photo, looking at it today, I see his best friend who has a very Italian family, a Native American, an Hispanic, black students and coaches, white students and my grandson (with the beard) who probably looks Middle Eastern if you don’t know his family. These kids are a team that worked and played together on and off the field.

Here’s my other graduating grandson as  the tall captain of the soccer team with his Hispanic co-captain.IMG_9895I arrived at commencement early by myself to save seats for the families and sat through part of the graduation of another high school. This school has a higher percentage of Hispanic and African American families than my school, but the result is the same. I watched large family groups whoop with pride as their student crossed the stage to receive his or her diploma. They all had cell phones or cameras to take a million pictures of their child’s special day. No red carpet will have as many flashes as a graduation. Everyone is all smiles, swelling with pride. The experience is the same for all of us and I teared up watching kids and families I don’t even know.

Thank goodness my grandsons are in the same class so I didn’t have to sit through another ceremony with the speeches that are to inspire us and will be forgotten in a minute. The good part is listening to the students speak and then walk across the stage. One of the largest cheers from the crowd went out for Javier, a beloved Hispanic student. Another was for this great kid, one of the student leaders of the class, who won an award for representing Native Americans so well. I watched him on the football field, with the drama students, and at assemblies and I agree. In my day, nobody acknowledged Native American heritage, even in a state where we have more tribes than any other, and today we embrace it.13263764_1022420817835511_160239830595331892_nStudents of all ethnic backgrounds flung their hats in the air, ready to enter a world where their next steps might go in all directions. For this day, they were celebrated for being who they are.13241333_1022420561168870_2207988693638277508_nHere’s to my boys, hoping all good things for their futures.13237747_1022421881168738_4114059906056242530_nA few days later, I took my granddaughter to the zoo. It was a sunny Sunday so families were out in force. As we walked and walked that day, I heard voices all around me speaking in various languages from English to Chinese to Spanish. Watching the people, I realized there was no difference. We were all saying the same things for the same reasons. “Stay close!” “Stop running!” “Come here!” No matter whether you are a Mimi or an abuela, a Daddy or a Grandad, by whatever name you call us, we are all there to share the experience. We all paid the money, carried the children, pushed the babies in strollers, rode the train, and said “Look!” with excitement as we shared the experience of seeing a giraffe in person IMG_8076or met the penguins up close.IMG_8037We had the same experience that day, generations of families together making memories for our children and grandchildren. It didn’t matter what language we spoke or where we came from. We were all trying to ride herd on little ones, watching them play, keeping them safe from the dangers all around us, and loving them so very much. There was no difference in our hearts at the zoo that day.

Last night, my granddaughter introduced me to a place I’ve driven by many times and never noticed. It is a Mexican bakery and was delightful with its variety of baked goods, its cleanliness, its friendly service. I looked it up on the internet because I was fascinated that it is a 5th generation business. Started in 1912 in Mexico, it became one of the largest bakeries in that area of the country. For some reason not given, one of the family members came to American in  1998 and opened the bakery in Tulsa. They have three bakeries here and are about to open a fourth with the vision not only to make pastries rich in ingredients and taste, but also to promote family values and unity. How American can you get? Or how Mexican.

This morning, the television came on blaring the latest ugliness in our election. I think all the candidates and the commentators need to take a day off and go to the zoo. It’s much more civilized there amongst the animals.

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Categories Entertainment, Family, Memories, Reflections, Restaurants