Does anyone remember swimming from back in the 60's or 50's.
For laughs here are some of my memories.
In the 1960's lap lanes if they were put in a pool were scorned. Most pools were open and filled with splashers.Toy submarines were big People who were older then the swim teams (young people) who actually wanted to swim laps were .."oddballs" "they were "exercise freaks". All the pools I went to were outdoors. On labor day all swimming stopped..that was it. Most of us girls sat by the pool lounging ,oiling and burning and checking to see who was "seeing us". Then if we went in it was only for a few minutes to cool off. The flower swim caps were coolest but only if the pool required caps other wise most of us perfered to swim capless. If a cap had a strap most girls pulled it off right away and "lost it" We really did not care if the caps kept out water as we would swim heads up "Hollywood Style".Unless we had just had our hair done a couple days before then we would want to stay dry but the best time to swim was before a trip to the beauty shop.Every bodys secret wish was to sneak in late at night to skinny dip. Guys liked goofy swimming masks and goggles and fins so they would be scary looking and they were goofy for sure! I remember trying one swim mask that had two snorkles sticking out curved on the end with the ping pong balls in the cages ,it covered your whole face and when the balls stuck you could not breath .. death trap swim mask I called it..Of course liability lawyers had not been invented yet. We all awaited the mid summer pool partys with the big bar-b-cues and luau partys .We bought all our summer pool items at the big Memorial day drug store sales were we could get things like towels,suntan oil, zorris (flipflops)and two swim caps for the summer before the big advertised "Playtex Swim Cap Riot Sales" ended. And of course we played Marco-Polo on and on just as kids do today.
Former Member
The one thing I remember from swimming in the sixties is the blocks. They were really blocks... wooden crate type things at the end of the pool. The lane lines ran up the side of the pool right onto the front of the blocks and over the top. The two pools I swam at were right on the beach, so we had the best of both worlds... if we got tired of the pool we just walked out the gate and swam in the Atlantic or walked down the beach. One of the pools had a bulkhead seperating the 'shallow end' from the 'deep end.' We loved swimming under it. On more than one occasion my suit got hung on a screw or something and I had to tug hard to get it loose... I tore one suit once and had to leave the pool quickly with a towel wrapped around my waist. Swimming in the surf at night was always so much fun, guess because it was 'dangerous'
Yeah, I swam in the 1960's. I even swam in a pool that they now have a bulkhead in. The Bellflower pool hosted novice meets and in those days we swam 33 1/3 yards. The races for 11-12 year olds were 66 2/3 yards, a very long sprint. This was back in 1969 when I was 12 years old. And there was no such thing as lap swimming you had to swim during rec period and sometimes my dad and I swam some laps while kids were playing around. And the Red Cross didn't teach you butterfly. you had to learn it on a novice or AAU team or a private swim school. Yes, all of us in our 40's and beyond swam for AAU not USS or USA swimming like today.
Another thing the goggles of the day were so poor that competitive swimmers from novice to AAU until about late 1971 went without them. Your eyes were so red from the chroine. So, many teams didn't do yardage much over 3,000 yards. Only some top national programs or college programs in the late 1960's did a 10,000 yard workouts. I think Debbie M was one of the first to workout between 7,000 to 10,000 yards in double workouts.
In the 1960's lap lanes if they were put in a pool were scorned. Most pools were open and filled with splashers.Toy submarines were big People who were older then the swim teams (young people) who actually wanted to swim laps were .."oddballs" "they were "exercise freaks".
We really did not care if the caps kept out water as we would swim heads up "Hollywood Style".
At my pool and many others in the UK and that is still what you see. We are about 10 years behind you in terms of enlightenment. I have tried to convince them of the wisdom of having at least 1 lane in at all times.
I explained the dangers of mixing width swimmers, splashers and people who like to jump in any where and any time and people wanting to do lengths.
To try to swim lengths at these times is like a runner doing a 10k as laps through the shopping mall, with his eyes looking down and not ahead !!
We have 2 lanes in from 6:45 am to 8:30 am, monday to friday and twice a week a "special" swim time of 1 hour where all 4 lanes are in. The rest of the time it is a free for all, length swimmers are not welcome and the pool is dominated by the" head-up breaststrokers."
I remember swim club in the early 70's with poor goggles and our coach used to smoke heavily on poolside, there would be a layer of smoke floating on the water surface. I have very bad allergies and asthma so training was hell.
I forgot about the jumping in. Yes I got jumped on a couple of times! You could tell who was on the swim teams too because they wore one piece suits in matching colors ,I remember White Stag brand and I do remember seeing the AAU emblems , I don't remember any of the swim team swimmers with goggles. Back then they were the big round eye goofy looking ones (Sounds like my Barracudas today gasp..) but mainly only the boys wore them..the younger boys that is and the occasional "exercise buff" , (thats the term I was trying to remember on my first post to describe fitness swimmers) .To tell the truth and I have said this before but I give Mark Spitz a good deal of credit for getting swimming popularized. He was the first swimmer I can remember with goggles on a swim team (Life Magazine) and he looked cool not goofy. The goggles have helped lots of people who would have quit I am sure. Today we have indoor and outdoorpools in lots of towns where people can swim year round. And the lifeguards are still tanned and wearing the white zinc oxide on the noses!
I think in high school, the girls team had wool bathing suits that was in the 1970's. Anyway, swimming is very standardized now, few swim in meets that are 33 1/3 yards or 20 yards like I did in 1969. But, I guess it wasn't that groovy afterall. back in the 1960's.
Well for pool building I think that in Southern California a lot of pools were built in the 1960's because land was cheap and a lot of people wanted the sunny middle class lifestyle that was available then. The colleges mainly community colleges built several pools in the mid 1960's to the early 1970's. The high schools almost built a pool at ever school then because the cost was very inexpensive compared to today. The high shcool league I was in had built 7 pools at each high school by 1968. Today, there are some new pools going up there but its a great deal more expensive. And in Arizona I would say many pools are post 1960's because the big population growth occured in the 1990's and demand hasn't kept up with supply in Phoenix because the growth was very rapid. Now in Tucson the pools have a better ratio to the population because growth was slower.
Well, that's true about the polo epidemic. There were pre-1960's pools. I mention the bellflower pool which was probably built before 1960. It even look old then and they still use the thing for workouts and some meets. I swam also in the old LA olympic pool built before 1932 for a meet. But in the 1960's land was a lot cheaper in most urban areas. A house cost 28,000 in 1969 and now in the LA area the same house cost 330,000.
