January 21, 2007

Trivia Question: Where was the first swimming pool in Littlefield? I’ll bet you guessed wrong.

Once upon a time (in the West), there was a dairy. This dairy - owned by the Cundiff family - was located at the west end of 1^st Street, just west of where 1^st Street intersects with what is now Sunset. During the early days, up until sometime in the early 1960's, the street was called "Cundiff", because of the dairy, of course.

The Cundiff family built a swimming pool on their property. This would have been somewhere between the 1930's and 1940's. The pool was opened to the public. I don’t know what the cost of admission was, but there was a price. I do know that the "Smith kids", children of Alta and Bob Smith, spent a lot of time swimming - that is when they had time. The pool they frequented was a different one, north of the railroad tracks on Westside, close to what was then the Vause Dairy. The Smith family lived west of the Vause dairy, which was located about a half-mile north of the track. I believe the dark red brick house is still standing on the east side of the street.

Many of you remember, in those times the work around the farm or house was a lot harder than today, as most of it was manual. There were few if any mechanical aids to make life easier, and those who had any of these new-fangled gadgets were fortunate.

The children were all expected to do their share. Usually any boys in the family got to gather cow chips or buffalo chips (in this part of the country, as trees were few and far between) for fuel for the fires until the advent of the gas-powered heaters and kitchen appliances. They also milked the cows and tended the other livestock, helped plant, cultivate and harvest the crops, kept all the buildings and fences in repair, and did anything else that might come up. Chances were few and far between to go swimming, and everyone jumped at the chance, whether they could swim or not.

The girls did the house work, for the most part, though they helped with other chores, as well. Remember, there were no washing machines as we know them. The clothes were washed in big wash tubs with bar soap and scrub boards. After the clothes were thoroughly scrubbed, that water had to be dumped, and the tub was filled with more hot water (heated on an open fire in the summer, to keep from heating up the house), and the clothes were rinsed. Usually this process was repeated at least once, and if you were a good laundress, twice or three times. Then the clothes were hung on the line to dry. (There’s still nothing like the smell of sheets fresh off the clothes line.)

Like all kids, there was fun to be had, sometimes at the expense of others. Bettye Kate (Holladay) Smith tells me her family always had a milk cow, laying hens, and a garden. A family moved into the house next door who also had a milk cow, but had no pen. An agreement was reached and a partition was built down the middle of the pen, so the neighbors could keep their cow close. Ms. Smith and her brother would sneak under the partition and milk the neighbor’s cow (they knew better than to milk their own!) and they’d steal a couple of eggs from their own hens. These ingredients were critical in the creation of the perfect mud pie.

Many years later, the neighbor, who had moved away, came to visit Bettye Kate’s mother. Naturally, Ms. Holladay called Bettye Kate to come visit, as well. During the conversation, Bettye Kate told the neighbor about the mud pies and the origin of their ingredients. The neighbor had a great laugh, but Ms. Holladay would have probably switched Bettye Kate, even though she was grown and a mother herself, if she could have!

Later, Littlefield burst onto the modern scene with Maytag wringer washers. These washers were real work and time savers. Four semi-square tubs were arranged in a square. The first tub, usually on the "bottom" right (for right-handed users) contained the agitator within the tub, and the wringer above it. After the clothes were agitated, they were fed through the wringer, which was turned with a crank. The clothes fed into the next tub, on the top right, which contained the first rinse water. They were hand-rinsed, and moved to the third tub, on the top left, rinsed again, and then to the final rinse, on the bottom left. All that was left to do was take the clothes home and hang them out to dry. What a boon!

Back to swimming pools: The second known pool was also west of what is now Sunset, but a little further south. Those of you who are familiar with the Cherry Blossom area know there’s an older, white house in the middle of the neighborhood, with a tennis court. Mr. and Mrs. Ware lived there (Kenneth and James Wares’ parents). That tennis court now covers the location of the swimming pool.

There was a community pool located in Laguna Park, on the northwest corner, for many years. Every summer the city sponsored "Recreation", where all the kids in town could come every morning for two weeks, for the purpose of learning to swim and having fun. I can’t tell you how many of us learned to swim there, but I can tell you we all had a lot of fun. For those of you who were there, do you remember who the life guard was almost every summer? She was an excellent swimmer (there was no such thing as a "certified" life guard then - just someone with enough maturity and expertise to watch the kids.) All you "boys" remember her. I’ll give you a name - Sandy.

The trees around Laguna Park were planted through the efforts of the children in grade school - 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd grade - during the early 1930's. The children carefully saved their pennies, and paid 2 cents each for the trees – quite a feat back then. There were a good deal more trees at one time. Elm trees don’t live particularly long as trees go. Many have been lost to age, disease, and destruction for new projects.

According to Ms. Smith, she and her sister and brothers, along with other neighborhood kids who lived on East 3^rd at the time, decided to have a "sunrise breakfast" one morning. They got a bottle of milk (yes, milk used to come in glass half-gallon bottles, and they were delivered to your door - for a price, unless you had your own cow, which the Holladay family did), a box of cereal (probably Wheaties), and enough bowls and spoons to go around, and journeyed to the west side of the park where they proceeded to eat their breakfast and watch the sun rise. Of course, the trees in the park were pretty young then, and there was an unobstructed view of the east.

A few years later, Ms. Smith and her sister Hazel would climb the first tree at the northeast corner of the park and move from tree to tree, heading west, all the way to the northwest corner. They’d keep traveling all the way from the northwest corner to the southwest corner, never touching the ground, to where the old Legion Hut stood. (Incidentally, the Legion Hut was actually the very first depot.) At this point, they’d have to "go to ground" to the other side of the Legion Hut, where they’d continue their journey all the way around to where they began. Pretty good for a couple of girls, huh! And in dresses yet!

Since then several buildings have been added to the park - the Community Center (northeast corner) is now "Our Place"; the Boy Scout Hut (southeast corner) is still used today, to the best of my knowledge; the Girl Scout Hut (northwest corner) sits where the old community pool was.