Evergreen swimming pool has reopened and that is great.

Now kids can stop sneaking into Lake Hicks, which is headquarters for swimmers itch in White Center where my kids grew up. That rash put little red blisters on the boys that came from waterfowl who love the place, and we had to rub them (the kids, not the ducks) with some pink stuff we got at the drug store.

There was no other swimming hole except Colman Pool at Lincoln Park and that was a real hike. The famed West Seattle icon Morey Skaret, who still lives only a few hundred feet from it, was it's first lifeguard.

So our five boys had to make do with a Saturday night rub in the tub. Sometimes they swam in Salmon Creek below our house, near Schick Shadel Hospital on Ambaum.

I grew up in Portland and we had a choice of Renne's Lake about a mile away or the Columbia slough, a sluggish side channel of the Columbia River, which had a lot of logs and a bunch of sewer outfalls serving the hog ranch and the slaughterhouse. Great fishing spot for carp and crappies.

Jantzen Beach, about three miles away, had a huge outside pool but only rich kids had the money to swim there. It cost ten cents.

I spent many a summer day at Portland's Peninsula Park outdoor ice water pool, near Jefferson High. Brave kids got their suits on and scooted like lemmings for the preacher's seat plunge into the icy Bull Run river water. Now, that took courage.

Rich kids who lived over by Grant High had heated water, just like Evergreen. In 1930, Evergreen would have been uncovered and about 38 degrees.

Peninsula Park pool had a high stucco wall, which helped keep the wind off our frigid wet bodies.

My dad, a good swimmer, despaired for me and once threw me in the swirling Sandy River on a Sunday outing. I walked about thirty feet on the bottom of the swift stream and clambered out.

Several years later, I figured swimming out and loved it.

Big kids played handball against the inside wall of Peninsula's pool and many times they lost the handball as it took an unplanned flight through a small hole about 10 or 12 inches square and disappeared in the dark. Then the big kids would find me and threaten to dismember me if I didn't squirm through the gap and find the ball in the dark and gloomy spider hole.

When I refused they threw my terrified cob-covered frame into the deep end of the pool.

It was either stink or swim.