Mott Swimming Pool

Making a splash off the diving board, diving for sunken treasure and conquering the challenge of new swimming skills have been at the heart of summer recreation in Mott since 1957. Now thanks to an over $300,000 renovation they will be part of summer in Mott for years to come. Follow along with the progress by viewing our renovation slide show. All work should be completed by June 1, 2004. We plan on being open for our normal full schedule this summer. That schedule includes:

Pool Renovation Slideshow

View of the old pool. Cracks and holes in the pool shell. Cracks and damage along the decking. Demolition of the bath house. More of the demolition. Demolition of the pool in general. No more bath house! Foundation preparation for the new bath house. Gutting the C-store in preparation to move. Moving Day! The old C-store becomes our new bath house. The new bath house in place with new doors and windows being added. Interior walls being framed and plumbing added for showers. Old shower in girls bathroom. New shower area with walls up. Old boys bathroom. Layout of a new bathroom. Putting in dividers in the bathrooms Old mechanical and chemical shed. Filter and pipes in mechanical shed. The waterworks have been compared to a WWII submarine. Walls going up in the mechanical room. Painting around the new sand filter. Plumbing the new mechanical room. New pool heater in the southside of the mechanical room. The old Lifeguard Station. Work proceeding on the entry and lifeguard station. Filling cracks and cutting down the shell for renovation. Full view of the pool during renovation. Preparing shell to weld on the gutter system. Gutter work begins. The new gutter system in place. Filling in concrete behind the gutter system. Rolling out the new liner. Installing the liner in the deep end. Triple welding the seams in the liner. Installing the ladders. The new diving platform. Pool and slide in 2003. Picture of the new slide, color may vary. Mott Swimming Pool at end of 2003 season. Current view from diving platform. Line outside on the opening day Line for the new slide on opening day.

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CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF THE OLD SWIMMING POOL
By Owen Blickensderfer

Our small town (and maybe where you live, too) is blessed to have a swimming pool for families to enjoy. It is a great way for me to get some much needed exercise, not to mention cooling off on hot summer days. When I was a kid, the water was pretty cold during the morning swimming lessons. The town did not have a pool heater like today. The lifeguards pushed ice chunks to the shallow end of the pool with a big pole so that we would not hurt ourselves while diving off the high dive. If we got cold, we could take a cold shower to warm up. (No hot water heater back then either.)

Today the shower area has hot water and the pool is heated. Young people are so spoiled these days. Back then the pool was packed wall-to-wall with kids of all sizes and ages. During the ten-minute break, the head lifeguard entertained us with fancy dives from the high dive. "Do a double-twister-one-and-a-half!" we would yell. He would launch high into the air and tuck into a graceful ball, tumbling this way and that on the way down. We watched in unblinking fascination, certain that this time the gyrations would end in a glorious belly flop. The twisting and spinning were too fast for the human eye to follow. Just before hitting the water, the diver would unfold his body. His hands and arms would enter the pool followed by his head and body. As his toes disappeared beneath the surface, a tiny splash would barely ripple the smooth surface. All of us would let out our breaths in a collective "aaahhh." "Do a clown dive!" came the next request. That is when I realized that if I could not be a spaceman when I grew up I wanted to be a lifeguard.

We played a game on the low diving board called "jump or dive.” The rules were simple. One by one we sprinted down the diving board and took a running bounce on the end. Just when your feet hit the board a designated "caller" would yell either "jump" or "dive.” You had about a quarter of a second to set your balance correctly and execute a jump or a dive as directed. If you anticipated the call correctly, you entered the water feet first or head first without disgracing yourself. If you had to try to correct your trajectory in midair a noisy belly flop would result, to the supreme satisfaction of all.

Another pastime enjoyed by most of the boys was a "cannonball" contest. The object was to gain the maximum spring from the high diving board, tuck your knees under your chin and enter the water bottom first. When the maneuver was done correctly, a stream of water would shoot straight up into the air. Nobody wanted to play that game when Morris Schaible was around. Morris was the undisputed "King cannonball" of the Mott pool and maybe the whole universe. Morris could have made gobs of money in the film industry by hiring himself out to simulate bombs hitting the water for a battleship movie. As Morris hoisted himself up the ladder to the high board, he would have this silly grin on his face. The little girls in the shallow part of the pool would scream and scramble out of the water to take refuge in the bathhouse. Kids would swim to the side of the pool and hold tightly to the edge, watching with great interest for they knew what would happen next. When Morris hit the end of the board, the fiberglass was bent to the extreme limit of its endurance. The pipes of the tower trembled and groaned. As he left the board in a lazy upward arc, Morris’s body rotated 180 degrees till his back faced the unsuspecting lifeguard perched in her elevated chair fifty feet away. He would lean back slightly and grab his knees just before hitting the water with a KAWHOMPH! Twenty gallons of ice cold chlorinated water exploded into the air around him in a precisely directed geyser that rained down on the lifeguard, extracting a gratifying scream. The resulting tidal wave washed over the sides of the pool to soak the teenage girls who were sunbathing on towels.

The high diving board is gone, the old lifeguard perches are gone, the old bathhouse is gone, the cracked deck is gone, the old galvanized ladders are gone and the old light poles are gone. Nothing is left of the pool except the concrete shell and lots of memories. Some folks worked hard to make this all a reality. The new pool is great. Mott is fortunate. One day it will all be paid for. (send money.)