09/21/2026
It’s a summer day in 1978, and the City Pool on Elm Street is overflowing with kids. Surrounded by a chain-link fence, a couple of lifeguards telling kids to stop running, and smelling of chlorine, the pool itself was a haven in summer, an oasis in the heat. Most of us didn’t have air conditioning, and the cool, aqua-blue water of the pool was a salve to soothe your summer doldrums.
It was also the place where most of us learned to swim, me included.
However, this particular summer day began a few days prior when Boy Scout Troop 382 had taken a trailer full of canoes out near Roberts to a slough just off the Interstate where it was safe to teach young boys how to both stay in – and fall out of – a canoe without drowning. As one of the older scouts, I mostly hung out in the water, coaching the younger boys and helping make sure they didn’t panic when they were required to tip over their boat and figure out how to right it again. I ended that evening waterlogged.
The next morning, I was covered from head to toe in a rash that looked as though I was the super spreader for Chicken Pox, the Measles, and both Scarlet and Spotted Fevers. But I had none of those. According to the startled doctor to which my mother took me, I was sporting a thick coat of “Swimmer’s Itch,” bestowed upon my person by tiny schistosomes, a parasite that departs a freshwater snail in search of a duck, and mistakes said person for a waterfowl, much to the chagrin of both person and parasite. The parasites can’t survive in people, but not for lack of trying, and they leave you covered in red spots for the better part of a week before giving up.
“What about swimming lessons,” my mother asked. “He has them tomorrow.”
“He’ll be fine. There’s nothing contagious, and the chlorinated water will be good for him.”
So it was on this morning that I arrived for lessons, took off my shirt and as I prepared to enter the water, the protestations of about 50 moms erupted outside the fence. My own mother spent the next 15 minutes defining “schistosomes” to very unhappy moms who were pretty sure I was going to infect half of Idaho Falls with any number of contagious diseases.
The pool has been gone since 1986, well after I finished every class offered, mostly parasite free. It was replaced by a beautiful year-round indoor facility called the Wes Deist Aquatic Center, and most of my experience there was taking my own brood to swimming lessons. This sad photo is best understood if you imagine the cars are swimming laps the length of the parking lot…
