You would think that a house built back in good ole 1906 B.C.E. - before (air)conditioning expected - would have all sorts of funky little features that would keep it temperature stable. Things you see in the Gamble House, like ceiling windows that encourage air flow. Unfortunately for us, this seemed to be rustic winter house of rich family who probably felt it was charming to put in lots of air-stopping walls, a fireplace, and a big, stuffy attic just for kicks. Since they only used it during the few winter months, they probably had the option of high-tailling it to the Northern California coast when the heat got a little kicky. I'm thinking it cost about $800 for a summer of luxurious coastal living.
Ah, to be a rich person in 1906.
I once got a fortune out of a cookie that said "Lucky is coming your way." I always loved that -- I think it meant luck is coming your way, but maybe it meant some person/canine/time traveller named Lucky was soon to be arriving on my doorstep. So lucky was ambiguous -- it could've meant anyone, anything. What made me think of it is two-fold: one, that I just recently wrote a section in a novel-chapter that I've been working on that spends time on luck(y) and two, that when it comes to pools and other full-body submersion tanks of cool-cold water, I've always been lucky.
I grew up as poolside royalty at a swim club called Westwind. What made me royalty was the fact that my grandpa just happened to own the joint and so, my family got free summer admission to both Westwind and the tennis club next door which - again - my grandpa just happened to own. You knew we were like the scholarship kids because we were the only people that rolled in ten-year old Cadillac without a muffler and with the windows down, since the air-conditioner was usually broken. Oh, and my little sister was usually hanging her whole head, neck, and sometimes chest out the window as we made our way to the parking lot. Believe it, Gloria Allred.
My cousin Cathy just reminded me a few weeks ago about what terrors we were because of this royal status. It was probably the first and only time that any of us had a sense of entitlement, i.e. our grandpa owns this place so we should be allowed to get on the P.A. system and us girls should be allowed to run through the guys locker room. Which I never did, I swear, except once when I took part in the "All-Female Westwind Sleepover," an event where we hunted ghosts, slept on lawn chairs in sleeping bags, and yes, took that coveted all-access tour through the crappy boys locker room. But my sister and Cathy - never ones to let mere lifeguards get them down - took some excursions through the locker room during regular hours. They also waited for every chance to jump on the P.A. system and when it came, they would page our moms with phony messages. My sister and Cathy were three years younger than me, but I learned everything I ever needed to know about prank calling from listening to them on the P.A. system.
If you've ever spent any amount of time in the Midwest during the summer, you'll understand why we spent almost every day at the pool. Temperatures can and do reach 100 degrees by 10:00 a.m. and that's without the humidity. One thing I enjoy about living in the desert climate - California, in other words - is that no matter how hot it gets during the day, the temperature always goes down at night. In Illinois, that's not so much the case. You can spend the night in toasty 90 degree + humidity sweats. The years of my Illinois life seemed to fluctuate between winter and mosquito season.
When I came to California, I heard what I can only call now a very vicious and hurtful rumor that there were NO mosquitoes. I was told that they couldn't survive, that there just wasn't enough water for their viral reproduction patterns. I was overjoyed. I was the girl who (apart from always being in the pool) always had dozens of small red bumps on her arms and legs as a child, the one who the mosquitoes always attacked first. And I was the one who doesn't just get bit, but whose bites swell up to astronomically red and itchy proportions. So I came to California, bright eyed and like so many others, was deceived by the rumors of this golden land. Because IT'S NOT TRUE. Mosquitoes live, jive, and survive all over this place. And it turns out, that in a way, my saving grace is partly to blame. (But that comes later.) And yes, there are less mosquitoes here than in Illinois, but it's not saying much since there are less mosquitos everywhere compared with Illinois. Right now, I've logged a total of nine bites in the last week. Which is a lot compared to zero.
Sadly, by my last years of high school, Westwind was a shadow of its former glory days. Aurora got the bright idea to open kick-ass community aquatic centers, which were a fraction of the membership it cost to hang out at Westwind. Plus, the aquatic centers had cool slides, wave pools, and the classic mom favorite, the lazy river. So Westwind closed. My mom and aunt Janie got subversive one year by sneaking us into an exclusive neighborhood-only pool by using our grandparents address as their membership address in order to get a key. Of course, their high class version of fence-hopping only made me nervous. I've never much had the constitution for getting in trouble. It gives me gas. We spent one good summer there before a certain Benedict Arnold ratted us out to the community center. We were thenceforth banish-ed. Now that I think back on it, I feel a certain sense of pride that my mom and Janie were cool enough to pull the wool over the eyes of an entire neighborhood community center for a summer. I'll be calling them if I ever have the urge to check out one of those exclusive hipster clubs like LAX or Bungalow 8.
So here's the later part: Russ and I have spent some miserable days in the heat, shutting ourselves up in dark rooms, and sitting in front of fans with our bellies exposed. I once heard that if you put your belly in front of the cold air, it will cool down the rest of your body, which, like the no-mosquitoes-in-California thing, seems to be untrue. Even for all that, it was still so hot and sticky inside. Just when we were considering taking up that old tradition of sneaking into pools, Russ had a brilliant idea.
He figured out how foothillers, like ourselves, beat the heat without spending a fortune to drive to the beach or join the Rose Bowl's Aquatic Center. He discovered the hidden pools of the foothills inside all the canyons on a hike last week. Some of the water from the late-melting snow in the mountains is still coming down this way and so, the pools of the foothills are high and beautifully cold. Whole families gather with picnic baskets and coolers and spend the day in the water. Some of the pools are over six feet deep; some are beside waterfalls; the one Russ and I relaxed in on Saturday was about four feet deep and full of tadpoles. We sat on the rocky bottom, reclined against rocks, and let the chilly mountain water make up for the 100 degree heat, the weird humidity, houses without central air, and of course, all those damn mosquitoes.
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Mmmmmm
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