Capaha Park Pool Archives

November 14, 2011November 14, 2011

1964 Capaha Park Swim Meet

This is a swim meet at Capaha Park Pool on July 31, 1964, if we believe the note on the negative sleeve. There are big holes in Google’s Missourian archives for the last part of 1964, so I don’t know if a story ran in the paper. Some of the pictures are pretty marginal, but there are a bunch of Capaha Pool fans our there who will overlook the technical shortcomings. Click on any photo to make it larger.

I almost got electrocuted

All I remember about this swim meet was that I almost got electrocuted. My electronic flash – strobe – was sick, so I borrowed one from somebody so I could cover the meet.

In case you didn’t know, strobes work by sucking an electrical charge out of low voltage batteries and storing it in a capacitor until it’s boosted to hundreds of volts. When you press the shutter release, that closes a contact that sends all that voltage across the flash tube, producing a very short duration powerful blast of light. Later models operated off a 510-volt battery, but that’s another, equally painful story.

Keep the plug covered

The batteries would drain fairly quickly, so some of the strobes had ports where you could plug the unit into a regular electrical outlet. Well, what can go in, can also come out, so you’re supposed to keep the contacts covered with a plug when you’re not using it with AC power. The guy who loaned it to me either wanted to see me dead or he didn’t have the plug. I never did find out.

Photographer lights up

So, anyway, I’m walking across the wet pool deck when my finger accidentally touches those exposed contacts. The strobe says, “This guy must want to take a picture, so I’m going to dump my XXX volts and make a bright flash.” Instead of going through the flash tube, all those electrons took the path of least resistance – my body – to get to the wet pool deck. I thought somebody had tackled me from behind. I looked all around, though, and there was nobody close to me.

Flash was brighter than the photographer

I went on to cover the meet and POW!!! the same thing happened. This time I realized what was going on and made sure to keep my fingers away from the light-the-photographer-up contacts.

Remember braiding lanyards?

I think the kid on the far right is braiding a plastic lanyard. That was all the rage when I was in grade school. Square braiding was easy; round braid was a little harder. I can’t remember all the ways we used them. I think the challenge was in the braiding. Actual utility was secondary.

Wife Lila pointed out that these were taken before the lanes were painted on the pool bottom. Here’s what the pool looked like when they were getting ready for the season. It contains links to most of the other Capaha Park Pool stories we’ve done.

October 20, 2011

Capaha Pool All Washed Up

OK, that’s a bad pun, considering that the Capaha Park Pool is nothing but grass and memories these days. This single frame of some guys washing down the Capaha Park Pool was in with some stuff dated 5/1966, so I’m assuming that they were getting ready to fill the pool for the summer season.

I asked Wife Lila, a former lifeguard, if she recognized the guys, but she couldn’t put names to faces. Terry, Jacqie, can you ID them?

Capaha Park Lagoon Algae

Scott Moyers did a story in Tuesday’s Missourian about Capaha Park Lagoon’s algae problem. This isn’t exactly a new problem. Here are some pictures from the mid and late 1960s when there was a cleanup campaign on. I’m not sure when they were taken, nor who the subjects are. A couple of the men look familiar, but I’m going to let someone else put names to the faces.

Lagoon dates to early 1900s

Scott’s story says the 3.5 acre lagoon was put in shortly after the property was transformed into a fairgrounds. The city acquired it in 1914. Generations of Cape Girardeans have enjoyed fishing, ice skating, duck feeding and even jumping into the lagoon.

Lagoon has become shallow

Over the years, silt has filled up the lagoon to the point that it’s only about five feet deep, about half of the 10 to 12 feet years ago. Algae grows in warmer, shallower water, particularly when the summer has been as hot as this year’s. The lagoon hasn’t been dredged in about 20 years, the story pointed out. What makes me uncomfortable is a comment from Mayor Harry Rediger, who said that the permanent solution is to come from the parks department’s creation of a strategic plan for the entirety of Capaha Park.

“Another idea is to change the concept of the lake a bit.” he said. “I can’t report on it just yet, because it’s still in the planning stages. But we do intend to fix that in some manner – it’s just that how it’s to be fixed has yet to be determined.”

When city officials start talking about making changes to something that’s been a part of the community as long as Capaha Park, warning flags start waving. I look at all the park amenities that we grew up with: the lagoon, Cherry Hill, the band shell, the train from the cement plant, the pool (oops, guess we can scratch that one) and I don’t see many things I’d change. When you hear the drumbeats for “improving” Capaha Park, better start going to meetings and letting your voice be heard. We know how Bloomfield Road has been “improved.”

November 2011 aerial of Capaha Park

Broadway and Southeast Hospital are on the right. The pool is empty, but not razed yet.

Gallery of Capaha Park Lagoon photos

A collection of photos taken over a period of time. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

June 26, 2011September 22, 2011

Capaha Pool: Erased

Wife Lila and I hadn’t been back to Capaha Park since the pool was razed. When we pulled into the loop, there was an audible gasp from the seat next to me.

The pool where she had been a lifeguard for 10 years had been erased. The city didn’t even have the tact to leave behind a reminder like the oval that had been the old pool in the background of the photo.

Fighting back tears, she said, “I don’t know how you can feel this way about something that’s not a person.”

Salvaged half a brick

There were a few brick fragments sticking out of the mud from last night’s rains. The first one I brought her was red, but neither of us could remember any red brick being used in the building. Later, Bill /Jacqie Jackson, Lila’s lifeguard colleague said that there was one course of red brick used as an accent in the pool building.

I’ll have to take his word for it. It must have been used in an interior wall, because I don’t see it in any of the photos I took just before the wreckers moved in.

I went back to retrieve a tan brick that was more like we both remembered.

Laurie scored brick and fence cap

Lila gave Jacqie her half-brick because Niece Laurie Everett, of Annie Laurie’s Antiques fame, scored her a whole brick and the cap off one of the fence posts while demolition was in progress.

Tag: Capaha Park Pool