There are few rewards of a long run in the summer’s
heat that rival a quick dip into a pool. There is even an Endothermic
Principle in Physics that describes the release of
heat from one body of mass to another called the “Whoo
Theorem” or possibly the “Wu Theorem”, I really don’t
remember. We usually just said “WooHoo!” The easiest
way to understand the principle is to perform the following
experiment which we performed on many occasions during
or after our summer runs.
The experiment starts with the basic premise that you
must first warm a body of mass to a suitable temperature
above its normal state. In the case of the bodies involved in
this experiment, that core temperature starts out at 98.6.
When you run ten or twelve miles on a July evening in
Kentucky, that temperature can be increased considerably.
The attained temperature is rarely known in precise terms,
but for the sake of discussion we will use the terms described
in Table 1 below:
Table 1
Temperature Terminology
98.6F Cold Blooded
99.6 Warming Up
100.6 About Good
101.6 Worked Up A Pretty Good Sweat
102.6 Geeze, Man It’s Hot!
103.6 Let’s Stop & Get A Drink
104.6 How Far Is It To The Pool
Once the subject’s core body temperature reaches 104.6
F, his only conscious thought thereafter is “How Far Is It
To The Pool?” This usually means he has about five minutes
of consciousness left before he must submerge himself into
a liquid mass of specific temperature, hopefully considerably
below his own, or risk heat stroke.
Now, having sufficiently warmed the subjects to somewhere
between “Worked Up A Pretty Good Sweat” and
“How Far Is It To The Pool,” we invented a game in which
the participants must find the nearest pool and dive in, the
objective being to get the body temperature to “About
Good” without having the police called. If you are a group
of poor kids in the suburban neighborhoods of northern
Kentucky, you intentionally set out for the parts of town
where there are pools, and conveniently, where nobody
knows you. The run to these suburbs on your average July
night is performed in 85 degree temperatures with 90%
humidity and you are doing good to go three miles before
your body reaches “Geeze, Man It’s Hot” temperature.
One summer night in 1974, a record sixteen pools were
accomplished in a single run. Of course, some of the pools
were in the back yards of houses where the occupants were
on vacation, but other homes were fully occupied with the
owners taken by complete surprise at the multiple loud
splashes coming from their back yards.
The real trick to making it into the Pool Hopping Hall
of Fame is to pick a group of runners motivated more by
stealth than by adrenaline. Of course, this became harder
and harder to do on our team. On this particular night all
the right conditions came together for what would have to
be described as a “Perfect Game,” if this were baseball.
I had just returned home from my 3:00 p.m. to 11:00
p.m. shift as a bellman at the Holiday Inn, and my brother
John was sitting in the light of the porch, lacing up his
shoes, when I pulled into the driveway. He announced that
the Baynum brothers were waiting for us so I quickly
changed into shorts and shoes and we were on our way.
The Baynums lived about a half mile away and even
though the lighting was never good on that stretch of road,
we ran in the dark and were there in just a few minutes. Already
we were approaching the “About Good” zone when
Gerry announced we were going for the record.
“What is the record?” I asked him, thinking we were
going to attempt a course record time for one of our regular
runs.
“Eight,” he said, with that stupid grin on his face.
“Eight what?” I asked.
“Eight pools.” The same stupid grin.
“Who did eight?” I had to know.
“Me.” Same stupid grin.
We ran on silently in contemplation of this fact. Jude,
Johnny, and I knew that Gerry never bragged or exaggerated,
especially about his own personal accomplishments.
For him to state that he had hopped into eight different
pools in one night meant that he had doubled our known
group effort of four, which was done almost out of necessity
due to the extreme heat, and all in apartment pools
where there is little danger of consequence other than being
told to leave. The week before we did a night run which
took us by several apartment complexes. We simply
walked in like we lived there, took off our shoes and
jumped in, got out, dried off, put on our shoes and went on
down the road. In repeating this a few more times, we had a
memorable and pleasant evening of running and been kept
reasonably comfortable in the heat by our short submersions.
The number eight rumbled around in that same unfathomable
stratosphere as Roger Maris’s 61 home runs, Ty
Cobb’s 4192 base hits, John Walker’s 3:49 mile, or Wilt
Chamberlain’s 100 points in a basketball game. All three of
us ran on beside Gerry in awe and amazement.
All three of us were thinking, and two of us said, the
same thing at the same time:
“That ain’t nothin.”
“We could do sixteen, easy!” said Jude, who was
Gerry’s older brother, after all, and never to be outdone.
“There ain’t that many pools in town,” Johnny, ever the
thinking man, said.
“How deep does a pool have to be to count?” I asked
after which there was an uncomfortable pause as we were
calculating the many variables in our heads.
No one answered immediately. It was a new game and
we were making up the rules. This was not something to be
taken lightly. The future of this emerging sport and any
later attempt to break a record stood poised on the wisdom
of this one crucial decision.
It is commonly known that great minds think alike, as
we had demonstrated just a half-mile back in analyzing
Gerry’s record. This principle was at work again when we
all came up with the answer: “We could count lakes,” we
said, almost in unison.
No cartographer of the area could have drawn a clearer
picture of our route than the one that was forming itself in
my mind. I quickly did an out of body travel thing placing
myself about three miles above the surface of the earth and
I could see the many lakes that I had sneaked into to fish, or
ice skated on in the winter, or had raced around in the various
meets held within a five mile radius of where we were
now running. There were no less than eight I could think
of: three on the golf course, two in the cemetery, two on
farms, and several others in the neighborhood we were approaching.
We stopped for a moment waiting for the sparse traffic
to clear on the four lane Dixie Highway, the major northsouth
road which runs from Canada to Florida and passes
right through Erlanger. Though there are stop lights every
quarter mile or so to manage the heavy commuter traffic, at
this time of night there was seldom any cars on it.
Our wills were being solidified about what our next
step should be. We had run five miles that morning at 6:00.
All four of us had worked our regular full time jobs sometime
that day and knew we had to get up again the next day
to go back to work. It was eleven thirty on a week night,
hot and not showing any signs of cooling off. A lesser
group might have considered turning back and trying on
another night when conditions would be more conducive to
the effort it might take to accomplish what lay ahead.
No one had the courage nor wisdom to filibuster our already
stated plan, so when the traffic cleared, Gerry
sprinted across and hollered behind him: “You all going
swimming with me or not!”
The line in the sand had been crossed. The race was on.
Within a few minutes we were sprinting across the field
toward the banks of Silver Lake, which was bordered by
land owned by a pretty nice family who welcomed the
community to fish or skate but probably wouldn’t have
cared much for the midnight skinny-dipping about to occur
there. At this first lake, we took off our shoes and what were
still relatively dry shorts, before slipping into the water and
getting fully submerged. The only rule that was crystal clear
for all of us was that no body of water that you couldn’t go
completely into would count as a “pool.”
Having our first pool easily completed we hurriedly
dressed and put on our shoes and within a half mile came to
a house Jude said had a pool in the backyard. With the
stealth of Navy seals, we slipped through the dark side yard
and stopped to peek around the back corner of the house.
Sure enough there was a pool. Gerry leaned over to start untying
his shoes, but Johnny reached down and touched his
shoulder. Gerry looked up and Johnny shook his head “No,”
pointing to his wristwatch. All three of us got the message
and another codification of official pool hopping was established.
“Shoes are permitted to be worn when conditions exist
where a hasty exit may be necessary,” is how this section
would have read had the rules ever been written down.
All four of us leaned and began an army crawl toward
the inground pool and within a few seconds all four of us
had another pool and were crawling across the yard when
the back porch light came on and a man came out carrying a
baseball bat.
“What the . . .?” was the last thing I heard as we jumped
up and bolted toward the street. My heartrate bounced up to
about 220 plus my age and continued on into the redline
area as we sprinted down the street to an unlit section of
road and assumed no one was following us. Having escaped
without consequence made us at first giddy, then breathless,
then as we slowed down to a pace where we could talk
again, the whole incident became uproariously funny.
Once the laughter subsided, I asked Jude how he knew
there was a pool there when none of the rest of us knew
anyone who lived in that part of town. He answered in the
best suave voice he could muster: “One of my girlfriends
lives there.”
“How many girlfriends do you have?” John asked him,
knowing that Jude had a steady girlfriend at school.
“A pair and a spare,” Jude answered, as if that should
have been a well known bona fide fact.
Johnny thought this answer over for a minute and said:
“Hang on. We have to go back.”
“I ain’t going back,” I said, ever the smarter, older
brother.
“Not to that house,” he said. “I know a girl who lives a
few houses down from where we just were, and she has a
pool.”
“Nuh unh?” Gerry said.
“No foolin,” Johnny said.
And sure enough, a few minutes later, he raised a finger
to his lips and pointed between two yards on the opposite
side of the street from where we had just recorded our second
pool. There behind the house was what we would learn
over the next year to be the pool hopper’s nightmare: an
above ground pool. The reasons for this would seem obvious
once they are thought through, but the thinking through
of things was not something we were all that good at.
The first potential for problems is that elevated pools
typically have a deck or platform built around them with an
entrance to that deck coming right out the back door of the
house. Building codes typically require a thirty-six inch tall
guardrail around the pool area to keep non-swimming
youngsters safely away. This layout provides a particular
challenge in that entrance is strictly limited to going right
by the door of the house and egress is accomplished either
the same way or by jumping off the deck or fencing around
the elevated pool.
People who have permission to use the pool never think
about these things, but people who don’t have permission
must learn to roll when they hit the ground after jumping
from six or seven feet above it. Which is pretty much what
we had to do after Johnny, Gerry, and myself slipped quietly
into the pool, only to discover that Jude had climbed up
on top of the tool shed next to the pool and given his horrifying
“Laugh of Death” as he cannonballed into it.
Before the owner of the pool had a chance to wipe the
sleep out his eyes and grab his weapon of choice, we were
out of his pool anyway and 200 yards down the street, dripping,
laughing, and taking turns punching at Jude who had
caught and passed us. He was obviously proud of his accomplishment.
Sensing that our morale was getting a little too good, I
suggested that we better be careful. No one acknowledged
hearing a word I said.
I myself was beginning to get a feeling something magical
was taking place, that the moon and alignment of the
planets was such that there might be no stopping us tonight,
that maybe, just maybe, those . . . . blue lights up ahead
weren’t mounted on top of a police car!
“Shoot!” said Johnny.
“Dang!” said Jude.
“We’re busted,” said Gerry.
“This way!” I said.
Knowing the only way this cop could catch us was if he
was in his car, and that cars mostly only go on roads, I
ducked in between the two nearest houses and proceeded at
a dead sprint through the yards and into the woods behind
the house. It was dark under the canopy of trees, but there
was enough light to navigate through the trees just out of
sight of our pursuer.
For many years I have pondered the question: Can you
run faster if you’re scared or if you’re mad? After a seemingly
endless volume of personal experience, I can assure
you it is fear that lights the jets like nothing else. Olympic
sprinters can have all the steroids, HGH, and other performance
enhancing substances they want if they’ll just give me
a little of my own natural adrenaline, the kind that comes on
suddenly and you don’t notice it until you start paying attention
to the fact that you seem to be sailing six feet off the
ground and you look back for your buddies and they are
fifty yards behind you starting to believe you’ve ditched
them and getting pretty pissed about it.
In what seemed like a half-hour but was probably a
minute we emerged from the woods into the back yard of a
home that had, and I know you probably won’t believe this:
an above ground pool! Catching our breath in the shadow of
the trees and listening for signs of any followers or potential
problems with number four, we huddled together and sat
looking back over our shoulders, at the pool, or at the house.
After a minute or so, we silently determined that it was OK
to go on and we slipped into the pool by going over the side,
dunked under, and slipped out in such a quiet and stealthy
manner that we never even saw the man sleeping on his
outdoor recliner next to his pool until we squished along
side the pool and Johnny poked Jude and pointed at him.
For an instant I thought they would not be able to resist
dumping him into the pool but they somehow found the will
to resist and we proceeded on our quest.
Having tied the previous group record of four pools (we
were calling the lakes pools by virtue of the unanimous decision
of the board of regulators, i.e. us), we proceeded on
to the golf course where no fewer than three lakes were
easy prey at this time of night.
Forty minutes, eleven shortcuts, and seven pools later,
we made our way to the apartment complexes whose pools
were more or less lined up a quarter-mile apart and access
entailed the simple hop of a low fence. We were getting
pretty good at diving in, swimming the width of the pool
and pulling ourselves out without breaking stride and the
fourteenth pool had been accomplished in a total time of a
little over an hour and twenty minutes. We had been in serious
danger of apprehension only once. Our skin was starting
to prune up and most of us had various scrapes, slightly
twisted ankles, or cuts from the fences, but all in all, we
were nearly overwhelmed with pride.
We had stopped thinking about where the next pool
was, as each of us now knew the subliminal route that had
formed in our collective subconscious. The last two bodies
of water were on our way home and one of them belonged
to a friend’s family who would not be shocked too much if
we were found in their pool at 1:00 in the morning.
The second to last was to be in the shade cooled waters
of Garbett’s Lake,which was nestled in the woods behind
Garbett’s Greenhouse, a mere half mile from our house.
The other three didn’t know it, but I had my one and only
blast of rocksalt from a shotgun fired in my direction by
Mr. Garbett, who was none too pleased to catch me fishing
in his lake at sunrise one morning a few years back. I left a
pretty decent stringer of bluegills behind, too.
But as we grew nearer to the lake, a real reluctance
came over me to venture into the woods and sneak down
next to the lake. Call it a sixth sense, or being overly cautious,
but something, one of those voices, was telling me
that this was not a good place for me to be. As you might
imagine, there was no sharing of my concern with the present
company. It was too dark to see their eyes, but I could
sense the steely-eyed resolve that existed because when we
said sixteen, we meant sixteen. Fifteen would not do.
So I did what any sixteen-year-old under this kind of
pressure would do: I followed my peers into the woods,
squished down to the lake, and walked into the water. I
floated on my back out into the deeper part of the lake and
looked up at the stars. I remember the low gurgling sound
you can hear with your ears under water of others swimming
nearby and I remember how loud the crickets
sounded when I leaned forward and lifted my head out of
the water. I turned to see the white teeth in the beaming
smiles of my brother and friends and now I could only hear
that one voice inside that was saying “Yes, yes you can,”
when the thirty-seven other voices that talk to us constantly
were all saying their variations of “No, you can’t.”
And a half-mile later, after our last chlorine bath in the
pool belonging to neighbors who welcomed pretty much
any of their kids’ friends anytime, I stood under a street
light with my brother and my friends.
“Pretty decent run,” Gerry understated, with that fatuous
grin.
“Sixteen!” Johnny said.
“I’m starving,” Jude added.
The Baynums turned toward their house and slogged
off to make another in a long series of attacks on their
mom’s refrigerator. Johnny and I started the quarter mile
walk up the hill to our house. It was dark; the only sound
was the crickets, the hum of the streetlights, and the squishing
of water in our every step.
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