Pool Food

 

photo by lilxerica on Flickr

Summers seemed to last so much longer when I was a child.  There were books to read, bikes to ride, creeks to explore, and pools to swim in.  I didn’t watch television (yes silly, television was invented when I was a child); in fact, I rarely was ever home during the day in the summertime (I am sure the lack of central air conditioning was a contributing factor).  I was on my bike playing bike tag on carless streets, at the playground sliding down scorching hot metal slides or at the pool.

The pool was a unusually large community pool, or it just seems large in my memory.  Nothing can take me back to age ten faster than a whiff of coconut suntan oil and the vision of leathery septuagenarians (or at least appeared to be septuagenarians) smoking cigarettes on woven plastic chaises sunning themselves well before the term sunscreen was even part of the lexicon.  It was always a happy day when my mother would give my sister and I each a quarter to buy an ice cream or, oh the joy!, a dollar bill to buy french fries and a fountain drink. 

Since I spent so much time there as a child, there are certain foods and candies I will always associate with the pool.  Airheads, Fun Dip (formerly known as Lik-M-Aid), Swedish Fish – they might as well be time machines.  And eating fries in that red checked paper bucket drizzled with ketchup from the red plastic squeeze bottle?   Pull up a pair of striped athletic socks and play Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded” on a crackly transistor radio – it’s 1979 all over again.

What is it about sitting in a wet swim suit that makes the fries tastier and the hot dogs juicier?  Is it the chlorine that sharpens your palette?  Or is it simply the increased physical activity that whets the appetite to appreciate any sustenance?  Or perhaps it’s the freedom of going to the snack bar with money clutched in your hand and ordering food like a grown up?  Maybe it’s a combination of all of those things, but I do know that the smell of cooking oil and chlorine makes my stomach growl no matter what age I am.

We decided to celebrate my son’s fifth birthday at our swim club and naturally, the menu selection was of great importance to me.  If you have not been a member of the 5 year old birthday party circuit, it consists of three things- pizza, pizza and more pizza (and a little cake thrown in).  Now we love pizza every now and again, but frankly, the pool and pizza … it just doesn’t go together like a burger and fries do.  At any rate, we settled on burgers, dogs and fries as the main fare catered by the pool snack bar.  And yes, the little red and white gingham paper baskets are included.