Summer in Sespe - 1957

While kids “in town” enjoyed their summers by spending hours at the Plunge, an outdoor, in-ground swimming pool on the Fillmore High School campus, my family came up with our own way to keep cool.

A tina (tee-nah), a galvanized metal tub, was a perfect portable, easy-to-maintain (no need to hire a pool service) source of cool on a tamale hot summer day in the Ranch.

(L > R) My brother, Adrian, (age 8), me (age 4) and my big brother, Charlie (age 14) are in the back yard of our home, House #130. The diagonal lines that rake the upper part of the photo are clothes lines that ran from the side of our neighbor’s garage (seen) to our garage.

It wasn’t unusual for my mom to hang clothes in the relative cool of the morning and have them become dry, stiff and smelling wonderfully fresh in just a few short hours.

Before the summer was over that year, my parents splurged and bought a “real” pool! It made quite a stir in the neighborhood.

The cold, garden hose water would raise goose flesh and wrinkle hands & feet but we didn't care. We would keep refilling the pool and stay as long as they would let us. Even though our “swimming pools“ may have been just the garden hose, a sprinkler to run through, a tina or a sheet of heavy-duty plastic draped over a metal frame, every photo I have of us shows faces of children who really didn’t seem to mind that they weren’t at the Plunge with all the kids in town. We look happy and cool.

Photo on the Right: (L > R) Adrian, me & my cousin, David Ramirez (age 4).

BELOW: (Front L > R) My cousin, Nick Robles (age 6); my aunt, Anita Ramirez (age 9); my brother, Adrian; (Back L > R) me, my cousin, David, my cousin, Tenchi Robles (age 8).