Show Me the Place, 3

“Show me the place.”

Duke Senior in As You Like It (2.1)

3: The Swimming Pool at Phillips University; Enid, Oklahoma

The swimming pool at Phillips U!

A place a loved at 102!

Yes, 102 degrees! So hot

My bicycle would melt, I thought.

But summer days there at the pool—

And not a thing could be more cool.

I learned to swim and learned to dive—

And how, in heat, to stay alive!

My father worked at Phillips U—

And that is how we got to do

The swimming thing on brutal days

Beneath that brutal Sooner blaze.

*Google Earth shows the pool is still there—can’t tell if it’s still in use, though. The last time I saw it (a decade ago?), I walked up to the walls outside—peeked in through a crack—didn’t look as if it were in use.