Pool_1

tall cold hurricane fencing. Christ. Someone hated nature. But cold wasn't enough. Toping all that fencing was razor laden spirals of barbed wire. Abutting the reservation, in its own wire cage with an arm's length official name was the Lou Costano Swimming Facility, named after a Patterstown kid, who many years ago made it big in Hollywood. The sign was old, faded, and very hard to read. It didn't matter. Nobody called this place by that name. Not ever even once. Before it was opened to the public, the Lou Costano Swimming Facility was inadvertently rechristened by the mayor's wife with a real name, one that the locals could relate to, a name that stuck because it connected with the reality of this place. Each of the two project buildings, seen up close, was a marvel. How could any erection so tall, missing so much brick, with so much rot, and so cracked, remain standing? The local answer was that all the rats that infested it held hands. The reservation was called 'rat reservation' because of the proximity to the projects, although rats were not really seen in the reservoir. A large set of fence gates greeted the street marking the drive way which wound, also fence lined, up to the high point ending its course at a massive parking lot adjacent the swimming deck. The swimming facility, itself, was big, very big. It was easily ten times the size of any Olympic facility. But the parking lot was enormous beyond reason. No more than ten cars were ever seen parked in this lot constructed to hold thousands, and surrounded, as was the swimming facility, by twelve foot high steel hurricane fencing. On North Mountain, where trees once flourished, steel barriers dominated. There was a terraced entry to the swimmer's change house, boys door on the left, girls on the right, with a turnstile arcade-like entry in the center. A circular kiddy wading area was at the low end of the terraced land that fanned out before the change house