This summer marks the 26th year I have lived in this building without going into the swimming pool. I have always tended to avoid the water, whether here, by the ocean down in Florida, or back in my native Chicago. Perhaps it has something to do with all those historic photographs of the Chicago River back in the 1800s that I've seen, showing the river filled with cow carcasses, garbage, rats, and raw sewage, courtesy of Chicago's meatpacking plants. Or maybe it has to do with those cruises we took as children down the Calumet River to Lake Calumet, on the far South Side of Chicago. That particular area had it all - ugliness, squalor, and mind-numbing pollution. The hit men along the shore would even wave to us as they disposed of the bodies. I'm sure the water is perfectly clean here, but on the other hand, why take chances?
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