Ashworth Pool delights survive the decades
The official high temperature in Des Moines was 93 on July 12. No wonder they were lined up to get in when Ashworth Swimming Pool opened at 1 p.m. that day, like sinners thirsty for redemption.
It was a summertime scene that’s played out more times than a cashier’s clicker can count over the past almost 90 years. But the origins of the oldest municipal pool in Iowa and site of the first government co-sponsored “Learn to Swim” program in the nation go back even further than that.
The Ashworths left England for Iowa in the mid-19th century and moved into a log cabin near Walnut Creek, just west of 63rd Street and what was to be renamed Ashworth Road in 1941. As the family prospered and grew so did the surrounding community, to the point where a couple of descendants, the Ashworth boys let’s call them, eventually made a grand gesture in repayment of the family’s good fortune:
“Ashworth Park, the gift of Charles and James T. Ashworth to the people of Des Moines — December 4 1924. Overland from New Hampshire they came in 1851. Here on the neighboring prairies respected and loved they lived to witness the transformation of a primitive land into a rich and powerful commonwealth. In commemoration of those pioneer days they have dedicated this piece of virgin land to the people as a playground forever. To their memory this pool is erected as a monument by the City of Des Moines.”
That’s the inscription on the limestone mural that fronts the pool entrance, the only part of the original facility that remains. When the pool opened on the better late (in the summer) than never date of Aug. 28, 1926, it featured a sand deck and gas lamps.
The city’s design committee included Ding Darling, a Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist for The Des Moines Register and prominent conservationist of his era. Carved in the ledge atop the memorial facade are the initials of many a swimmer, some of them couples in the throes of summer love.
When Ashworth — or Splashworth as some have known it — closed at season’s end in 1982, it didn’t reopen until 1984. That summer of 1983 must have been an especially long, hot one on the west side of town while the landmark pool was reconstructed.
On that steamy Sunday last month, an old bullfrog made for the same watering hole where he’s been going since the early 1960s. There was a water polo tournament going on that rendered the diving boards off-limits. Usually they are fun to watch. Aerobatics by the fearless, jackknifing and somersaulting; pencil dives by acrophobes who just want to say they’ve taken the plunge from the high board. But water polo, for all the vigor it demands of the players adorned in caps like the ones astronauts wear beneath their launch helmets, is tiresome to watch, especially in heat more suited for basking — heat so extreme that a wasp glided in for a cooling dip of its tiptoes. So the old bullfrog plopped in a shallow corner to reflect. He was struck by the amphibiousness of humans; the young living in water, the adults staying mainly on land. In the drainage trough a big beetle did the dead bug backstroke, much to the intrigue of a goggled tadpole in colorful trunks.
The old bullfrog came in feeling hot and heavy. His back ached. But buoyancy lightened and refreshed him. The blended scents of chlorine and sunscreen were a mild intoxicant. Small kids leapt from the deck into the reassuring arms of parents and grandparents. Bigger ones clamored for attention, showing off bold new strokes, making the big splashes that all kids want to make in the eyes of their elders. Swimming pools offer one of life’s major milestones: The Deep End. Most of us cannot wait to get there, unaware when first we do that there will be no going back.
Beneath its cool, twinkling, beckoning surface lurks responsibility. But first there are can openers off the springboard aimed at splashing lifeguards, stuck at their posts like sitting ducks and armed with only whistles and megaphones. There is a breathless underwater world of weightlessness and garbled, muffled speech in bubbles otherwise reserved for comic strips. And there is a reassuring sensation of unsinkability that’s transferable to life on dry land.
There used to be an annual neighborhood competition to see who could make the most trips to Ashworth each summer. There were the car rides to the pool when the windows were rolled up and the air conditioning was turned off on Snake Street (the curvaceous block of 44th Street between Ingersoll and Grand avenues) to get as hot as possible before racing inside and jumping right in. There were cute girls. And there were the walks and bike rides home via the Greenwood Market at the corner of Polk Boulevard and Grand where fruit pies and sodas satisfied the extreme hunger that always followed an afternoon of swimming.
Looking around, the old bullfrog thought it might have been nice back then if Ashworth had featured the concession stand and basketball hoops that it does now. Another wrinkle added in recent years is the season-ending allowance of dogs into the pool for a refreshing dip — Aug. 23 this summer — a new slant on the dog day(s) of summer. But he decided it really couldn’t have been any better than he remembers. Better than the squeaky wringer they used to dry their trunks in the locker room. Or the contests to guess the water temperature, which was always posted in the cashier’s cage. Or the re-enactments of swashbuckling scuba diver Mike Nelson from the then-popular TV series “Sea Hunt.” Or, sigh, the cute girls.
Even with its modern tweaks, Ashworth is behind the “aquatic center” times compared to other municipal Des Moines facilities at Northwest, Nahas and Teachout, which all feature water slides, now a commonplace draw. The attendance trends reflect as much. According to the last two Des Moines Park and Recreation annual reports, Ashworth and Birdland (the only city bathtub besides Ashworth that’s slideless), the old-school pools, were the least attended. In 2013, Ashworth attracted 18,000 swimmers. Last year, only 11,000 came. (In 2013, Northwest led with 29,000; in 2014, Teachout did with 16,000). But the fuller context is that those totals — plus the 80-plus prior ones — add up to well in excess of a million idyllic summer afternoons enjoyed across several generations.
When the Ashworth boys moved to this area in 1851, Jimmy, let’s call him, was 6 and Charlie, his little brother, was 3. Probably the closest thing they had to a swimming hole growing up was nearby Walnut Creek, which shriveled to a trickle my midsummer. Jimmy died before the pool opened in Greenwood Park, but Charlie lived to see it. And it’s not hard to imagine him standing at the fence, an old man watching kids beating the heat. Maybe late in that opening summer of 1926, one even called out, “Watch this, Grandpa!,” before cannon-balling into the water just like that goggled tadpole in the colorful trunks did on a sizzling summer Sunday in July of 2015.
Don’t you hope so?
MIKE WELLMAN has lived in Des Moines most of his life. He is an author and freelance writer who also works as a staff writer for the Des Moines Public Schools.