Random thoughts from the editor…
July 2025
By Michele Miller
What’s What New Port Richey, Editor
It’s afternoon, later than usual, when I head to the New Port Richey rec center for a 45-minute swim that will help me get away from it all. This is my time to clear my head of the daily tidings and the scamblings of this column I’ve been mulling over, because that is where it stays, clogging everything up and overwhelming other useful thoughts before you can get to the writing part of it
“One, One, One” is the cadence of counting laps as I crawl my way to the far end of the pool that will end with “Sixy, Sixty, Sixty” or maybe a few more if I’m up to pushing it because getting exercise is also part of it.
It is here, in the lap pool, where the water envelops me – a rocking, comforting cradle, that washes away the outter din, save for the hydration breaks that have me tuning into the top hit playing over the loudspeaker and the summer camp kids who are having one heck of a time in the next pool over.
I get it.
While some of my peers grouse about the noise, I can’t help but feel a nostalgic lift at their squeals and laughter, their hoots and hollers of enjoyment. The sound of the diving board launching a somersaulter or a more timid diver, followed by friendly cheers at the splashdown, makes for a pleasant pause. The lifeguards blowing a quick whistle at a pair playing a rambunctious game of tag with the direction to “walk, not run” on the pool deck elicits a knowing smile.
These are the familiar sounds of summer – the ones that rousted me out of bed early as a kid eager to make new friends at summer YMCA camp that happened to be right next door to the house I grew up in in my home state of Massachusetts. I couldn’t wait to spend the day making potholders and clay ashtrays, shooting bows and arrows and BB guns, playing kickball and working strands of colorful gimp into a braided keychain no one would ever use. Along with the ashtray.
There were occasional camp sleepovers and field trips to places like College Pond and Benson’s Wild Animal Farm, and Nantasket Beach, where you might get to hold hands with that year’s summer crush on the bus ride.
My parents wouldn’t pay for it, but I wanted to go to summer camp so badly that I cleaned my older sister’s room for the entire summer to pay for the tuition.
In later years it was sound of school buses delivering campers in the parking lot that often scrambled my butt out of bed when I slept through the clock radio alarm playing “Brandy” for the umpteenth time. Toss on a guard suit, a pair of shorts, and a YMCA staff t-shirt, and head out the door to make $35 a week working as a camp counselor, teaching swimming lessons and making sure no one drowned during open swim.
Those were the days.
“You live right next to the Y??!!” was often the envious reaction from townie kids who understood the good fortune in having an outdoor pool practically in your backyard, and on occasion, the keys to the place because living next door, you were a good option in opening up on Saturday mornings.
Accessibility was a factor, but so was the need to escape for me and a lot of kids who came of age in the ’60s & ’70s. We spent countless hours on the courts playing basketball or street hockey; bouncing on the trampoline in the gym, doing arts and crafts up on the third floor, shooting pool, and playing ping pong in the game room on Friday nights. Swimming laps in the pool because even back then, it brought a sense of peace.
The “Y” was more than a building and the grounds that surrounded it. It was a haven that came with a membership that rendered a “get out of whatever was going on at home that wasn’t good” card. A place that promised distraction and giddy laughter that could make you forget for a time.
More than once, I was granted a kind allowance for my bossy nature, along with guidance from a camp counselor who had gotten a whiff of the stern and often cruel parental influence that was overshadowing what she saw as the better part of me.
Those kinds of gestures stick in a way that can sometimes get you past turning into someone you don’t want to be or help break the chain of dysfunction.
The Y wasn’t a money-making prospect, and so sadly, after some years, the organization sold the property to a church whose elders filled in the pool and built elderly housing on the baseball field before selling the YMCA building to a developer who rehabbed it into upscale condominiums.
The house next door belongs to someone else’s family now, and these days, it’s about a 10-minute drive from my New Port Richey home to the rec center, which stands out as one of my favorite havens in the world.
It’s a place where summer sounds come around like clockwork still. Listen for it. Take it in. Find your peace.
Now onward.
Michele
