The Village People’s YMCA
The smell of sweat and chlorine was unmistakable and overwhelming.
But it is forever locked in my mind as the first thing I noticed when entering the YMCA more than 50 years ago. The noise was there, too. Lots of yelling and kids running around.
At first, I was scared and intimidated because I didn’t know anyone. A lot of kids from my east end/Colvill School area generally couldn’t afford the $12 a year to join or didn’t know about the available scholarships.
I was sent there to learn to swim and play baseball. I did that – at least swim. I was never very good at baseball. Over the years I also learned how to play basketball, volleyball, racquetball, and pool, something my parents might have frowned on back then since they associated pool with taverns.
The entry to the Y was from the Main St. side. Today it is a historical façade that mostly serves as an emergency exit. After parking your bike in the racks out front and climbing a lot of steps, you entered the main floor hallway. The gym was on the right, through a door that was probably not up to code. You turned left to get to the main desk to check in. As you headed that way, you passed the TV room. This was a dark room mainly for the “residents.” Back then the Y rented some upstairs rooms to men. Remember the Village People song “YMCA”? Yep, that’s what they’re talking about.
The front desk was across the hall down a bit from the TV room. You checked in with your Y card (no bar code back then). Older teens working the desk checked out ping pong balls and paddles or they buzzed you through the door to the swimming pool in the lower level.
Swimming lessons were based on skill levels – Minnow, Fish, Flying Fish, and Shark. It took a number of years but I finished them all. I remember treading water for 10 minutes for one test. My first lesson was with a bunch of boys my age. It was a Saturday morning and we were nervously waiting in the TV room. Suddenly a loud voice boomed, “If you’re here for Minnow lessons, get down to the pool now!” This was how our instructor and Y director, Bob Schneider, introduced himself.
We raced downstairs and stripped down to nothing. Yep, swimming was done in the nude, at least for us boys. I don’t remember ever swimming there with a swimsuit on. Girls had lessons there, too, and separate from the boys, of course. But they wore suits. The pool room was so small you could touch the ceiling diving off the board and it really echoed in there. I felt terrorized for awhile, getting scolded for not following directions. But I survived. When you live right along the Mississippi River, knowing how to swim is a practical necessity.
Playing pool and ping pong in the big room at the end of the main floor was a step toward manhood. I got good enough to win once in awhile so began to feel like one of the guys. While waiting for a table to open up, we were mesmerized watching all the traffic out the huge windows. The Main St. traffic always seemed intense, especially at this, the busiest intersection in town, where Broad St. divided into East and West Avenues. You could see the Irish row houses kitty-corner from the Y, right next to Jorgensen Chevrolet. I remembered when I was five years old in 1960 and sat on my dad’s shoulders, watching President Eisenhower give his speech commemorating the new high bridge. Maybe President Donald Trump will come here in 2019 to commemorate its replacement to note how tremendous and beautiful the new bridge is. Better than any bridge ever built. It would be huge.
I was in a rock group that played at the Y for our 8th grade dance. Norm Westby was running the Y then and everything went fine until Carl Eastlund played the Jimi Hendrix version of the Star-Spangled Banner. Norm was not impressed and remembers it to this day. I saw my first fight after our 9th grade dance at the Y, right outside on Broad St. It lasted about a minute but was advertised well in advance and talked about for some time after.
The Y added a new swimming pool addition when the old VFW just down the hill was torn down. That VFW was where I ate my polio vaccine sugar cube and later, attended gun safety training. At the start of another expansion, a large crowd watched K. C. Flueger operate a crane that took the first wrecking ball swings at the upper corner of the Y with the big windows. The Wellness Center was added above the pool in a third expansion. All these improvements, and more, were necessary and well received.
Hal Carlson’s large mural in one of the gyms gives a nice visual history of Y activities. It boldly shows the Y’s father figure Joe Saul, who directed it for 42 years. If you look carefully you can see Hal’s son Steve and his friend Randy Schutz playing pool. They were classmates of mine.
When I think about the old building and my past experiences there I wonder how many cities the size of Red Wing have a YMCA like ours, made possible by forward thinking people who donated time and money to get it built and who continue to keep its many programs going, changing with the times.
One thing will never change, though. You’re still greeted at the door by the odor of sweat and chlorine. And that’s a good thing.