Longtime southwest-area residents say water was vital to surviving childhood summers

Summer memories are packed with pools and sprinklers for many residents.

General manager Ben Burkhalter took a break at the Born and Raised sports bar and lounge at 7260 S. Cimarron Road to chat about his summer memories. The Bonanza High School graduate said the key to summer survival was water.

“When I was a kid, just about every day, you’re at Wet ‘n Wild,” he said. “A season pass to Wet ‘n Wild was like the key to the summer.”

That and pools.

“Anybody who had a pool in their yard was basically your best friend during the summer,” Burkhalter said.

When he couldn’t make it to the Strip or a friend’s pool, Burkhalter would head to the Garside Middle School pool.

“You would pay a couple of bucks to get in, and you could go swim in the summer at the pool,” he said.

Tommy Sokolik grew up going to the Garside Pool at 250 S. Torrey Pines Drive, too. The Garside and Las Vegas Academy graduate liked the pool so much he got a job there.

“I was actually one of the staff that was here on the last summer that it was opened before it got remodeled,” Sokolik said.

The pool was a simple square with a diving board.

“It’s so much different now,” he said.

Packed with play equipment and sporting twisting water slides, the pool is more of a water park. Even before the remodel, Sokolik said neighbors loved the pool’s convenience and would come by to cool down and relax.

Southwest Las Vegas resident Bonnie Horsley beat the heat without leaving home.

“Summertime, I lived in my bathing suit,” she said. “I always had the little plastic kiddie pool and a soaker hose or sprinkler to play in, not the automatic sprinklers like most people have now. We had the little one that screwed on the end of the hose, and you moved it around the lawn.”

Though they were big lake fans, no one in the family had a pool when Horsley was young.

“So my Nana and I would sneak into hotels to swim,” she said. “My favorite memory is swimming at the original Mirage Motel, what was later called the Glass Pool Inn until its demise.”

When Horsley was 8, her family moved from the Paradise area to a home near Buffalo Drive and Blue Diamond Road.

“My mother didn’t use the A/C because of the expense, so I spent a lot of time outside under the sprinkler,” Horsley said. “We would keep the house closed up during the day in the summertime and open up the doors and windows at night to cool it off. Since we had no neighbors and no paved road, it actually was a lot cooler back then.”

Spring Valley resident Lynne Adamson Adrian said she’s grateful that when she was raising kids in the ‘80s, the air conditioning in Las Vegas was reliable.

“Not like the Hoover Dam workers who used to go to the old Boulder City movie theater wearing wet sheets to cool off in front of their fans,” she said.

Horsley’s grandmother had a swamp cooler.

“Since her cooler was on the roof, it wasn’t easy to clean out, so she would wet towels, and we would hold them over the vents in the house when it was first turned on to catch any dirt or debris that had accumulated,” Horsley said. “To this day, I have a swamp cooler on my home, and it is my primary source of cooling along with my ceiling fans throughout my home. I love the smell of fresh aspen pads.”

The end of the school year as summer approached was sometimes the hardest. The school bus didn’t have air conditioning, and the kids couldn’t wear shorts.

“It was so hot,” Horsley said. “First thing when I would get home, I would take a cold shower. Then I would hang a wet sheet in front of the box fan and sit in front of it to cool off further. I remember one summer, Mom and I went on a short trip. We came back, and every candle she had had drooped over from the heat. They were all tapers and looked like candle playground slides.”

Real playground slides were best avoided in summer. Shade coverings over playgrounds are a modern luxury kids a generation ago didn’t have. Burkhalter said kids would avoid the slides.

“Or you slid down on a T-shirt or something. You knew it was, like, an 180-degree slide, and you could melt your skin,” he said.

Adrian recalls taking her children to Bob Baskin Park.

“They had animal sculptures that spouted water,” she said. “The kids loved it.”

Horsley and her friends didn’t need playgrounds. In middle school, she remembers living on her Honda all-terrain cycle.

“I spent every free moment on the ATC,” she said. “In the summers, my friends and I would literally ride all night. We would start riding just before dark and, depending upon their parents’ permission, we would ride until dawn. Sleep all day during the heat, and ride in the cooler evenings — that was my summers. If we did choose to ride during the day, we typically would head to the caves at the very south end of Windmill, but not before soaking ourselves under the hose first. We built stone seats at the entrance, and the air coming out of the caves was always a lot cooler and so refreshing. We could spend the whole day up there just sitting in the entrance way and hanging out.”

For Horsley, the best days were when it rained.

“We would all ride our bicycles, motorcycles, horses, whatever we had, and just relish the rain,” she said. “To this day, I still always go out and stand in the rain.”

Born and Raised operations manager Curtis Boldman has been in town for 13 years. He said it’s actually cooler here than his native Phoenix. When people complain about the heat, he tries to put it into perspective.

“After spending a year in Iraq and a year in Afghanistan, yes, it’s hot here, but I don’t have to wear 90 pounds of body armor on top of it. So as everybody is going, ‘I’m dying,’ I’m like, ‘At least you’re not wearing a helmet or a uniform.’”

Contact View contributing reporter Ginger Meurer at gmeurer@viewnews.com. Find her on Twitter: @gingermmm.