Mack Truck Shirt

Robinson-Trueblood pool celebrated as 'hallowed ground'

In those days, a lot of the older boys in the neighborhood would work the tobacco fields, Crawford said. Despite his grandmother’s wishes, he wanted to join the boys and make a little money. So he decided to sneak out one morning and hop on the truck headed to the fields. After one day of working in the fields wearing only shorts and a t-shirt, he realized it was not the job for him.

“The next day, they had a lifeguard class at the pool and I joined,” he said. “I believe I was one of the best swimmers they had.”

For Crawford, it wasn’t just that the pool was his first real job. For him and the rest of the area’s black community at that time, it was the only place for them to swim.

“This pool was built in 1953,” said George Ellis, who learned to swim there. “It was one of the first municipal pools built for blacks in the south. It’s hallowed ground. It means a lot to people who came here.”

Hundreds gathered Saturday for the sixth Robinson-Trueblood Swimming Pool Community Reunion, held at the pool near the corner of Alabama and Dade streets.

Ellis, a former Florida A&M University swimming coach who organized the first pool reunions, said the purpose of the event was to keep the pool’s history alive.

“It was the place we gathered to have a good time,” he added. “It was wholesome fun — there were diving boards, people swam, they danced and they socialized. Just good wholesome fun. And we want to share that with the young people today.”

During Saturday’s event, attendees swam and also enjoyed skating, ping pong, live entertainment and free food.

The pool has changed over the years. It became an activity pool in 2001, which added a water slide, water spouts and rain umbrella to the site.

But even before those amenities arrived, attendees said the original standard pool was quite the hot spot back in the day.

Vernon “Jack” Gilbert was one of about 50 who had stories of what is it was like at the pool during its early years.

How It Really Happened: Super Mario Bros. - Dueling Analogs

Into something tangible in the real world.

Here’s what I thought: I didn’t want to do the overalls on Mario, so I opted for jeans, t-shirt and blue plaid shirt. I explained the large “M” on the hat by making the hat a Mack truck hat.The giant mushroom hat on the mushroom retainers looks a lot like one of those Rastafarian cap. The idea that he might get high off of ‘shrooms just added to the illusion.I was originally thinking of making “The Castle” the name of a strip club chain, but it would have taken too long to effectively demonstrate that she was in another castle location in the comic. So I decided that “Another Castle” should be the actual name of a strip club. There’s not much more to Peach than she’s a stripper with blonde hair and wears pink and instead of being a Princess, her name is Princess (at least her stripper name is). As far as King Koopa, I had to figure out some sort of wardrobe that would allow me to have similar colors in the same place and look to match his personality. My solution was to model him after Francis Buxton from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

I always figured it was an axe at the back of the bridge; he doesn’t hit bowser with it, but he uses it to chop the bridge support, dumping bowser into the lava. I’m pretty sure that was standard procedure back in ye olden days, at least in some places. At an important bridge you have an axe on hand so that if the enemy is approaching and can’t be driven back, you can quickly and easily collapse the bridge, preventing invaders from using it.