Dad and Prices Run Pool

Last night my friend Raymond Harrington and I were sitting at the mostly empty bar at the Hunter’s Den in Marshallton. A couple of women were sitting across the bar, to our right was a man and his daughter, and another man was to our left. The various conversations were simply a murmur of background noise when I heard Tommy Gears drift over from the other side of the room. I looked at Raymond and he obviously heard it too. Then I heard it again with Prices Run pool, I jumped off my barstool and went over to the other side of the bar and showed the woman my driver’s license and said “I’m Thomas Gears!” Then the man at the bar with his daughter said “I used to lifeguard at Prices Run with your father in the 1950s.”

W. Thomas Gears at Prices Run Pool

The woman introduced herself as Eleanor McNutt. She joked that my father was so handsome that when he was a lifeguard at Prices Run she thought about drowning her younger brother to get dad to come over to them. The man, Marty Apostolico, told me he remembered my father as an excellent swimmer and diver. Apostolico was a retired teacher and well-known high school football coach who lead Dickenson through its glory years as a football giant. McNutt is retired from the Dupont company also remembered my dad from his days working security at the Chestnut Run site.

The man on our left was wearing a Wilmington PD tee shirt. I turned to him and said “I guess you know my dad as well” and he shook his head yes and agreed. So goes life in Delaware, our little piece of the world where everybody knows everybody.

The both McNutt and Apostolico shared fond memories of Prices Run pool. Dad is 80 and still lives in the city on 9^th street near St. Anthony’s. Here he is talking about Prices Run Pool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaDEvd4jSBk