This Florida swimming pool attempted to distinguish itself.
Louis Minardi has owned a pool designed like a six-shooter handgun for approximately 40 years, leaving his neighbors to wonder what kind of loose cannon they live close.
“Neighbors who have recently purchased homes in the area have all stopped by,” the 67-year-old Gunn Highway resident of Odessa told Fresh Take Florida. “Everyone is asking, ‘Is this guy insane?’”
According to the University of Florida’s student newspaper, the unusually shaped pool was constructed in the 1980s when Minardi refused to allow his children to swim in a neighboring alligator- and snake-infested lake without his wife Raye watching them with a shotgun from the deck.
An old high school classmate and builder convinced Minardi to allow him to design the 55-foot-long bespoke pool.
The blueprints that the late contractor and friend Albert Jones III offered were for a Western-style Ruger Blackhawk with a long barrel from the 1950s. Jones even detailed the tiles on the pool’s bottom in order to distinguish the various components of the pistol, including the trigger and ammunition chamber.
A Jacuzzi was put in the “gun’s” hammer, and the tiles surrounding the pool were designed to imitate the brown grip and silver body of a revolver.
Minardi recalls Jones, who died in 2010, instructing him, “You swim your lap down the barrel.” “It gets deeper on that end. You can swim back after you have flipped over.”
The pool’s surface has been replaced over the years, but its shape remains same.
Minardi, who founded a now-defunct gunsmithing business in 1976 and got his first gun – a double-barreled shotgun – in middle school, stated that the pool has served as a gathering spot for friends and family, who have used it to teach their children how to swim.
The homeowner, who has had a lifelong enthusiasm for firearms, emphasized the need of firearm safety in the Sunshine State.
Louis Minardi stated, “If you’re qualified, mentally able to have one and protect yourself, I believe you should have one, whether you keep it at home or carry it with you.” Yet it’s the same as everything. It is instructive. It involves educating the public about firearms and how they operate.”
»Florida swimming pool with the shape of a gun tries to stand out«