Florida Couple Makes Waves as Six-Shooter-Shaped Swimming Pool Photos Resurface

A Florida couple’s revolver-shaped backyard pool is making waves on social media as photos recently resurfaced showing aerial views of the 1980s-era creation.

“You swim your lap down the barrel,” homeowner Louis Minardi told Fresh Take Florida, describing the designer’s pitch for the unusual, 55-foot pool.

“It gets deeper on that end. You can flip over from it, and then you can swim back.”

“Neighbors that have bought houses around here have all come by,” Minardi told the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications news service. “They’re all, ‘Is this guy a whack job?’”

Minardi and wife Raye Ellen’s home is in Odessa, Florida, near Tampa. Coincidentally, they live off Gunn Highway.

Minardi’s high school friend, Albert Jones III, suggested the design about 40 years ago. He knew of Minardi’s lifelong affinity for firearms and firearms safety, and developed a design he thought would resonate, the outlet reported.

Minardi was not keen on it initially, but he came around. The couple wanted a pool. They lived near a lake, but the lake had snakes and alligators that would make swimming hazardous.

Jones modeled his plans around a 1950s-era Ruger Blackhawk, a firearm with a long barrel. On a larger scale, that barrel is just right for swimming laps.

Originally, the pool’s perimeter tiles reflected the brown handle and silver body of the Western-style revolver, and the tiles at the bottom were meant as an artistic rendering of the trigger and ammunition chamber. The creative contractor even fitted a hot tub in the hammer section.

Though Jones passed away in 2010, his work lives on. Minardi told the outlet that friends and family use the pool to teach children how to swim.

Minardi, now 67, grew up hunting and received his first firearm, a double-barrelled shotgun, when he was in middle school.

Minardi and his brother operated a gunsmithing business in the 70s and 80s. Minardi now runs a family-owned taxi service.

Gun safety and gun education remain important to Minardi. He told Fresh Take Florida he has taken his children and grandchildren hunting and says the children are not permitted to use a gun unless they are properly trained an closely supervised.

See Fox 35 Orlando’s overhead footage of the revolver-shaped backyard pool below.