When Dad decided it was time for his boys to learn how to swim, he took us down to the Green River near Woodbury, Ky., and pretty much threw us in. Unlike the old Red Skelton story, we didn’t have to fight our way out of a grass sack to find the surface.
With a little encouragement, some downright fear and a genetic sense of survival, we learned how to swim in those muddy waters.
There were no Red Cross lessons and certainly no municipal swimming pool around to safely learn how to swim. There was nothing but a sand bar and a need to survive.
Which brings me to yet another poor decision I made recently, in an effort to bring the joy of swimming to my grandkids who live out in the country — hundreds of miles from the Green River at Woodbury.
At one of those giant discount stores, I spotted a massive 18- foot vinyl swimming pool suspended from the ceiling. In the middle was a poster depicting a half-dozen kids frolicking in the crystal clear waters of an “Easy-Set” backyard pool.
“Perfect,” I thought. “This will keep the kids out of the cattle ponds with the dogs and within sight of their mom.”
Then came the fun part. “Make sure the `Easy-Set’ pool is on level ground,” the instructions read.
“Hmmm, looks level to me. Start blowin’ her up,” I ordered. Within seconds, the pool was aired up and ready to be filled.
After the first hour of running the garden hose into the pool, I realized this could take a while. Then, it dawned on me they aren’t on a municipal water system, and all the water would have to be pumped out of the ground.
“She ain’t never run dry in 50-odd years,” I was assured.
That’s when the garden hose started sputtering, and belched out about 50 gallons of mud into the center of the pool.
“Shut her down,” I shouted. “I think we need to let it settle out a bit.”
By now, I could see that the south end of the pool was about two feet lower than the north end. That’s fine, I thought, thinking it would simply be easier for the kids to climb in on the lower end.
Studying the situation a little further, I was reminded that one of our local fire departments offered a pool filling service for a small fee. This, I thought, would clear up the muddy pool situation created by the well that ran dry in the middle of the filling process.
One tanker load later, the only thing that was clear was the realization that I had created an “Easy-Set” farm pond, complete with a layer of mud on the bottom.
Then came the joy of adding chemicals. “You need some flocculent,” one salesman told me. “Lots of chlorine and a load of clarifier,” another said.
Another salesman said to throw the kids in the pool, turn on the filter and let them stir everything around until it clears up.
None of that worked. Now all I have are several mud-filled filters and a bunch of kids who don’t care what color the water is, so long as they can jump in and play.
Reminds me of the Green River at Woodbury, Ky.
* Readers can contact Len Wells at (618) 842-2159 or [email protected]
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