The Daily Record

Frederick Othman
McLean, Va. - Envy not the idle rich lolling by their private swimming pools of turquoise blue. Swimming pools are more trouble than babies, and, when being scrubbed, a good deal bigger. The fellow who owns one seldom swims in it himself; he's too busy crawling around in an underground sump with a monkey wrench trying to keep the filter adjusted. Otherwise, the turquoise becomes scummy green and the health department asks questions.

On this subject I am an involuntary expert. One of our more prosperous neighbors owns an extravagantly beautiful pool behind her ultra-modern house. She now is on a month's vacation in a mountainous area where the nearest swimming pool is 100 miles away. Before she left she asked Mrs. Othman, who should have known better, if we wouldn't like to move into her place, enjoy the swimming and kind of keep an eye on the machinery?

I wondered why a woman with a layout like that even considered leaving town. Now I know. She had to get a month's relief from minding that danged pool.

The day we moved in, the water looked a little peculiar. Almost milky. I was inclined to suspect some utter strangers who were disporting themselves in the shallow end (they said they were friends of friends), but it turned out the filter was on the blink.

Well, sir, at the side of the pool was a manhole cover, as on a sewer. I lowered myself into an underground chamber jammed with machinery, dripping with condensation, and sloshing two inches of water on the floor.

The pump that brought the water up the well was working fine, but the pump that circulated the pool water through a dingus full of chemicals was hot. It also was dripping. I turned the shutoff valve: it came off in my hand. And there I was in the gloom being doused as by a fire hose.

The water was creeping up toward my arm pits and I was in imminent danger of being drowned subterraneously when I got out of there and closed the master pipe.

Turned out the lady who owned the works had neglected to climb down the iron ladder and oil the bearings. These were burned out.

The motor weighed 250 pounds. It took four men and a winch to get it out of there; what the bill's going to be, or who pays, I have no idea.

I'm dosing the pool meantime with chlorine and little do I care if it reddens the eyes of our nearly-unknown guests. Even so, there forms daily on the surface a scum of green. This has got to be skimmed off, like grease from a roast.

Only difference is that this pan is nearly 50 feet long.

Some of the algae, of course, along with grass clippings, dead leaves, and no telling what all else, drops to the bottom. Only way to clean this out is with a kind of vacuum cleaner that works with water instead of air.

Manipulating the nozzle at a depth of 10 feet is hot work and also dangerous. Three times now I've nearly fallen in with the rest of the debris. I will say, though, that our callers have enjoyed our pool to the utmost; some of them like nice people and I'd like to know them better.

I haven't been able to join them yet in the water, because of being too busy on the sidelines. Only hope that the kind lady who turned this watery Frankenstein over to us enjoys her vacation where it's dry. And also that she returns soon. I don't know how much longer I can survive playing at being rich.