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IN SEARCH OF OUR POOL
One hot, humid day this June my husband, Robert,
and I were driving around in search of consummate
bargains at less than perfect yard sales when we
heard an advertisement on the radio, a commercial
designed to capture the attention of anyone
feeling the negative effects of the day's sizzling
heat. We too, the advertiser said in an
enthusiastic voice, could be the proud owners of a
swimming pool if our credit only proved worthy.
Being inundated with unwanted, obnoxious
advertisements,on a more regular basis than either
of us would wish, our usual response when faced
with one is to ignore it until it goes away. This
time Robert's reaction was somewhat different.
Blame it on the ever oppressive heat or our
feeling more financially "well" than we had in
months. Whatever the motivation was, it proved to
be the impetus for Robert's turning to me and
saying "Honey, let's see if we can get ourselves a
pool!!"
Upon our arrival at the Recreational Factory
Warehouse ( hereinafter known as "the Pool
Place" ) we were deluged with images of the best
and brightest model pools, pool tables and
jacuzzis that that company had in stock at the
time. An overeager young man with a hungry look in
his eye approached us introducing himself as Jim
and inquiring if he could be of assistance. He
would not be the last person to approach us with
the same slightly wild anxious look about him.
Since we had come in knowing what we wanted in
terms of shape and size --- a 24 foot circular
above-ground pool ---the choice of which pool we
wanted was relatively easy. Then came what would
seem, at the time, to be endless red tape.
There were questions to be answered, forms to fill
out and papers to sign. Next, at long last, they
got onto the question of whether we were credit-
worthy. To cap the day off, we were turned down by
the first credit company the people from the Pool
Place called. It was too late in the day to call
any others. My husband's response was "Oh
well...we'll have better luck with
another company tomorrow." My own reaction was more
pessimistic: "Our credit is so bad that no-one
will loan us money for a pool." I did not share
this reaction with my ever-optimistic husband.
That my husband's confidence had proven to be on
the mark was born out when we got a call from the
Pool Place saying that although we had been turned
down for credit in their finance company's out-of-
state office, an Atlanta branch of the same
company had accepted us. I breathed a sigh of
relief, little knowing that this was just the
start of many days of "pool-waiting" to come.
Now that we had put money down on a pool we had to
figure out where to put it on our less than one
acre of land. This turned out to be one of the
easier jobs ; Robert and I had already planned
years in advance what we thought the most
strategic position for a pool would be, should we
ever acquire one. There were, however, conceivable
problems with the spot we had picked. It lay on a
hill, and thus would need to be leveled. It also
lay dangerously close to our grouchy neighbors'
fence line. In order to have our ground leveled,
we needed to get in touch with the pool place who
would arrange with one of their subcontractors to
level the ground and unearth the hole that our
pool would go in. It took close to a week to make
it happen but finally the men were there with
their Bobcat digging up our dirt and making a
hole. When they were finished, there was a level
place with a big dirt cavity with sand piled up at
its very center. It was well within our property
limits.
The next step would be to get the pool itself put
in, liner and all. This would prove to be a
longer, more drawn out process than we had
imagined. Again we had to get in touch with the
Pool Place. They sent over their pool building
sub-contractors, a company called Wavecrest. The
owner of Wavecrest, a lady called Carla, came and
inspected our hole and then said that the crew
would be there between 3:00 and 5:00 that
afternoon, to build our pool. 5:00 came and went.
Then 5:30 and 6:00. At 6:30 the builders still
were not at our house. Suddenly it began to rain.
This was not just a light rain but a huge storm,
complete with lightning, thunder and hail. When
the storm abated, an hour later, our dirt hole
was half full of water.
After a weekend of futilely waiting for the pool
builders to come, we phoned Wavecrest on Monday.
Carla said that the pool could not be built as
long as there was water in the hole. The next week
it rained every day. We spent the week using our
neighbor's suctioning device to empty water
out of our hole. One of the workers came to
examine the hole toward the end of the week and
said we still had too much water in it. Carla made
a weekend visit and said that we would have to
wait till the following Monday before our hole
was dry enough to get our pool installed. At her
suggestion we laid a tarpaulin over our hole.
Then came a couple weeks where I had to stay home
from work making mostly unreturned phone calls to
the Wavecrest people and waiting in vain for
their workers to show up and finish their job. My
two teenage children developed the semi-constant,
worrisome refrain of "When are the POOL people
going to get here???" The next weekend I finally
asked my husband to make a call to Wavecrest.
According to Robert his phone call was answered by
"Wavette of Wavecrest"! She promised, as others
had before her to have a service crew out before
the end of the day. The crew was not forthcoming.
When the pool-builders finally came, a few days
later, they looked suspicously at our still-muddy
hole and informed me that they did not think the
hole had dried up enough for them to put the pool
in. They made a phone call to Carla, who said that
they should do the best they could to complete the
job. They worked on it for less than an hour at
which point one of the workers came up to me
saying "Do you know where the bolts are?"
Apparantly when the Pool Place had delivered
the parts for the pool, they had left out
delivering the wall bolts which, as my husband
informed me, are one of the most important parts
in the correct building of a pool. "We'll be
back," the worker continued. "We're just going to
get some more bolts..." Since it was still early
in the afternoon, I had no reason to doubt his
word. Still, I never saw him again.
After a few more rather heated calls to Wavecrest
we finally got the pool completed on July 4. We
have yet to complete a privacy fence and a deck
around our pool, but at least my family has
somewhere to swim!
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