Thrift
“Thrift: the art of not getting what you want, but wanting what you got.”
~ Anonymous
I love that saying! It has carried me through most of my adult life and is probably the number one reason why I never jumped off a bridge. In my first marriage (the ‘old days’), it was not just a saying, it was a way of life for our family. Well, for at least one of us, anyway.
I always wanted a swimming pool. Not one of those blow-up types where by the time the rings are all filled with air, you aren’t – and when your bluish color returns to normal and you come out of your coma, then the kids can jump in and have a blast. But, I dreamed of a real, live, water-deep-enough-that-your-whole-body-is-covered-with-water-at-the-same-time kind of pool. My then-Mr. Wonderful always said, “No.” Excuses given: we can’t afford to buy a new, $300 pool (honest…that’s what they cost back then), the chemicals and what-not to take care of the pool cost too much money, the water bill will go sky-high, and further more, you can just go to the lake with the kids each day and we won’t have the muck and mess of muddy foot prints all over the house…and so on. Then, one day, my brother took pity on me and decided to give me his old above ground pool. His family no longer used it, he said, and it was a shame to see it go to waste.
I felt like I had died and gone to heaven! At last – a pool was finally going to be ours!! Happy, delirious thoughts of no longer having to trek four energetic, rambunctious kids to the lake anymore caused me to go into a kind of trance. Finally, the big day arrived and the pool and its components were dropped off at our house. “It won’t be long now,” I thought, “and we’ll all be enjoying summer like never before!” As a kid, I also believed in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny way too long – but that’s just me.
We unrolled the skin of the pool and were a bit shocked to realize that a 15’ above ground pool measures approximately 47’, when stretched out on the lawn. That’s when the problems began. There were lots of rust spots in the metal – some of them huge holes, actually – that demanded fixing. Mr. Wonderful came up with a plan:
He spent about $50 on a new heavy-duty electric drill, $60 for special little grinding/sanding bits for the drill, $15 for a 100 foot specially rated extension cord, $30 for a pop rivet gun, and believe it or not, about $150 for one large piece of custom cut sheet metal. The idea was, he was going to sand away the minor rust spots, then patch the sheet metal in where there was a huge hole. Hard to imagine, I know, but the best way to explain this is to take a tin can, cut it from top to bottom, spread it out a bit and ‘patch’ in another piece of tin, attaching it to both cut ends with pop rivets. Yeah…really, that was the plan. Every evening for about 2 whole months, that is what we did: unrolled the metal ‘skin’, and sanded and scraped it until I thought I would scream! FINALLY, it was time to pop rivet the new metal onto the old. We had, at last, one complete circle of metal – and then it was time to buy the special, marine-rated paint (cost: $50 a gallon – we had to buy two). Expenses thus far: $435, or about $135 more than the cost of a new pool already – and we weren’t quite done!
It was time to level the ground, and lay down a cushion of sand. This we did over the span of one week, working each night after dinner until after dark. Cost of sand: $40. Excedrin, Ibuprophen, muscle rub medicine, new heating pad: approx. $45.
At last, the moment arrived to put the liner in the pool. For some strange reason, it did not seem to quite fit. We pulled and pulled, stretched, coaxed and cajoled the plastic liner to its absolute breaking limit, and with about 1 inch to spare, for over-hang all around the perimeter of the pool, it was at last in place. Something didn’t feel right, I told Mr. W. Shouldn’t there be more over-hang? “Nah….don’t worry about it,” he said. (We learned the very hard way that when a pool liner is left to dry out for a while, it shrinks. Who knew??)
The water tanker came the next day. Since we had a well, we figured it would take about 3 months to fill the pool and it was already July. So, he bought us some water. Cost: $50 (cheap, I know, but this was back in the ‘80’s). As the water began to enter the pool, the liner began to slip. First one area, then another was sliding back in toward the inside of the pool. Like madmen, Mr W, the water guy. and I started pulling like mad on the liner to keep it in place.
“Go get some hot water, and that will help to stretch the plastic,” the water guy said.
“Uh…I think we’d better stop,” I ventured, “We need to get a new liner, I think.”
“No..no..it’ll be alright. I’ve seen this before,” Mr. Water- guy said. “Besides, I can’t get my truck back up your driveway with a load of water on it,” he concluded. I asked if he could just dump it on the ground and Mr. W almost had a conniption!
“And waste all of that money we spent so far?” he screamed. “We’re going ahead!”
So, kettles of hot water were provided and sure enough, the plastic did begin to stretch…and hold!
“See?,” Mr W. said smugly to me, “I told you it was going to work!”
The kids by now were in the pool, with the water nearly to the top. My life long dream of a pool in my own backyard was now within moments of being a reality! Visions of pool parties, tall cool drinks on a cute little patio table on the deck we were going to build, no more sopping wet bathing suits and towels making a mess in my car and so on filled my brain. I could barely contain myself!
At that point, I decided to go in the house to get a cigarette. I had been standing by the sheet metal patch, and left my post to go in the house. As I walked toward the back door, I heard a sound that I will never in my lifetime forget. I can’t quite describe it – words don’t exist to tell you what it was like. All I can say is, it was part way between a screech, a bang, and a tremendous “WOOOOSH!”, all at once. I turned around to see my now nearly-flattened pool, in this monstrous, obscene “U” shape, lying in a heap on the ground, with my four kids riding a tidal wave down into far reaches of our backyard. (Don’t worry….they were fine).
The irony is, had I been standing where I was standing just moments before, I would have been cut in two. The break occurred exactly where the sheet metal patch was, and with the force of that much water suddenly escaping, pop rivets were found weeks later about 100 feet away from the center of the scene As it was, Mr. Water guy had a cut on his arm about 6 inches long that looked purely ugly – and he had been standing right next to me. It was the one time in my life where I can safely say that smoking saved my life.
Listen carefully – if you really want to save money, do it right the first time. Some things are better left alone and you will be richer for having bought brand new to start with. Our grand investment of $570, give or take, resulted in no pool and praying we weren’t facing a lawsuit from the water guy. He was only too kind and we never heard from him again.
Incidentally, we never did get a new pool. Mr. W. just wouldn’t hear of it, and besides, we spent all of our ‘extra’ money already. For the next several years, I continued to truck my kids to and from the lake each summer.
I may not have gotten what I wanted, but I wanted what I got: four happy, tanned, and pleasant- memories- of-afternoons- by- the -lake kids.
And, evenutally, a divorce.
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