The Swimming Pool and The Pond

The Old Farmer loved his children and the joys of childhood.

One year he got a scoop attachment for the old John Deere
and decided to dig a swimming pool for us.

He dug a nice long rectangle hole about 3  feet deep across the driveway from the house. Lined it with old shingles and waited for the rains!

Well it only got a few inches of water in it. To solve that problem he ran a line over to the hole from a downspout on the house.

Ha! Next rain it started to fill up and pretty soon we had a pool.

Next thing we see is a  mouse who fell into the water and couldn't climb out.

I was quite young at the time, the youngest in the family. Everyone surrounded
the pool so that wherever he swam one of us would be close enough to "rescue" him.

Of course he swam right to me and everyone is yelling "catch him catch him"!

So I caught him. Or maybe we should say he caught me! Right on the end of my

finger and he held on for dear life. I joined in the hollering and was jumping up
and down, trying to shake him off with little success.
Well I guess you could say he was rescued and at my expense!

Well after the rains came the mosquitoes and the pool was short lived.
Filled back in and soon more grass to mow.

 

A year or two later the township was widening our little one lane country road
and needed fill dirt. They came to the Old Farmer and asked if they
could dig a hole out between our fields and with luck a spring
would fill it up and a pond we would have!

It turned out to have several springs and filled in short order. Not being
stagnant there was no major mosquito issue, we spent the summer
swimming and playing and sharing the water with crawdads

and muskrats and tadpoles and frogs. The crawdads would craw over our toes,
we would catch the frogs and let them go (catch and release :  )
and I am glad to say I never came face to face with a muskrat.




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