The Old Farmer loved his children and the joys of childhood.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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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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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8 comments:
I remember swimming in that pond many times but don't remember the part about the muskrats! I am wondering now if that was purposefully kept from me so I would swim in the pond 😬
Quiet giggle....
I remember swimming in the pond. I also remember Judy showing me the slides the muskrats made to slide into the water. We also used to skate on the pond.
So our thoughts drift to winter as the tar melts on the roads!
We used to ride our bikes about 2 miles to Lees Crossing Pond to go swimming....about 50 years ago. Once everybody got out, after a while you'd see a turtles head pop up; then a snake slither across; bloodsuckers were always there and some kids would be covered with them. I never had a bloodsucker on me, but 1 time when I was climbing out, there was a crayfish hanging from the bottom of my bathing suit.
Thanks for the memories Diane, where was Lee's Crossing?
I never had a "swimming pond" but as a kid I was a "pond guy" let me explain: in those times there 2 kinds of boys (don't know how girls behave about that): "stone guys" (who couldn't avoid kicking a stone, branch, a fruit, can...whatever even if it was a yard away....! And then there were the "ponds guys" who, if there was a pond, rainwater flowing, big or small in sight we had to cross it in the middle...with wet consequences of course (our boots did not last long, either the stones' or the ponds')! Now I guess a bunch of shrinks would come and help the poor children with such dangerous obsessive-compulsive disorder... by that time it was great, great fun!
LoL
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