The main reason for an in-the-ground swimming pool in New England was an unsatisfying week on Cape Cod. At least this was true for us. During our first summer back in the northeast, we decided we should take a week’s vacation on the Cape. After a long wait in lines of traffic, we finally completed our journey across the canal at Bourne and arrived on the extended arm of the Bay State. We had rented two rooms in a motel in one of the quaint towns along the southern, ocean side coast. That was the first problem.
Brochures and word-of-mouth made the villages picturesque, and they did live up to this reputation, most of the time, but the motels on this side of the Cape were tourist traps. The one at which we stayed was far from any private beach. All of the ocean side town beaches were make-believe beaches. They held only a few grains of sand, unlike the beaches of the mid-Atlantic states. Here the New England coastline consisted primarily of pebbles and larger rocks, which did not accommodate our tender, non-Yankee feet. And the water was cold. Only natives of the Commonwealth could venture into the water at more than an ankle-deep level. The Bayside was somewhat better. There, a visitor could find a few more grains of sand, a few less pebbles, and warmer water, albeit with a surf that was actually only knee-deep for some distance from the shore.
And then there were the rains, daily showers, for seven days. Summer had disappeared from the Cape and stranded us there, enclosed for much of the time by the walls of the motel, a refuge where we and our kids could argue without interruption. The five of us tried to escape in our station-wagon to drive to tourist attractions between Falmouth and Provincetown and back again to Sandwich. Being isolated in the multiple seats of a slowly moving vehicle (the traffic reappeared despite the showers) offered a slightly better environment than the confines of the motel. We returned, finally, to Amherst and vowed not to endure another family-vacation on Cape Cod.
Instead, during the second summer we lived in Amherst, we decided to have a swimming pool dug in our backyard. After all, many of our faculty friends had such facilities behind their own homes. I was never certain if they, too, had the construction problems we discovered.
We had not realized our house had a small underground river flowing beneath it. For several weeks our sons enjoyed sitting on the bulldozer and the trench-digger residing there, as our contractor attempted to empty out the hole he had started at my request. Later, I, myself, put in the French drains around the pool and planted the willow tree in the lowest part of the yard to provide a way to keep the chlorinated water and the natural fluids in separate locations.
And then came the bricks. With some encouragement, our boys helped Karen and me lay pavement blocks in the packed sand which we had wheel-barreled into place and tamped down as the foundation. I lost count of the number of bricks we put into position around the pool, but there was enough left over to make interesting piles and short fences in appropriate, nearby sites. At least, I did develop a magnificent tan while working in the yard that summer.
Then came the fall, and the time to “close” the pool, a process followed by other transplanted Yankees who had decided that swimming from June through August was worth the effort of closing and opening their pools every late September and early May.
Depending upon which season was approaching, I had to either lower or raise the level of the water in the pool by using its pumps accordingly. Then I floated (or removed) the log or two needed to prevent the water from freezing during the winter months. A blue, plastic tarpaulin covering the pool added to its protection. This cover was sufficiently porous to allow melting snow to pass through it when the winter sun made its way slightly above the horizon in December and January.
Each spring called for the ritual of “shocking” the pool. A mixture of salts and other chemicals killed the dark-green algae which had reproduced, even in the cold weather, throughout the pool. In some magical way, the green coloration vanished, and the blue tints returned. Once more we could jump into the chilled water that ultimately provided daily comfort for us in midsummer when the humidity in the Connecticut Valley became high enough to allow tobacco leaves to be harvested for the outer covering for some of the best cigars manufactured in the States.
In the end, the entire annual effort was worth the anxiety of wondering what a week-long vacation might be like on Cape Cod. Besides, there were some pool-less friends and their kids who did enjoy coming over for a swim and hotdogs during July.