Table the Notion of Retrieving Furniture From the Pool

The recent windstorm played havoc with our swimming pool. We have three box elders that I imprudently planted 30 years ago. In the fall they cover our yard, including the pool, with large brown leaves.

Worse than that, the gale-force winds had blown our outdoor table into the pool, along with one of its chairs. The large umbrella had been blown right out of the table, but mercifully it did not go into the pool. Leaves covered the pool and swirled on the bottom.

I had tried to scoop up some of the leaves with a net on the end of a pole, but the net came unfastened and sank to the bottom, where it rested, out of reach, along with two gardening trowels and two towels that had somehow been blown in.

We were both glad that the umbrella, though it had blown the full length of the pool, did not go in. Some years ago the umbrella had gone into the pool, and it was not easy getting it out. I had stood in the kitchen door drinking a cup of coffee and giving my wife instructions as she tried to wrestle the umbrella up out of the water. It was raining at the time.

Being about 8 feet in diameter, and bowl-shaped, the umbrella offered much resistance when pulled against the water. Once or twice I was afraid my wife was going to fall in, but she is very strong and finally, with my encouragement, she triumphed.

“There’s no way we can get that table out,” I told her. I suggested that we call our younger son and ask him to come over with his wet suit and fish the table out. He had done it several years earlier when the table had gone in and its safety glass top had shattered into cubes. He had not only had to get the table out but to scoop up the cubes. I had the glass top replaced with one of plastic. Now it was broken in two, with one piece remaining in the table and the other resting on the bottom of the pool.

It was Sunday and our son would probably be home. I hated to call on him again, but I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t sure our pool man could get the table out either. He was to come the next day. My wife telephoned our son’s wife. She said he was having a bad day. The lawn mower wasn’t working, their pool pump wasn’t working, their two cars weren’t working and my son had fallen while trying to skim the pool. Faced with falling on the deck or going into the pool, he opted for the deck and skinned his face on the concrete.

My wife relayed this news to me. I told her not to mention our problem.

I thought I might put an ad in the neighborhood paper for a licensed diver to come around in his wet suit and fish the chair and table out. But that would take too long and might be expensive.

One thing I was sure of. I wasn’t going into the pool. The heater hadn’t been on all summer, and the water was too cold. I tried reaching the table with a pole, but it was no use. The pole slipped from my hands and sank to the bottom.

That was our low point. We realized that the job of recovering the sunken objects was beyond our skills. I wished we had never built the pool. I wished I had never planted the elders.

When Aim, our reliable pool man, came the next day, we were waiting for him. He said it was a bad day. Most of his other pools were also full of leaves. I told him we had thought of hiring a diver. He said he thought he could do it.

Actually, he made it look easy, but then he has longer and stronger arms than I do. He took a long pole with a brush at one end and hooked the brush under an arm of the chair and easily pulled it to the side and lifted it up. He retrieved the table in much the same way, hooking it with the brush and pulling it to the side. My wife reached into the water and pulled it up on the deck. The table top was harder, but they fished it out.

He used his net to scoop up the trowels and the towels. He then used his vacuum to clean the leaves off the bottom and his net to clean them off the surface of the pool. Altogether it had taken him hardly more than half an hour.

But I hate being that helpless. I’m going to buy a wet suit and have my wife take lessons in its use.