The Green Lagoon, Part 1

The Green Lagoon, Part 1

Quentin Smeltzer, SmeltzerNation 7/18/10

This summer, while the British Petroleum company has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico, my family and I have been experiencing our own ecological disaster right here in Connecticut: our pool is green. 

For years our pool has been filled with crystal clear, blue water.  That all changed at the end of last summer when we made the mistake of hosting a pool party.  What ten children and a couple of adults did in our pool one can only imagine, but the effects were obvious.  Within days our beautiful, blue pool began to morph into the dreaded Green Lagoon.

Reacting to this development required a trip to the local pool store, only, I won’t go to the store in our town anymore.  My local merchant seems to believe that charging a four hundred percent mark-up on everything, so that he can make his annual income in the space of two weeks’ time, is the perfect business plan.  Not only does he charge prices that would make a Kardashian choke, he serves up his goods with a healthy dose of insolence and a quaint lack of cooperation.  The combination leaves me breathless. 

I once went into his store with a water sample and a box of half-used chemicals.  My plan was simple: show them what I had and buy only what I needed.  Instead I was grilled about where I bought the half-used chemicals.  Accusation followed interrogation.  “Did you buy those here?  You didn’t buy those here!” 

Okay, yes, and?

They told me the chemicals I had were incompatible with the chemicals they sold.  Evidently chlorine is not chlorine.  Bottom line (hold on to your hats):  they could not help me.  They refused to sell me anything!  

Okay, then…  

I drove to a pool store in a neighboring town and spent a week’s salary there.  I guess my local pool store showed me!

So it was off to the neighboring town again to nip the post-party problem in the bud.  There, I was greeted as usual by a single, teenage girl manning an empty store.  These girls, dressed in short-shorts and midriff baring fashion, come in one of two body types:  slightly overfed or absolutely perfect.  No matter.  Either way I have reached the age when I am invisible to women under the age of thirty. 

Within an acceptable time frame she put down her smart phone, tucked her gum into one cheek and ran our sample through the analyzer.  Her manicured nails clicked on the computer keyboard.  A print-out said I needed fifty pounds of this, seventy pounds of that, and maybe another fifty pounds of something else.  Follow the instructions and all would be well. 

The instructions, however, were problematic.  They said to put five pounds of chemical A into the pool, wait eight hours and then put in another five pounds.  They said to follow this procedure for chemical A, then for chemical B, and then for C.  Performing some quick math in my head I realized that, if I never slept, I could complete this procedure by Christmastime.  Assuring my wife that directions are for weenies, I dumped all of the chemicals into the pool at once.    

The pool turned into an ominous, milky-gray sludge.  It looked like the color the sky turns just before the tornado touches down.  It was the end of the season so I decided to batten down the hatches, close it up, and let a good winter freeze make everything right again. 

Over the winter, tragedy struck.  The very expensive cover on the pool, only in its second season of use, ripped.  Perhaps a metric ton of fallen leaves, buds, insects and bird droppings dumped into our own, personal gulf.  When we pulled off the tattered remains in the spring, the ominous gray color was gone.  The pool water was now the color of a lime green Popsicle.  Our long, local nightmare had only just begun…

To be continued…