It’s summer, and you NEED a pool… 

Anyone who lived in the midwest in the 1980’s and 90’s will remember “the Watson’s Girl.” It was relentless. Every day, every summer, no one could escape her perky little voice in the low budget tv commercials she made for her father’s pool and spa company: “It’s hot and you NEED a pool….”

Unfortunately, it would seem the Watson’s Girl has taken up permanent residence in my head. Now, come summer, as soon as the temperature heads toward 90, I hear that same  perky little voice reminding me it’s hot out there, and I start scheming how to get my hands on a pool.  Problem is, there’s no money in the budget for a real in-ground version, and I just can’t  have one of those ugly above-ground versions intruding on my landscaping vision.

So I sat myself down a few years ago to brainstorm this problem. I came to understand that I don’t really need A Whole Pool. Too big, too costly, and altogether too much maintenance. What I finally realized that the urge is not to swim, but to float.

Enter the stock tank. Stock not as in “summer stock” or in “stocking the shelves,” but stock as in LIVEstock. Cattle. I need a big cattle watering pool that need only be big enough for me to float.

Fortunately, we have ready access to such things here in Kansas. I originally thought I would purchase a hip, corrugated steel baby that would look all sleek and industrial installed in my backyard. I went to the local feed store and amused the staff by “trying them on.”

First I climbed into the chic industrial version.  At 8 feet in diameter and about two and a half feet deep, it seemed like a good fit. I know this because I stretched out on the bottom for a true sense of scale. A word of advice:  don’t wear your church clothes for this one, kids, because you’re gonna get dirty. Apparently they don’t have much call for middle-aged women trying on stock tanks, and they’re all full of crud.

At the low, low price of $359, it seemed to fit the bill (and my visual aesthetic). But then I remembered how my women friends had been imagining us all together, fancy summer drinks with little umbrellas in hand, lounging in a circle in my new little pool. I decided to sit up to check out the group lounging potential and was dismayed to discover that the corrugated steel version, with its straight up and down sides, was just not going to work. Inadequate back support is just not acceptable in a stock tank pool  for a bunch of middle-aged umbrella-drink drinking women. When you get to my age, aesthetics no longer get to trump comfort. I had to move on.

For more about how this story unfolds, click the tag “Stock Tank Swimming Pool” in the left margin. There’s so much more to be told.