Pool readies for a splash
Rachel Cavanaugh
News Editor
After a hard-won cover effort, the facility is set to open June 7
It was hard for Goldendale residents driving down Broadway last weekend to miss the giant dome-shaped bubble rising from the town swimming pool.
The new pool cover was installed Saturday after months of anticipation, finally putting questions to rest about an open date.
“Now that the cover is installed, the final leak repairs can be done,” said pool manager Lori Anderson. “After a week of filling and heating the pool, the grand opening will start at noon on Saturday, June 7.”
The erection of the pool cover was not a simple process.
Dozens of volunteers joined staff and lifeguards to roll out the cover, get it over the slide, and bolt it down to the foundations. With each fabric section weighing several thousand pounds, the crew said getting the center piece up was a “major feat,” to say the least.
“We moved it one foot at a time,” said Jim Smith. “We had people on the slide stairs, and on the platform on top of the slide. When [the installation leader] said pull, everyone would pull and eventually the cover made it over the slide.”
Steve Flanagan, a representative from manufacturer Yeadon Domes, said they had originally planned to lift the center section over the slide as the cover began to inflate. However, plans were changed due to fears that wind gusts might send it blowing down the street.
“It’s huge inside,” said pool manager Lori Anderson. “We knew the dimensions when we ordered it, but it seems so much bigger than we envisioned. It makes the pool deck area seem so much larger than it really is.”
The cover will remain up for a month, and then be taken down on the weekend of June 28 and 29. According to Jennifer Smith, CKCPRD Board president, this is because temperatures will be too high later in the summer.
“They don’t realize how hot and humid it will be inside the cover once there is water in the pool and consistently hot days.”
Normally, she said, the cover will go up in the fall and come down in the spring. The only reason it went up this late in the spring was to check for problems and make sure everything was working properly, she said.
“We had planned to put the cover up last fall, and then when there were delays, we had a new delivery date of February,” said Smith. “We didn’t end up getting the cover until May, so that’s when it went up. It certainly wasn’t the original plan to put it up when the weather was in the high 90s.”
The air-inflated cover was paid for by inheritance money left by longtime Goldendale resident Wilma Olsen. The Central Klickitat County Parks and Recreation District have worked that last two years with the City of Goldendale for on the project.
Anderson said emphasized the importance of volunteers to the process, thanking people like Bishop Companies, Kern’s Welding, and Spring Creek Ag. She did point out, however, that next time, additional labor will be needed.
Read to your kids
Karen Henslee
It’s a popular stance... no one, not even politicians can mess this one up. And, it is bipartisan. There are no rallies protesting it, and it’s a win-win situation for everyone.
And I agree.
I’ve always loved to read. For as long as I can remember there seems to be no better way to escape for a few minutes than to dive into a book.
This hunger for reading began as a child, and I remember my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Young. Ah, she was great. After recess, her voice would settle us into our seats to listen to her read.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (she would dance around and sing all the oompa-loompa songs); The Mouse and the Motorcycle (we could almost feel the wind blowing in the mouse’s ears as he rode the boy’s red toy motorcycle); The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (we were all spellbound with the White Witch and the awesomeness of Aslan). Not to mention Island of the Blue Dolphins, Call of the Wild, and other great adventure stories. I was hooked.
But as great as these childhood memories are, reading to my own children is a joy that exceeded even my own memories. We could never have enough books. Little Golden Books, Dr. Seuss, The Berenstein Bears (many of which I still have pages lodged in my memory).
But my favorite memory was of reading through the Chronicles of Narnia series, specifically, The Horse and His Boy, with my daughter. Each night before bed, the two of us would climb up onto her top-bunk and read a chapter or more. I’d read a page or two, then she would. But mostly, she just wanted me to read.
While reading to our children can instill in them a desire for learning and a hunger for information, it is the closeness it brings that is the real value.
No matter how technology “improves” our lives, we should never give that up. Setting a child in front of “baby Einstein” videos won’t replace it. |
