The Pool

It all started on a Friday afternoon in September 1993 while Ferg and I were sophomores. We lived together on the 12th floor of Towers South on the Honors floor. A bunch of us were outside playing stickball after dinner that night when Chris Wright drove up and started talking to one of us (I can't really remember who, but that isn't important), and then got back in his truck and left. Rumor had it that he was going to Wolohan's lumber. I had no idea why.

The next thing I know, Wright has already been to the lumber yard, and has brought back 2 4'x4'x1" pieces of ply wood, a large roll of plastic, and a roll of duct tape. I then thought it was appropriate what was going to happen to all of these materials, because I thought we might have been building a fort or something, and you know how much fun those can be! Well, Ferg told me that we were going to attempt to turn our shower room into a swimming pool. Of course, I had already turned the showers into a sauna, but I had never even THOUGHT of a pool!

I immediately claimed my non-participation in this fiasco because I was not about to go down with everyone else. Before you could blink, Ferg, Wright, Craig Garner and Chip Basso, a couple of our friends from Sesser, IL, had wrapped the 2 pieces of plywood in the plastic and taped up the cracks in the plastic. The wood was now water proof. Then, it was on to the shower room. The wood was placed flush against the entrance to the showers, layered again with plastic, and duct taped. All the drains were duct taped, and the showers were turned on.

I begged them all to stop, but there was no stopping the pool now. We all sat around for hours contemplating the absolute worst thing that could happen. The worst thing that we could come up with was if the floor were to collapse under the weight of all the water and all the people in the pool. We decided that if the floor was to collapse, the 11th floor sure wasn't going to stop all the water either. Neither was the 10th or the 9th or the...well you get the point. Towers South was going to have a giant hole going down the center of it. Ferg told me, "If that floor goes, I'm going to just jump in the hole, 'cause I don't want to be around for what happens."

Then, just like any honors floor would do, we did the math and the physics of the situation. After about 20 minutes of number crunching, we deduced that each square inch of the floor would have to support about 1 2/3 pounds. After we saw that the floor would support Anson Rinesmith jumping, the engineers gave the go-ahead with the project.

Eventually (about 2:00 a.m.) the pool was finally finished. It was about 2 1/2 feet of pure fun! Of course, I didn't set foot in the water, because I still wanted nothing to do with this project, but everyone involved had a great time as you can tell by these wonderful pictures. The pool lasted only about 30 minutes until the tape began to peel off the drains, but everyone agreed it was well worth the time, effort, money, and risk that was put into "the pool."

Unfortunately, that was also the night that Paul "Bo" Hill was seriously injured on our floor due to a water fight. We all prayed for Bo, and he came through well.