"Mother's Day Pond" by Troy H. Cheek on Jun 02, 2005

What could any mother want for a combination Mother's Day and birthday present besides the name of her youngest son in print?

A pond, of course.

I know, it wasn't the first thing that came to my mind, either. But apparently my father and two brothers had been considering it for a while. I pitched in a few dollars and both nephews did as well. My second brother, T2, went off in his truck, named "The Contraption" for obvious reasons, and returned with a "complete" and "everything you need" decorative pond kit.

As always, that's a bit of false advertising. But the kit did include a 90 gallon pond liner, a plastic waterfall, a pump, a fountain head, and a bunch of hose. For a few dollars extra, the guys at the Wally World Land-Mart threw in a brass frog that spit water, complete with his own pump.

We presented this to my Mother who proceeded to call us turkeys, berate us for spending too much on a gift for her, punch us in the arms, and generally indicate in the way only a crotchety old woman can indicate that she was happy. We scouted out some locations, decided that we wouldn't get started installing the pond any time soon, and chucked the whole thing in the basement with plans to maybe have it installed by the end of the summer.

When I came home from work the next day, the hole was dug.

It seems that my youngest brother, T3, had come by earlier and scouted around until he'd found the perfect spot for the pond. My other brother, T2, had ended up not working and had come by later to help Dad just remove the sod and see how things would look. Encountering what they would later describe as the easiest digging conditions either had ever encountered in their entire lives, they ended up digging the entire hole and were test-fitting the liner when I arrived.

All that was left was for me, they said, to wire in the pumps.

Piece of cake.

Ha ha.

In their infinite wisdom, they had chosen a location which was well away from any of the existing outside outlets and equally far away from any existing holes drilled in the walls. I don't mind digging a trench and I don't mind wiring in outlets. I don't even mind drilling through cinderblock. But the 'new' house, if I haven't mentioned it, is brick. Red brick. All-American red brick. You just don't drill through that stuff.

I know. I've tried.

Getting a wiring hole through brick usually takes a hammer and chisel. A hammer drill is better. Oh, you can drill through the mortar between the bricks with just about anything, but try sticking a heavy gauge wire through a hole that small.

But I was in no hurry as they'd barely test-fitted the liner and weren't planning to actually install until after they'd brought in some sand.

When I came home from work the next day, the liner was installed.

It seems my youngest brother, T3, had come by earlier with a few buckets of sand. T2 had helped backfill while my father ran the garden hose. They were testing the pumps when I arrived.

"How are you powering those?" I asked.

"Extension cord running out of the utility room window," T2 explained.

Dad had even picked up a waterproof outlet cover and a Ground Fault Circuit Interupt receptacle. I was able to prevent him from nailing it to the wall right then and there by pointing out that the outlet box he had bought was in no way watertight. Not to mention that you can't nail to brick. I put off buying an outlet box that was waterproof for a week or so.

Once the pumps were running, still powered by the green extension cord running out of the utility room window, Mom decided to add fish. Of course, a newly-installed pond is not an ideal environment for fancy fish, so Mom did the next best thing by dumping a few dozen bait minnows into the pond.

The first few died horrible fishy deaths as we hadn't the filters put on the pumps correctly.

These were soon joined by some goldfish, and algae eater from the indoor aquarium, and numerous water plants. The algae eater didn't make it through the first night. I had told Mom that it was a tropical fish and early May in Tennessee did not qualify as tropical, but she wanted it out of the aquarium anyway. While picking out goldfish, she'd found some other fish she wanted in the aquarium and was afraid the size extra-large algae eater would munch on them.

A frog and a collection of salamanders found the pond on their own. As did several types of insects, much to the delight of the minnows and goldfish. I especially liked watching the mosquitoes get pulled under one leg at a time by minnows too small to eat them in one bite.

"Help me! Help me!" I cried. The family decided I was weird. Of course, I'm the only one who thinks that a bug zapper and a six-pack is quality entertainment.

Most of the salamanders wondered off and I haven't seen the frog for a few days. He was small enough that one of the salamanders might have gotten him. The fish had a pretty high mortality rate at first. We've since balanced the pH and stabilized the minerals and even invested in some anti-fungal treatment, so we think we've got that licked now. We're putting off purchasing any expensive fish for as long as we can force ourselves to do so.

I still haven't wired in that outside outlet. I've been claiming that I haven't located the right wire yet. In all honesty, I just don't want to have to try to get through that wall.

I would have called this story ended, but Dad called the other day asking if he could borrow my truck. My truck insurance only covers me as the driver (long story), so I offered to drive him wherever he wanted to go. He wanted to go to a nearby (20 miles or so) home improvement store. He'd decided that everyone visiting the pond was beating down the grass, so he was going to put out a few paving stones to make a path.

"I made some measurements and sketched the layout here. Can you calcuate how many stones we'd need to do this? I don't want to end up one or two short."

I calculated. "Um, is this inches or feet here? Feet? Okay. I make it as 72 twelve inch squares or 52 sixteen inch squares, depending on which you want." A few, the man had said.

"Hmm. Well, it says here that the twelve inch squares are 22 pounds each. I think that's heavy enough since we'll be moving them by hand. How many will your truck haul?"

I figured that I might could haul 40 or 50 squares in my half ton truck. As luck would have it, the store only had 48 in the particular style that Dad had settled on. Dad decided we'd buy the rest at a later date.

I looked at the pallet of stones and turned to the salesgirl. "Since we're taking all you have on that pallet, think you can get a forklift out here and just load the whole thing into the back of my truck?"

"Oh, no, sir," she replied. "Our insurance doesn't let us drive the forklift in the parking lot during store hours."

A quick game of 20 questions revealed that we couldn't pick up the stones after the store closed, she couldn't help us load, we didn't have any work gloves with us, and gloves were on sale for just $8 a pair. We toughed it out without gloves, Dad getting the stones over to the truck and me doing all the lifting and stacking. By the time we finished loading, my truck which usually looks like it's running downhill due to the lift kit in the back suddenly looked like it was running level. The tires weren't too badly squashed, so I assume we were close to but not over the weight limit.

The drive home was a white knuckle affair. I just knew that I'd have to make a quick stop, which would result in either the truck not stopping or the truck stopping but the stones continuing through the cab of the truck and its occupants. That would be us. Unfortunately for the purposes of this story, we arrived home without incident.

Unloading was much easier, as we had gloves and could stack any way we pleased. I left Dad with the understanding that he wouldn't do anything with the stones until the next weekend.

When I drove by a few hours later, he was digging up sod. "I just wanted to see how a few of them would look," he told me. I let him do the digging while I lifted and placed the stones. We did about half of what we'd bought before knocking off for the day. The rest would wait until the next weekend.

The very next day I drove by and found my Dad digging while my two nephews were doing the lifting and placing. They placed all but one of the remaining stones that day. The only thing keeping Dad from finishing that day is that the store hasn't gotten any more of those stones in yet.

Of course, once that load of sand comes in, we'll have to pry all the stones up and re-seat them.

And me? I still haven't found that wire yet. Darn.

Copyright 2005 by Troy H. Cheek. Reprint with prior written permission only. Comments and questions to