Words cannot begin to express how I felt when I read a recent story in this newspaper that was accompanied by a photo of fill being dumped into a children’s swimming pool.
The Centralia City Council had not taken action to save the Pearl Street Pool, so the decision was made to fill it in.
I needed time to cool down before I started to write what I really thought about the situation. The language I would have used then, though, is not suitable for a family newspaper. If any of the members of the Centralia City Council had ever heard the sound of children laughing and giggling while they splashed water at the nearest occupant of the pool, I doubt there would have been a single voice in favor of continuing the filling procedure.
I suppose the argument for the council's approval is that restoring the pool would be too expensive — the city just doesn't have the money to continue restoration of it. To that, I would reply by asking the question, "What ever happened to the money obtained by the sale of all of the land at the bottom of Seminary Hill?"
You may remember that I opposed that act as well.
My motto against that transfer of ownership was, "Never sell land — you'll regret it someday."
My current motto would be, "Never reduce the learning experience and joy of children."
The installation of the "splash" pad next to the "splash" pool was not a huge success in my mind. Some other cities were getting rid of or reducing the numbers of their pools when ours was being built.
Last summer, whenever I would drive past it, I would seldom see more than three or four kids taking advantage of it. I couldn't help but guess that maybe 20 or more children would have been in the bigger swimming pool, if it had still been open.
Finally, it's a stark contrast to see the money that our neighboring city has been able to spend on playgrounds and pools — and schools. They have generous patrons and they pass levies.
I realize our economic picture has changed over the past few decades, but we used to be on a pretty even level. Let's hope we find some answers.
Thankfully, there's been some upgrading to the Schaefer Park playground recently, so that's a beginning.
Enough griping.
You might say that if that old duffer is so critical, why doesn't he run for the next opening on the Centralia City Council? The answer is something I've never made public. I felt I had to refrain from continuing to run for the position of council member because I could no longer decipher what was being said in the meeting room.
It's because of what my dad always claimed was a botched and primitive bit of surgery that is no longer used due to better medical procedures. The result was that I've been deaf in one ear since I was 8 years old. And while I was able to bypass most problems (and even passed the physicals for not only enlisting in the U.S. Army but also the stricter paratrooper requirements), the acoustics in the council's official meeting room would bounce back words at me from the hard flat walls in that room and my brain was increasingly unable to separate all the verbiage. That led me to, eventually, be unable to understand what was being said in that room.
At least that's what I blame it on.
While the human brain is capable of making sense out of so many things, there's always a limit to everything, isn't there?
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
