Olde Reed Addendum

The previous post featuring the Quest article "The Outdoor Pool Seriously Used To Be Awesome" featured a largely illegible jpg of the article in question: herewith the text:

Back in Olde Reed, when there were lots of "e"s at the end of words for no apparent reason, there was something known as the outdoor swimming pool. It was nestled in the west end of the canyon, surrounded by trees and blackberry bushes. This was a fixture of my childhood, being a Portland native. Swimming lessons were conducted there. you would walk down the precipitously steep steps as the familiar summertime smell of chlorine and sunscreen wafted up to you.

Now this wasn't one of these sissy modern day pools with the zero depth entry and laser guided water levels; it was a classic pool, probably from the fifties. It had cliff-like edges, and a real diving board. You just don't see that too much nowadays.

Then, several years ago, I think, a tragedy occurred. The watery heart of Reed College was ripped out in a blitzkrieg of enviro-cow-towing. Inexplicably, it was replaced with a fish ladder. Now, what kind of trade-off is this? We lose a pool in which people can frolic in the summer, and replace it with a fish ladder that someday a salmon might swim up and then die the in the swamp.

Some will say that the pool was hopelessly out of date, and would have required hundreds of thousands of dollars to renovate it and keep it from killing kittens and puppies with deadly chlorine gas clouds. Others will say that precious few actual Reedies used the pool, and it was locked up almost all of the school year. Regardless, it was awesome.

So now we spend money in order to build a ladder for fish. What next, a zip-line for squirrels to get across the canyon easier? A miniature escalator so the ducks don't have to walk uphill? I say let the animals figure out how to get around. We can't have our precious resources diverted to lazy animals who live off of government cheese and welfare checks.

So, excuse me if this dinosaur is a little old-fashioned, but I liked the days in which we spent our money for people instead of fish, for summertime fun instead of bowing to slimy fish and their heartless, beady eyes.