Installment 5

[Norm]

Great plastic blow up pool toy. Not quite. On Thursday I'll divulge the story behind this one.

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NORM SAGE

[DLRambo]

There are a whole lot of easier ways to clean the engine.

[Norm]

As Paul Harvey said "here's the rest of the story".

Many of you don't know that between his 1st career in the military and his 2nd as a home inspector Mike O tried his hand, no pun intended, as a swimming pool contractor. Mike had one pet peeve which was the fact that the excavation contractor failed to back-fill the pool shell using proper compaction proceedures. This resulted in settlement of the concrete pool deck. Mike decided to show them how it was done. He climbed aboard the roller and went to work. Only problem was nobody told Mike which pedal was the brake and which was the accelerator.

Actually, in the late 70s a road widening project was in progress a few blocks from where I lived. At the end of the day the workers would turn of the equipment and remove the ignition key. Those of you who are old enough may remember when the ignition key for a car was inserted into a slot located in the lower portion of the dashboard. You could also start the car,we called it hotwiring, by placing the foil side of a chewing gum wrapper behind the dashboard accross the ignition contacts. I never did such a thing I only heard about it. At any rate a teenager knew of this concept and started the abandoned roller. He was so surprised when it started he jumped off. In his haste to flee he triped on the gear shift and it started to move forward. The darn thing rolled right through a concrete fence and into the pool. Scary part was that this happened about 6:00PM and the homeowner and his family were having dinner. Can you imagine sitting at the table, hearing a loud rumble, and looking out of the dining room sliding glass door only to see the orange monster heading for you? True story. I've also got a photo of the crane removing the roller from the property.

NORM SAGE