WEBVTT

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The next poem is
a poem about Ohio.

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I wondered about this
one for a long time.

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And it happens that my
brother is in the audience.

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He'll remember this,
although I don't

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know if he would have made
quite the same thing out of it

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that I made.

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It's called "The
Old WPA Swimming

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Pool in Martins Ferry, Ohio".

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And back there,
there was-- certainly

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the 30s, in the late 30s,
people were trying to get jobs.

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And they used to have the WPA.

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I wish I had the gift
to bring into the poem

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the humorous response that
people made to the old WPA.

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And I know that at one
time or another in the WPA,

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Uncle Sherman and Emerson
Buchanan and Uncle Willie

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Lyons were somehow connected
to this sort of thing.

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And I think the
old man was partly

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connected with it at one time.

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There were all sorts
of jokes about it.

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Maybe those jokes wouldn't
make any sense to you.

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You're all too young.

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But it was-- in some
peculiar way, it was funny.

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You know, it's how
to build something.

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But I was very moved by
that when I was a kid,

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and I still am, by
the people trying

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to build a swimming pool.

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What did it mean?

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What did we need
with a swimming pool

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when we had a big,
beautiful river

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right near it, right near us?

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Well, here's my
attempt to understand.

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"I am almost afraid to
write down this thing.

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I must have been,
say, seven years old.

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That afternoon, the
families of the WPA

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had come out to have a
good time celebrating

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a long gouge in the ground
that the fierce husbands had

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filled with concrete.

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We knew even then the
Ohio River was dying.

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Most of the good men who
lived along that shore

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wanted to be in love
and give good love

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to beautiful women
who weren't pretty

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and to small children
like me who wondered,

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what the hell is this?

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When people don't have quite
enough to eat in August,

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and the river that is
supposed to be some holiness

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starts dying, they
swim in the earth.

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Uncle Sherman, Uncle
Willie, Uncle Emerson,

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and my father in his way helped
dig that hole in the ground.

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I had seen by that time two
or three holes in the ground,

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and you know what they were.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But this one was not the
usual cheap economics.

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It was not the solitary
scar on a poor man's face,

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that respectable hole
in the ground you

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used to be able to buy after
you died for $75 and your wages

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tached for six months
by the Heslop Brothers.

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Brothers, dear God.

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No, this hole was
filled with water.

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And suddenly, I flung
myself into the water.

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All I had on was a
jockstrap and a bad bathing

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suit my brother stole from
a miserable football team.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Oh, never mind.

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Jesus Christ, my
father and my uncles

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dug a hole in the ground,
no grave for once.

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It is going to be hard
for you to believe,

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when I rose from that water,
a little girl who belonged

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to somebody else, a
face thin and haunted,

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appeared over my left shoulder
and whispered, "Take care, now.

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Be patient, and live.

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I have loved you all this
time and didn't even know

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I am alive."

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