from A Natural History to California

I.

So Dad decided that we should have a swimming pool. It was particially because it was a cool thing to do, but it was also because they were cheap. He found out that he could buy a Doughboy for something like $80 at Sears. First, he would built a deck, so we would have a deck and Emma would paint the deck. She planned to paint the deck red, but not “real” red, more like brown-red. And this was an unusual occurrence because Emma rarely left the television. This, needless to say, was before Emma died.