The swimming season in Lake Michigan is very short. Young Frank rarely wasted a day of it. Frank’s father decided to build him the pool house when he realized that his son was not only enthusiastic about swimming, he was also fast. The pool house was a great glass greenhouse that not only housed potted citrus trees and other food producing plants, it also contained a beautiful black and white tiled swimming pool. It was the length of a competition pool but only about six feet wide. That was fine. Every day Frank would swim lap after lap after lap.
Frank swam like a machine. Nothing broke his rhythm. To watch him, you would never expect the epic adventures that were going on in his head. He pushed himself to swim faster by imagining that every literary sea creature was after him. He imagined he was a US submarine swimming to beat the German U-boat. He imagined he was a dolphin racing the castaway to safety. He imagined he was Jonah or Ishmael swimming to escape the great whale. Sometimes when got out of the pool he was startled by reality because his swim dreams had become so real.
Nothing real or imaginary could catch him. He never lost a heat.