Before she left New Hope for good, Melecia Swedbergh used to come to the Slip ”n” Dip all the time.
Something of an institution in Columbus, the water park is a popular destination for those who want to cool off on a hot day like Saturday, with its 96-degree temperatures.
The park is a modest place, equipped with a large pool and a slide with plenty of switchbacks, The air-conditioned concession stand serves as another way to beat the heat with its snacks and arcade. The walls, splattered with blue, teal and purple paint, add to the coolness.
But for Swedbergh, the Slip ”n” Dip”s appeal is in its nostalgia, and on Saturday she brought her daughter, her four grandchildren, her sister-in-law, her nephew and some family friends to the place where she spent so much time in her younger days.
In 1983, she graduated from New Hope High School and quickly got married. It didn”t work out, and the divorce was hard on her only daughter, Kimberly.
“It really bothered Kimberly,” Swedbergh said. “She was torn between me and her dad. We just married too young.”
She married again and followed her new husband, a Navy man, out to Jacksonville, Fla. Before long, that too ended, and she moved back to Starkville to help her parents, George and Betty O”Brian, by managing their long-term care organization. Swedbergh stayed on after her father”s death, an event which shook the family.
“My father”s passing was a devastating time for us,” she said. “He was the rock of this family.”
Swedbergh said that her parents were some of the first in the nursing-home business, but when more homes started popping up, the family operation had to shut its doors in 2007.
Swedbergh spent the next couple of years looking for jobs.
“The economy was so bad that I had to take anything,” she said. “I”m well qualified for other things, but I didn”t have a choice. I prayed, ”Lord, God, please just help me.””
Finally, she found a job at a British Petroleum gas station. She walked in doubting there would be an opening, but she was astonished when the cashier told her that the station was looking for help.
“I just started crying,” she said.
But it”s not an easy time to work at BP. Following an explosion at its Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the company is dealing with a public relations nightmare, not to mention the worst natural disaster in American history. Not only is it experiencing severe drops business; it”s hemorrhaging money at a rate of 50,000 barrels a day, according to new estimates by the U.S. government.
At the gas station, Swedbergh cooks. She wakes up around 2 a.m. and gets to work at 4 a.m., just in time to start a batch of biscuits and gravy for the first round of customers who start to roll in around 4:30 a.m. to fill up. She hopes the job isn”t permanent.
Despite the plot her life”s story has taken, she realizes there are others with far greater problems.
“You do the best you can with what you”ve got,” she said.
Instead of complaining, Swedbergh revels in her family. She saved her money in anticipation of going to the water park with her grandchildren on Saturday.
“It”s like, ”Do you want to go out and eat tonight? No, I”m saving for my grandkids,”” Swedbergh said. “I just had to bring these babies to this water slide.”
“It”s a good way to get them to chill and wear them out,” added her daughter.
To Swedbergh, a peanut-butter-and-jelly lunch in the shade of a big tree is better than a $56 dinner out.
“You might spend $6 on watermelon and laugh and have a good time,” she said. “Peace of mind and watching my kids be healthy and grow up — that means more to me than anything. Those are memories nobody can take from you.”
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