CLAYBORN COUNTY, IA — The Clayborn County Municipal Pool will open Saturday at noon for the unofficial start of summer, two hours behind its advertised 10 a.m. ribbon-cutting, after parks staff confirmed Thursday that the combination to the chemical shed died in March with longtime maintenance supervisor Lyle Pemberton, age 71, and was not written down anywhere a reasonable person has yet thought to look.
Pemberton, who oversaw the pool’s chlorine, pH balance, and what he called “the situation with the drain” for thirty-one summers, was widely respected locally for his refusal to commit operational details to paper. Parks Director Dale Krenshaw said the department had assumed the combination would surface during the estate cleanup, then during the funeral, then during the reception at the VFW, and finally during a slow walk through Pemberton’s garage with his widow, Marlene, who declined to enter on grounds that “Lyle didn’t let me in there alive and I don’t intend to start now.”
“We’ve tried his birthday, Marlene’s birthday, their anniversary, the score of the 1987 Clayborn–Audubon homecoming game, and the year he bought his Bronco,” Krenshaw said Thursday afternoon. “We’ve also tried 1-2-3-4 and 0-0-0-0, because Lyle was, in many ways, a simple man.”
A locksmith from Carroll has been engaged to bolt-cutter the shed at 9 a.m. Saturday, an operation Krenshaw described as “regrettable but festive.” The chlorine, pH adjuster, and approximately forty pool noodles inside have been inaccessible since April 14, when the combination was last successfully entered by Pemberton himself, who, according to assistant supervisor Cody Brule, “did the dial like a man who wasn’t going to be around to do it twice.”
Mrs. Eileen Peterson, who has brought her grandchildren to opening day every year since 2009, said she would arrive at the customary 9:45 a.m. regardless of the delay. “If the pool isn’t open, we’ll sit in the car with the windows down,” she said. “That’s what summer is.”
The forecast for Saturday calls for 94 degrees, the leading edge of what the National Weather Service is describing as a heat dome and what Krenshaw is describing as “the absolute worst possible weekend for a padlock situation.” Cooling-center signage at the county building has been updated to direct residents to the Walmart vestibule, the public library, and, beginning at noon Saturday, the pool itself.
Pemberton’s widow, reached Thursday evening at home, said she had found a slip of paper in his sock drawer with the numbers 17-32-08 written on it in pencil, but could not confirm whether it pertained to the shed, the gun safe, or a storage unit in Audubon he had never adequately explained. She said the family would be at the pool Saturday regardless. “Lyle would’ve wanted us to swim,” she said. “Or he wouldn’t have. Hard to say with Lyle.”