Beaver Pond. Everyone who grew up in Franklin went swimming here. My sisters and I took swimming lessons, and two things stand out in my memory from that time. 1. I was too weak to pull my chubby self up on the floating dock, and 2. The "how did Beaver Pond get it's name" incident.
My mother wanted to know why Beaver Pond was so named. She assumed it had to do with the rodents, but wasn't sure. She certainly didn't want to ask such an embarrassing question herself, so she bade me to make an inquiry of the lifeguard teaching us how to swim, as I was just a little kid, and who would mind if a small child asked a silly question? I asked away, being a giant sucker, and the lifeguard worked hard, but failed to suppress his laughter. I was indeed assured that there had not been a Reginald T. Beaverton III who had donated the land to the town, and that it was, in fact, named after the rodents. There was also laughter at the double-entendre at the word Beaver, and oh-ho-ho maybe it was lady swimmers who gave it that name, but I was too young to be aware of those implications at the time. Beaver Pond had a moment in the spotlight a few years after my beaver question, when Kenneth Sequin dumped the bodies of his two young children there after brutally murdering them. Sometimes I wish that I believed in Hell, as Kenneth deserves a nice warm corner of it.
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