MOTT - The life of a Mott kid just went from good to great.

"Good" was always the shaded old pool on the north end of Main Street, with a sweet ice cream cone a quick wincing barefoot walk away at the Poolside Drive In.

"Great" is the pool now, after $350,000 worth of repairs and improvements. It almost looks brand spanking new.

The kids that'll finally jump in with shrieking splashing joy this afternoon are children and grandchildren of grownups who spent their own childhoods the same wonderful way.

Today is no different than then.

Just after lunch, kids all over town will jump on their bikes or into their flip-flops and hustle downhill to the pool at the bottom, bright-haired children following the pull of gravity.

There isn't the number of kids now there were then, but each childhood has value.

The adults in Mott voted to tax themselves a half-cent sales tax to pay for the pool repairs, hedging against the future to give the kids a safe place to play in refreshing water.

Besides the alternatives of boredom and kids that don't grow up with swimming skills, the town knew it had an asset at stake.

Mott has the only pool in Hettinger County and the only outdoor pool in three counties. Some 4,000 kids and adults - a lot of them over and over to add to the total - used it last summer.

Good thing the pool is finally ready after work that started last fall.

"The kids are starting to hang around the fence," said Brian Wright, who's a Mott minister, park board member, member of the pool fund-raising committee and pool manager.

The pool, built in 1957, was on its last legs. It was draining water like a sieve, requiring more than 1.4 million fresh gallons just to keep it topped off last summer.

Hannah Friedt, articulate beyond her 8 years, says summertime entertainment would be a lot more complicated without the pool.

First, she would have to buy a plastic pool, set up the lawn sprinkler, make some lemonade and then get on the phone and call all of her friends over.

A pool is much better, she says.

"I'm really good at it. I can swim underwater from one side to the other," she said.

Now her mom and dad won't have to worry about sticky lemonade spilled all over the kitchen floor and garden hoses trailing around the back yard.

Even the pool bathhouse is new.

The old Cenex C-store building was moved down to flank the pool, and remodeled with changing rooms and showers on each side and the pool office in the middle.

Gone is the old bathhouse, a humble cinder block enclosure open to the sky and - from the girls' perspective - the occasional boy who scaled the wall just to set off some feminine hollering.

Because of its age, demolition of the old bathhouse required permission from the State Historical Society, which came a week after it was already gone.

About all that's left are the old wire baskets that once had matching tags, so the right basket could be paired to the contents' owner.

Kids will pay more attention to the new twisty blue waterslide and diving board than to the components that will make the pool last, hopefully for the next generation or two.

First, the pool contractor, Associated Pools of Bismarck, cut the top off the pool basin to install continuous gutter, a time-consuming job because the pool's teardrop shape meant a lot of specialty cuts, said contractor Brad Hofman.

Then the old basin was lined with 50-mill, reinforced vinyl over a felt cushion.

There's a new concrete pool deck, new drains, new ladders and lifeguard chair.

Wright said people were generous in contributions, but after six years of raising money, the momentum had slowed.

"It was time now to do something," he said.

The loan from the Commercial Bank of Mott was guaranteed by the federal Rural Development agency and the Bank of North Dakota.

There'll be savings in water bill and in natural gas, from not having to constantly heat fresh water, Wright said. That doesn't even include the $5,000 in small and large repairs it took just to get the pool open every summer.

Hannah and all of the kids who take their long-awaited first jump into the pool today don't have to worry their little heads about such matters.

"I think the adults are thinking all about the kids and how much we like to swim and cool off," she said.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)