Roads, Mills, Laps

When Men Were Men and the James Lemos Pool Had a High Dive

I was home visiting my folks a couple years ago when I first noticed that it was missing. Every time I’m back in Benicia I go check on it—convincing myself time and time again that it really is forever gone from our town.

I’m usually out for a run when I do my check. I’m out taking in the sweet smell of eucalyptus as the winds whip down the Carquinez Straits and blow the fragrance into my nostrils. I’ve usually got two handfuls of anise stalks in my hands as I enjoy being back, basking in good ole’ hometown nostalgia, taking it all in. It’s only when I turn down East J Street that I am reminded that something’s gone from my town: Yes it is. It was ripped up and carted away some time ago—replaced with a carnival-looking multicolored contortion of plastic tubes.

Gone are the days when big shaggy men (tough guys who rolled in from the rough bars on lower East 5th Street) bounced up and down on it while wearing cut-off jeans and mullets—eclipsing the sun while doing so. Gone are the days when skinny little kids—water wicking off them like rain falling from the eaves of a house—mounted those ominous stairs, shivering and shaking, contemplating their mortality.

“C’mon hurry up!” I remember the wet line screaming in unison.

The kid would waiver near the top; he’d hesitate and quiver like an Aztec sacrificant, and then shake his head, walking back down reluctantly.

Gone indeed are the days of the high dive at the James Lemos Pool.

I was a lifeguard there for a few summers in the late 1980s. At 16, I was certified to rescue anyone who fell from it. I had been trained and had subsequently passed all the tough tests that were full of apocalyptic, everyone’s-dying-at-the-same-time scenarios. I knew how to strap unconscious people to a backboard and how to tie a tourniquet over the stump of a severed limb; I could dive down to the bottom of the cerulean blue pool and bring unconscious victims back up to the top, safely cradling their head and neck with my hands. I could toss them a hardened ring or reach out to them with a foamy tube in fine textbook fashion. I could even possibly resuscitate them (yuck!).

Of course, I never wanted to do any of that!

I was scared of it—mortified white underneath my brown suntan. When it was my turn to rotate to the lifeguard’s high dive chair, I watched the clock and prayed for a safe shift. I despised sitting up on that chair, wearing nothing but a pair of goofy red shorts, twirling a silver whistle around my shaking finger (and running my fingers over the lanyard’s knots like the amber beads on a Greek komboloi).

The worst times to sit and watch the high dive were late in the afternoon. By then, the little kids had stuffed themselves with ten tons of Sugar Daddies, Jugi Fruits, and processed corn dogs. And the roughs with the mullets and the cut offs had swilled enough cheap beer down somewhere in the dark pockets of East Fifth Street to make them swagger ominously towards my stand. These two disparate groups invariably met at the line to the high dive: both types were intoxicated out of their senses. It was the worst time to be a lifeguard. We really earned our minimum wage during that rotation.

Showoffs invariably appeared too. Those guys basked in their death-defying antics—doing nail-gnawing gainers and “suicide” dives as if they were members of the Flying Wallendas. They mocked us lifeguards while we were stuck in our chairs, getting us wet to the enjoyment of the sugar-high kids and the shaggy drunks that waited in a serpentine line.

I guess I should be happy that the James Lemos high dive is gone. I’m sure it violated some safety code somewhere. Some starched actuary sitting behind a computer found it and summarily sentenced it to the scrap heap (or to some third-world country that isn’t a member of the International Swimming Federation–where it’s still ok to slip and fall head first from 12 feet without summoning an army of preying lawyers).

I supposed that’s a good thing that the high dive is gone and that the James Lemos Pool is better (and safer!) for it. But what kind of wacky stories will some past Benicia lifeguard/aspiring writer be able to weave in twenty years about a multicolored circus slide?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Chronicles of a Benician. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.