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Okay, c'mon now, be honest. You always thought of lifeguards as total
goof-offs whose only mission in life was to seek out and score as many
chicks as possible. And in a sense, you'd have a point. But what if I
also told you that during the 1950's and 60's, when I served as an ocean
lifeguard with the Atlantic City Beach Patrol, we averaged 5000 rescues
a summer. With a lifeguard force of approximately 125 men, with two to
each station, and 62 stations, we averaged over eight hundred rescues,
per crew, a summer. Many of these rescues were routine, some serious and
others downright dangerous. You will witness and experience all three
categories as I take you along for the adventure.
But basically,
your initial assumption had some merit. This was a fun job, the envy of
all who came in contact with us. As observers of people, we were privy
to an unending goldmine of characters. A case in point was our thirty,
something year old mascot whose job, he thought, was to make life as
difficult as possible for us. There was the attractive lady who showed
up one day to serenade my partner and me and then wouldn't leave.
You'll get to know a group of women who fondly became known as the
"bitches." Or, of the lady, who, in her search for ocean treasures, got
much more than she bargained for. Following a lifeboat crew, you'll
engage in the rescue of a bare bosom woman whose "heroic" Lothario
deserts her, for the safer confines of shallow water. There is much more
however...
Romantic liaisons, between guards and gals, were a
common occurrence and I would prove to be no exception to this
inevitability. My soaring love affair came in the form of a beautiful
dancer and model, from Manhattan, whose beginning held the promise of an
enduring soul mate love match, only to be scuttled by unforeseen events
that would lead to heartbreaking consequences.
Where else could
you work where each day brought a new set of surprises; like the day
Dean Martin showed up to shoot the breeze. Or when visiting movie screen
goddess Esther Williams, swam for publicity shots and some of us were
picked to accompany her. And there was Bert Parks, who came each summer
to emcee the Miss America Pageant and parked his belongings on our
lifeguard stand before setting out for his daily stroll along the beach.
Each September brought in the beautiful girls who would compete for the
coveted title of Miss America. These same girls stayed at hotels that
lay just beyond our lifeguard stations where they'd come each day for
publicity shots.
Additionally, we had the boardwalk with its
Convention Hall that housed the famous Ice Capades, billed as "Magic on
Ice" and came to the city every summer for forty years. There was the
World Famous Steel Pier, featuring all the top name bands and
celebrities of the day e.g. Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra. Farther
south was the Million Dollar Pier, a virtual fantasy land for kids
featuring two movies, stage shows, a haunted house, a huge horizontal
revolving "barrel" to try and walk through without falling, and best of
all, a Giant Slide, that for the stout hearted became the ultimate test
of one's manhood--or--womanhood.
The night life was second to
none and only complimented the already glamorous existence of an
Atlantic City lifeguard. Places like the Opus 1, Senator Bar and Grill,
Lafayette Lounge, Georges Hometown Tavern and The Tropics Cocktail
Lounge, just to name a few, all offered their own unique brand of
excitement. But for the most part they engaged in a healthy competition
of seeing who could attract the most females, in turn attracting the
most males-who drank. It was not unusual for an enterprising male to try
his luck with several girls a night. Like a taxi service he'd shuttle
them to and from his apartment until the Bingo light went on. My college
roommate held his master's degree in musical girlfriends.
You'll read all this and more in this highly adventurous, exciting, romantic and humorous memoir.
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