Lifeguard confessions (Part 2)

Marci Merrick - as seen from the high guard chair

Those work/study basket kids got an education working at Sunnyside pool that summer. The two I remember are a boy and a girl - Sharon, a skinny 15ish girl, and Rod? a boy of similar age. Both were shy, at least at first. As they got to know us they loosened up though. I don't know if the education served them well or not...

Aha - I just remember Pat Allen was another guard I forgot to mention, along with his bro Mike - both really nice guys. They were Sunnyside neighborhood kids - blue collar parents. Cindy Sheppard and Kim Waters too needed to depend on their earnings and student loans for college. Thinking back, I was still at the age when I took it all for granted how much my parents had provided for me - a college education, money for a car. I hope I wasn't too snotty about how fortunate I was.

The lifeguards were on 15 minute circuits - depending on how big the crowd was that day. There was the tall chair near the deep end of the pool, a station where a guard hovered on the side of the pool in shallow end, and another chair on the other side in the middle of the Olympic sized pool. There were 3 diving boards - a spring low board, a high dive and a medium. Even though we didn't have slides and other fancy schmancy stuff - that high dive was as thrilling a thing as I ever got myself to go on in a pool! Three meters is a long ways down!

The lifeguard chairs had microphones - which made me all powerful. It's a godlike feeling. "No Running, 3 Springs and off the board, That's it you're outta here, Break Time". Or "Pool is closed due to lightning" was a fave when we were burned out and needed a break.

The sound system carried tunes from the day that still take me back to that time.
The only radio station we could get to come in was WOW, which wasn't our fave station, but I do remember hearing some good bands like Commodores, Foreigner was new - had to go to Omaha to buy their LP, my buddy Robyn loved Thin Lizzy's "The Boys are Back in Town" because her bf was on an Henningsen Construction road crew and they traveled.

Sunnyside had a loft above the office - accessible via a wood ladder. Shag carpet and bean bag chairs were up there along with extreme heat. I spent a lot of time reading up there, sweat rolling off me.  I also made a latch hook rug that summer (remember those?).

Mark had sent me flowers to end the year...then he broke my heart..I found out later he was dating someone else too!

I was a little lovesick - I had been dating Mark, a guy from Fort Dodge who evidently decided summer was a good time to cut ties - but he didn't tell me, he just blew me off. In the pre-cell phone, email world, I sent him a couple letters that were un-requited. Perhaps all my wild partying was my way of dealing with heartbreak. Or it maybe it was just was fun to do...

Sometimes in between guarding gigs we'd sit on our towels and sun - you know with Baby Oil, frying like meat. We'd read Cosmo magazine and gossip. My dermo Ava Feldman is helping me remove evidence of that time in my life - annually frying off pre-cancerous spots.

After-hours in the loft we sometimes played a lil game called "Chugalug". Yes folks, the lifeguards were a bunch of crazy partiers. We never drank during pool hours - but at 9 p.m. - closing time, we got our party on. Heck, I learned to do a flip after a few beers. (I was too chicken without beer). And we didn't just drink at the pool - we drank all over SW Iowa - the Super Bowl, The Villa and other bars around town, Oakland, Greenbriar.

I remember driving over to Audubon on Saturday night with Kim and others to see a live band at a bar - (The band was called the Uglies from Creston with a singer named Mike Bullock. I can't remember my own kid's names sometimes but dumb stuff like this is stuck in my mind...). I don't know what we drank (did they have rufies back then?) but I ended up laying in the parking lot somehow getting pea gravel in my purse - I found it the next day. I hope I wasn't driving. Another time I helped at a swim meet - serving as a timer. After hours in the hot sun, I decided that was a good night to try gin and tonics at the Super Bowl. Five of them on an empty stomach. I still don't drink gin to this day..

There were no swimming lessons on weekends (thank goodness!), and Sunday was always a big hangover recovery day. But it was also pool cleanup day. Not always a good combo...We'd go early and float in the pool on rafts, rehydrating with water and laughing about the events of the night prior. But eventually Marci and Cindi would crack the whip. It was time to clean the changing rooms and pool deck. That's how I learned to clean toilets ya'll - you see at home we had Leona Wheatley - the cleaning lady. We'd also sprinkle stuff call HTH (it was like powdered bleach) on the bathhouse floor and on the pool deck and then hose it down, scrubbing with brooms.

Sunday nights were usually quieter - I needed to stay home sometimes! And please don't let me give you the impression all the lifeguards drank each and every night. I'm sure there were plenty of nights we didn't. I just don't remember those boring nights!

But it's no wonder my mother invited me not to come home that next summer. Who would want a crazy party animal like me around? Someone who was partying hard, only stopped at home long enough to sleep, eat stuff and do laundry. So even though most of the rest of the gang went back to the pool, the summer after my sophomore year I got to go to Grand Junction, Colorado to take a couple summer credits at Mesa Junior College and hanging with big sissies Susi (who lived there) and Cindy (who lives in Vail). It was much lonelier (I lived in the dorm by myself for a month), and less alcoholic, but  I grew up a bunch. And when I got back in early August I was still able to sub at the pool a bit before heading back to ISU.

You know they say, what goes around comes around. Our daughter Amy was a lifeguard the summer after her senior year in high school and the next summer. Her stories are just starting to trickle out. We were relieved when she stayed in Ames after that. You were right Mom.