Lifeguard – Janet Fash

I pored over all the information. As city lifeguards, we got no such written materials. Joe and Mitch wanted the same thing as me—to see how we could make improvements on the beach to make sure no one drowned. Their presence was a breath of fresh air. Mitch started helping me implement better trainings at my shack. We ran drills where we would do different rescues with the buoy, depending on whether there was one person in the water or two.

Joe, who started working at 117th Street, brought a paddleboard from Riis Park with him. At the time we didn’t have boards yet, we only had catamarans, which were fun for training but bad for actual rescues. They were big and cumbersome, and the guys liked to challenge the women to carry them, but they were dangerous to ride in because you’d be barreling into people on the waves. Once, I lost my bathing suit top coming in on a catamaran, and it was embarrassing—I had to avoid the public when I finally got back to the beach.

The paddleboard, on the other hand, was much easier to maneuver through the waves. Joe cut an imposing figure standing on it, using it to corral the crowds back to the shore before the incoming tide would change and strand them on the sandbar. He could also transport struggling people on it. But it irked Stein to see changes being made without his permission. When he saw the paddleboard behind Joe’s chair, he sent one of his men down to tell Joe to remove it on the basis that it wasn’t a standard piece of equipment.

Joe explained that in fact it was. “If you want me to remove it and then there’s a drowning, I’ll write in the report that you took away a standard piece of equipment,” Joe said. They let him keep it. Joe also taught us drills on the rescue board, which looks like a surfboard with handles on it, and eventually all the shacks got one.

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You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox. OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com To my best friend, Barbara Whelan, who inspired me to become a lifeguard for life, and to my sister Helen. OceanofPDF.com CHAPTER ONE 1974 The first time I ever saw a lifeguard get horned was in the summer of 1974. I was out at Rockaway, mostly against my will. My dad, who worked for Con Edison sweeping floors and eventually worked his way up into becoming a stationary engineer, always made sure to save up enough money to give us a beach vacation.

That year, my parents had rented a bungalow in Rockaway Beach on Beach 93rd Street for the summer and hauled all seven of us kids down. Originally, I didn’t want to go. I was fifteen, had never met a rule I didn’t want to break, and I wanted to stay with my friends back in Park Slope. My dad gave me an ultimatum—to come with them or move out of their house altogether.

He offered me a big plastic Con Edison bag to throw all my stuff in. I took the bag and put in my favorite faded jeans with the patches I had sewn on, my Frye boots, my winter coat, and my bathing suit. I imagined my independence would be permanent, and who knew what type of clothes I’d need?

But still, summer in New York meant hot tar and steaming subways, so the allure of the beach was strong. I was on the swim team at the Prospect Park YMCA and I loved being in the water, which always felt meditative for me. I hadn’t been back to Rockaway since I was ten, the last time my parents rented us a place there, so the strip of land on the southern tip of Queens was like another world. At the time it still had a classic wooden boardwalk where you could get splinters and protruding nails in your feet.

It was, and still is, the only real ocean beach in New York City.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Title: –
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• Pages: 186
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