A Great Time To Be

It was sizzling hot when Rob quit his summer job to enjoy the last two weeks of summer vacation. He stepped out of the lumber yard with his last paycheck in hand. He had just enough time to get to the bank and cash the check. He rushed to get there ahead of the other workers who crowded the bank on the first and fifteenth of the month. The smog backed up against the hills and covered the valley in a gray, eye-burning haze. Although it was four o’clock in the afternoon, shimmering waves of heat still danced off the pavement and rose to blend in with the smog. He walked out of the bank and looked up at the sky. The ocean breeze should start up any time now. It would clear out the smog and cool the place down. The forecast for tomorrow promised more heat and more smog. But Rob had an automobile and more than enough cash to pay for gasoline. He stopped at a gas station on his way home. All of his thoughts were on tomorrow. The ocean was only an hour away. He would call his friend, Jim, and they would go there. It was more than the cool sea air and lively surf that made the beach such a paradise. Beautiful girls in bathing suits lounged on the sand there. “What more could a guy want?” It was a great time to be seventeen.

He woke up early in the morning and called Jim. “Surfs up! I’m free. Let’s go,” Rob said.

“Great,” Jim replied, “but Ron and Al want to meet some chicks at the state beach.”

Of all of Rob’s friends, Jim came the closest to being a surfer. He was the one with the sun bleached hair and dark tan. Ron and Al were jocks who spent so much time in organized sports that they did not have the time to become surfers. Ron was just over six feet tall and weighed in at a slim one hundred and seventy pounds. He was a quarterback and a pitcher. He was also the lady’s man of the group. Al was six feet four inches tall and weighed close to two hundred and thirty pounds. Although he played football, his favorite sport was water polo. In the pool he was a real terror who seemed intent on drowning at least half of the other team. Out of the water he was like a big, friendly puppy. Rob thought Al was the perfect example of a boy who suffered from stereotyping because people who first met him were always surprised when they found out how bright he was.

“Who are the chicks?” Rob asked.

“Marcy, Anne, Fran, and Marsha. Linda might also come.”

Marcy was a surfer chick. She was one of the few girls who would get out there on a board with the guys, and they tended to treat her like a pal. Anne was the generic girl. She was not unattractive, but she did not stand out in the crowd. Rob thought she was too vivacious, but that was because she had a crush on him. She wondered if he was too dense to pick up on her hints or too shy to follow up, or if he did not find her that attractive. It was a little of all of the above. She was not going to give up at this point, but she was beginning to think she had gone about as far as she was willing to go. Fran was a small, dark, pretty girl with a sweet personality. Marsha had a graceful figure and good features, but she was so quiet that she frequently faded into the background. Ron had a real thing for her. Then there was Linda. She was a blond who stood five feet five inches tall, and she had a figure that stopped traffic. The prospect of seeing her in a bikini was enough to make anyone leave his surfboard behind.

“Did you say Linda? Beautiful body Linda?”

“That would be her.”

“State beach it is,” Rob said.

So Rob soon found himself in Jim’s station wagon. They were racing past the bean fields and strawberry fields at ninety miles per hour. The wind coming in through the open windows was like a mini-tornado. It combined with the blare of Rock and Roll to drowned out the roar of the engine and sounds of the road. But even at full volume the radio was no match for teenage voices trying to mimic the high, falsetto harmonies of the Beach Boys. This incredibly noisy burst of adolescent energy was blasting through time and space. The workers in the fields looked up from their work to catch a blurry glimpse of it blowing by.

The beach traffic was fairly light on weekdays, and the boys were able to find a parking space close to the sand. It was a good thing they did because it was a hot day. It was also late enough in the morning to have given the asphalt time to collect a considerable amount of heat. Which is to say that a leisurely stroll across the rough surface was likely to raise blisters on bare feet. Years of experience, however, had taught the boys how to deal with this. One foot went from car to asphalt while the other foot was in full stride, and an arm swung out to slam the car door shut. In a few bounding steps they were on the sand. They dug in their feet to reach the relatively cooler temperature beneath the surface. They then stood there looking for the girls.

Fran saw them and waved. As they approached her they saw Linda’s blond hair and well-rounded rump. She had unfastened her top to get an even tan, and they were all hoping she would fall asleep and roll over. Instead, she refastened the strap to her top, rolled over, and sat up to greet them. Jim spread his towel out next to her, and Ron settled in next to Marsha. Rob and Al nonchalantly tossed their towels on the sand as they exchanged greetings with everyone. Once the greetings were out of the way they both walked down to the water. Red flags were flying from the lifeguard towers and the surf was looking angry.

“Doesn’t look that bad,” Al said.

“I’ve been in worse,” Rob agreed.

With that they took to plunge. They both caught a couple of large waves and were feeling fairly confident. Then a huge wave walled up in front of them. They dove under it, but the force of the crashing water was incredible. They came up sputtering.

“Holy Shit!” Al gasped.

“Pounding sand!” Rob said.

What Rob meant was that there was very little water under the wall when it collapsed. The waves were breaking straight down, which meant that anyone trying to ride them would go over the falls. The boys had enough experience to realize they had to get out of the impact zone. They dove under the next wave and swam out beyond the break.

“What now?” Al asked.

“We wait for a smaller set.”

Unfortunately, the waves in the succeeding sets were as large or larger then the waves in the preceding sets, and the boys had to use the swells to swim toward the shore often enough to keep from getting pulled out to sea.

“The hell with it,” Rob finally said.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m fighting my in while I still have the energy.”

“Not me. I’ll tread water all night if I have to.”

“I’ll have them send a boat.”

Rob used the swells to move in closer to the shore. His body was not a buoyant as a surfboard, and he had no edge to dig into the face of the wall. There was no way for him to avoid being pitched over the falls. His only chance was to do a summersault and land on his feet rather than his head. The wave he was in slammed him down so hard that his knees hit his chest and knocked the wind out of him. He was now tumbling under water with no air in his lungs. He did know which way was up. He clamped his hand over his nose and mouth to keep from inhaling the brine. He almost blacked out. He gasped mightily when he broke the surface. He had just enough time for two quick breaths before he had to dive under the next wave.

“Wow, is he good!” Ron said. “You should’ve seen that. Rob did a summersault in that wave and came to the surface as pretty as you please.”

Everyone was now watching, but no one realized that Rob was fighting for his life. Oddly enough, they also missed the fact that Al was not in sight.

For the first time in his life, Rob was really afraid of the surf. The physical exertion was causing an oxygen debt, and that was making it increasingly more difficult for him to hold his breath. He was still fighting like hell to get out of the impact zone. “Stay calm,” he told himself. “If you panic, you die! Move laterally. Find some water you can work.”

“Man, can Rob stay under water a long time!” Anne said.

Ron started timing him. “Almost a minute and a half! There he is.”

“Did you loose track of him?” Marcy asked. “Or was he really under that long?”

“No, he was really under that long.”

“Rob can do that,” Jim agreed, but Jim was becoming concerned.

Rob was using every technique he knew, but he was making very little progress. He was also getting the hell beat out him. He had been fighting the surf for what seemed like an eternity. He could taste and smell the brine that had invaded his nose and mouth. He coughed and blew and drew in the precious air when he rose to the surface. The next wave raked him over the sand and shells on the ocean floor. He flattened out and tried to let the torrent move him closer to the shore. He was now taking on the white water. He tried to move laterally as the water gathered to form another crashing wall. He was desperately searching for a sweet spot where the water was less turbulent. The water retreated enough so that he could stand with his head above it. He planted his feet in the sand to resist being yanked back into the impact zone. He flattened out in the prone position just before the next wave slammed into him. It tossed him about like a cork, and he went where the water took him. It moved him toward the shore. It paused ever so briefly before it pulled him back away from the shore. Rob then lost much of the distance he had gained. There was no time to mourn the loss. He took a couple quick breaths and flattened out to lessen the impact of the next blow.

The movement of the surf was a brutal, relentless pattern varying only slightly in its intensity. It gave him no time to rest. Unlike him, its energy showed no signs of flagging. His lungs were demanding more oxygen, and every muscle in his body ached from the pounding and the fatigue. He could not give up. No matter how much his body ached or how tired he was, he had to keep fighting. He was afraid, so very afraid. At this point that was a good thing. That is what gave him the burst of adrenaline he needed to keep his muscles working.

The people on the shore thought Rob was slowly and methodically working his way in. Everyone, except for Jim, stopped watching him. Another fifteen minutes went by. Rob was now knee deep in water. That last burst of adrenaline had been spent. All of the energy had been drained out him, and he was staggering like a drunk. He collapsed and started crawling. He was struggling to keep moving and to keep from vomiting. He was almost there. He was almost safe. It would be a terrible thing to drown in such shallow water.

Jim walked out and helped Rob to his feet. “Where’s Al?” Rob gasped. “He still out there?” It took an incredible amount of Rob’s remaining energy just to ask the questions.

“Yeah.”

They now reached the dry sand. Jim let go of him and Rob collapsed. Rob had never felt so cold or so exhausted in his life, but he was finally safe. A lifeguard sprinted past him. The lifeguard was only five feet nine inches tall and weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. He tossed the float over the white water and dove under. When he tried to toss the float over the next wave the float did not make it. The wave took a hold of it and towed the embarrassed lifeguard halfway back to the shore.

Rob was lying in the prone position with his head turned to the left. He was just beyond the water’s reach. He was still sucking wind like a bellows. Anne and Fran were gathered around him. Both girls looked lost because there was nothing they could do to help him. He rolled over. It took some effort, but he managed to sit up. The dizziness was subsiding somewhat, and he tried to focus on the ocean. He was looking for Al.

“The life guard’s making another run at it,” Jim announced.

The lifeguard pulled out every trick in his arsenal, and he needed every one of them to make it out beyond the breakers. Using the lifeguard as his point of reference, Rob was finally able to see a dot on the surface of the water. The dot was Al’s head. Al had been treading water for almost an hour, occasionally swimming in with the swells to stay close enough to the shore to make a rescue possible. The lifeguard tossed him the float.

“Put it on!” he ordered.

Al noticed the lifeguard was out of breath. “I’m fine if you want to hang onto it for a while.”

“Put it on,” the lifeguard repeated. “I just need to tread water for a minute to catch my breath.” Several minutes went by, then the lifeguard said: “Okay, on the next swell swim like hell!”

There were two things the lifeguard did not realize. The first thing was that Al was so well conditioned that he had almost a full store of energy to draw upon. The second thing was that Al was a very strong swimmer. In spite of the float or perhaps because of it, Al jumped out to a big lead. The lifeguard felt the rope that attached him to the float go taught just before Al went over the falls. It was as though the lifeguard was a pebble on a teeter-totter when someone dropped a boulder on the other end. He shot through the air and landed head first in the white water. The float kept Al on the surface. He raced past the submerged lifeguard and dragged him along the bottom like an anchor.

Al realized the lifeguard was probably in trouble. So he planted both feet and reeled the lifeguard in like a trout.

“I’m all right,” the lifeguard said, but he was glad Al had a hold of him. Even with the float, it took them ten minutes to work their way in.

Al and the lifeguard walked over to Rob. They were smiling over the fact that they were both all right. The lifeguard sat down in the sand and looked at Rob.

“If I hadn’t seen the way you were staggering when you came in, I would have thought both of you were okay.”

“I guess it doesn’t pay to be too good.”

The lifeguard laughed. “Do I need to tell you not to go in the water again?”

“No, sir.”

The lifeguard stood up. “Good, because I’m not going out there again unless it’s in a boat.”

Rob was old enough to know that bad things happen, but he was young enough to think they would not happen to him. This was a wake up call. Today he had almost drowned. He did not want to think about it.

Al grinned at him. “I guess old Poseidon decided to teach us some respect.”

“He’s a crotchety old fart!” Rob managed say it with bravado.

Both boys laughed. The bravado was funny because they knew this was a lesson they would remember. Rob looked at the beautiful girls and listened to the pound of the surf. He delighted in the sight and the sound. Tonight he and his friends would build a fire in one of the fire pits. They would have a weenie roast, and they would try to make out with the girls. It was a great time to be seventeen. I was a great time to be alive!

First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Jun. 3, 2009