My Summer Job

I was listening to NPR the other day and there were these people describing what their summer jobs, oh so many years ago, meant to them in terms of life lessons. It seems that NPR is running a series on summer jobs and soliciting stories from all of us nobodies out in radioland. But rather than go through that process—I already know what it takes to get on NPR’s Click and Clack show, which my son did with his story about the time we were driving down from Mount Lassen and he decided to toot his horn at the slowpoke ahead of us . . . but that’s another story—I’m going to post my story here, where I don’t have to audition.

I learned to swim at the local YMCA and by the time I was 16 had my Red Cross Life Saving and Water Safety Instructor credentials under my belt. So now that I could also be legally employed, there was no question that I would try for life guarding at a pool; no bussing, waitressing, or housecleaning for me. I don’t remember how I got the job, but it was a lifeguard’s dream: a motel swimming pool in Manitou, the resort community “nestled at the foot of Pikes Peak,” where hardly anyone ever swam. The motel was owned by an older couple, who I’ll call Harvey and Helen Oakley, probably the only motel owners in town who provided a lifeguard for their guests. The motel had been in the family for a couple of generations, and apparently Harvey’s mother had run it in grand style, with evening barbecues and weekend square dances for the Midwest clientele that came back every year to enjoy the Rocky Mountains. After Harvey and Helen inherited the place, though, tourists seemed to prefer the newer motels with hot tub jacuzzies, and their old fashioned lodge, with no attendant restaurant or fancy features, was losing business.

But this meant nothing to me, at least at first, because all I had to do was show up in my bathing suit and sit out in the sun waiting for the occasional guest to take a dip. Helen never emerged from inside the motel where she smoked Camels and kept the books, but Harvey would come out periodically to check on me, apologize that there wasn’t much for me to do, I must be bored, and bring me sandwiches from the restaurant across the street.

Then Edward showed up. Edward was Harvey and Helen’s 14-year old son and was truly weird. He had pale, peaches and cream skin and jet-black hair that fell across his forehead and over his ears. He dressed only in black: black pants, black turtleneck, black fedora. I learned later that several of his bedroom walls were also painted black, while the remaining ones were covered with posters of Bela Logosi and Lon Chaney. At first Edward wouldn’t talk to me, he’d just come out and walk around the pool and look at me and act really annoyed if one of my friends was there hanging around with me. That was another perk that Harvey provided; permission to have my friends come swimming while I was on duty. I was just getting involved with one of the jet setters, what we called the older boys in high school who were the first to smoke dope and drop acid, and I was beside myself with nervousness when he began to show up at the pool to smoke cigarettes with me and laze around in the water. One day while he was there Edward showed up and jumped into the pool with all his clothes on; Harvey had to come out and apologize for his behavior, finally convincing him to get out of the water with the promise of a new guitar.

I was a kind person, even back then at the mixed-up age of 16, and I quickly befriended Edward, as I knew he desperately needed one. He used to show up at noon, after staying up late playing guitar or watching old horror movies, and Harvey would come out, lock up the pool, and send us across the street for lunch, which he paid for. Then Edward and I would play gin rummy all afternoon around the pool, waiting for guests. I finally persuaded Edward to swim without his clothes on (with trunks and a T-shirt) and I helped him practice his strokes. He’d still get pissed off when my boyfriend showed up on his way to work—he watered one of the local golf courses in the evening after everyone had left and would often take me for rides on the golf carts racing through the sprinklers—but resigned himself to going inside and bothering his parents until the boyfriend left. Then, unless I had to be home early or was going on a date, Edward and I would head back across the street to dinner.

This scenario played itself out over the course of two summers. For the second summer I got Harvey to hire all my girlfriends as maids. But also during that second summer Helen became ill and died of lung cancer. Everything quickly fell to pieces. After the funeral, Harvey took the night shift so he could drink without anyone knowing. Edward spent more and more time locked in his room with his stereo blaring, adrift at a tender age when he especially needed loving, involved parents. At the end of the summer Harvey sold the motel to a couple from Texas, who promptly fired me, having no intention of providing a lifeguard. They kept me on only long enough to teach them how to backwash the filter system, which I did every morning before opening the pool. Then, in a moment of contrition, they hired me as a maid. That lasted about a week, until one day I apparently put a bedspread on sideways, and between the time I left for the afternoon and drove home they called my mother and told her I was fired. When she told me, I immediately got back in the car, drove back to the motel, and told the Texans that if they were going to fire me they better do it to my face, which they did.
So did I learn a life lesson from this? As I said in my blog post called “Self Image,” maybe this experience helped me learn to “do what I want, say what I want, and expect results.” While I didn’t get the result of getting my job back (who wanted to be a maid anyway), I did get the satisfaction of telling someone what’s what, and knowing how to do that, my friends, is indeed worth learning.