The public pool closed at 3:00 PM every day during the summer. It was heated, but it was only open during the summer. Go figure.
When we first moved to Enterprise there was an OLD public pool. It was open for a short time after we showed up. Then someone found typhoid or anthrax or syphilis or something in it. The cause of the contamination was determined to either be the huge, canyon-like cracks in the bottom of the pool or the 6 foot strands of kelp growing out of them. Thus, the pool was condemned.
Skateboards hadn't been invented yet, so there wasn't anything to do but levy local taxes and build a crack- and kelp-free pool on the site of the old one.
It took about 5 years. At least it seemed like 5 years to a young kid. It was probably more like 6 hours. When the new pool opened I wore a pair of cutoff jeans to the new pool's Gala Grand Opening and paid for a one-day pass at the window. After I went inside, showered and emergedready to jump in the water, the lifeguard told me I couldn't swim in the new and beautiful pool with cutoffs. Something about plugging up the pumps.
So I went home (which was only a block-and-a-half at the time) and got into my old swimming suit. When I got back to the pool I went into the locker room, showered (again!) and came out the other side ready to do some serious laps in the baby pool.
The lifeguard sent me home again because I had a Band-Aid on my knee. Something about oozing sores and contaminated pools and public health.
I'm sure there was a method to his madness, but it sounded like a conspiracy to me. So I did what came naturally to a six-year-old... I started crying AND developing a seething hatred for lifeguards.
I still can't watch Baywatch without locking up my firearms. I hate lifeguards. No, I mean it. If you're a lifeguard just don't tell me. If we meet at a cocktail party, say you're a lawyer or a politician, or perhaps a sodomite. A used car salesman would be a good choice.
Just don't let it slip that you are a lifeguard. Anything but that.
Lifeguards suck. And they work at municipal pools, so municipal pools suck too. It’s the same principle as being tainted because you're a friend of Bill Clinton. It’s a "guilt by association" thing.
I suppressed my hatred of all things lifeguardy, and patronized the pools (on the days that I had no weeping wounds or un-hemmed shorts) over the years. Mom made a HUGE deal out of making sure all of her kids could swim. I guess I can't blame her. Who wants a kid that loves lifeguards, but can't swim?
So I learned to swim. Later, after Dad dug the pond, we did most of our aquatic recreation in the pond which, except for the leeches, was a pretty good place to swim.
I preferred leeches over lifeguards. Leeches are actually enthusiastic about weeping sores, and I've never met a leech who was opposed to cutoffs.
When my buddy Mel and I got old enough to drive (and therefore to be tried as adults) we decided that life was too dull so a stupid and futile gesture was required on a semi-regular basis. The local pool was a likely target.
Every few nights we'd park the car a few blocks from the pool. We always parked the car next to the river that ran through the park where the pool was located. Our modus operandi was to jump the pool fence, climb up the lifeguard's ladder onto the roof of the pump house, raise some Hell, do a few high-dives, jump back over the fence about the time the cops showed up, hotfoot it to the river, then float downstream to the car, leadfoot it out of town until our hair dried, then come back into town so I could buy a Pepsi and Mel could take a dump at the local pizza parlor.
It was always the same.
There was a big difference between Mel's family and mine. If MY parents knew that I had broken a misdemeanor ordinance about swimming in a pool (which everyone else swam in too...just at different hours than we were using it) I would have been given the old "Death by Mambo"treatment. Mel couldn't WAIT to tell his parents, 'cause they'd laugh their ass off and have a hilarious family bull session over the whole thing. You know...boys will be boys.
When I was a junior in high-school the county hired a hospital administrator named Richards from San Clemente (yes, Nixon lived there) California. He had two "gnarly surfer dude" sons my age.
Dad invited the Richards over for a barbeque on summer night. Before they showed up Dad asked me to make friends with the sons and make them feel right at home. I don't remember what I expected, but I'll bet it was negative. California was a pretty maligned state in Wallowa County because of the stupidity generated in the land of fruits and nuts. It still is.
But the Richards boy (and the whole family for that matter) were really nice people, and a lot of fun to be around.
So Mel (my brother) and I piled into Mel's car along with Ken Richards and Mel's little brother Don. We headed toward town and tried to think of ways to impress this new kid. We stopped at the Little Store for some Soda pop (I got a Grape Crush) and discussed what really cool stuff we should do that evening. Breaking into the pool seemed like a good idea at the time.
Richards was totally against the idea, but...what the Hell....he wasn't driving. Mel was. And no amount of over-cautious "Man, I can't get arrested my first night in town...My dad would kill me" arguments were gonna keep us from showing mister surfer-dude Richards what good-ol'redneck fun was like.
Off to the pool we went. He stayed in the car.
The cops showed up after about two dives each, and chased our young asses all over town. It was a pretty narrow escape. Richards left the car to hide in the weeds along the river at one point. Hell, we were really pissing the cops off I guess. No one likes to be made fun of. Even in a small town police officers have better things to do than chase kids all over town because they swam in the city pool, after hours, while wearing cutoffs. I'm pretty sure they were taking it personally. We were dodging searchlights and roving patrols for about an hour.
Richards was about to cry he was so scared of getting in trouble.
To make a long story short (and why not...I've already told most of it) we got away. We all piled into Mel's Dodge Colt station wagon (with the big dent in the hood where I tried to slide across it like Paul Michael Glaser in "Starsky and Hutch") and skeedaddled outta town.
Just outside the city limits there was a hill with a big road-cut in it. As we crested the hill a huge old hoary badger ran across the road in front of the car.
Mel laid on the skids and we all piled out of the car (which was now sitting on the crest of a hill, with all four doors standing open, in the middle of the road...Mel never was too good at finding a safe parking spot). We all took off after the badger at a dead sprint. I had grabbed the Grape Crush bottle off the floorboards of Mel's car before I got out.
The badger looked over his shoulder at a bunch of long-haired rednecks chasing him and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. He got to the edge of the road cut (which was a soft, loamy soil) and started digging like the devil...or at least a bunch of hicks fresh from a misdemeanor...were on his trail.
We got there only a few seconds after he started digging his escape-route. We started wailing the tar and nicotine out of that big ol’ nasty badger.
Mel, Don, and I were all crowded around him punching him, and I was whacking him with a ten-cent-deposit Grape Crush bottle (back when they weighed about a pound empty). Thump-thump-THUMP-dig-dig-Thump-dig-THUMP.
Richards just stood there and watched while making California surfer-dude noises.
"Whoa dude! he's gettin' away!"
Like any of us really wanted to keep him.
I'd been bitten by a hamster once or twice...I had NO desire to be bitten by a badger the size of a small sheep. The badger was REALLYtrying to get away now. And he was actually making pretty good progress.
THUMP! thump-DIG-DIG-thump-THUMP!
He was almost so far into his new hole now that we couldn't reach him. I couldn't use the bottle because there wasn't room to swing it inside the narrow hole.
That didn't stop Mel, and Doug from punching him some more. When he got his hole deep enough that his butt was about a foot inside the hole Mel reached inside the hole to grab him and pull him back out.
Even though Mel is a smart guy, no one ever accused him of being a genius. But that was one of the STUPIDEST things I've ever seen done (and I've been around the stupidity block...yessiree).
Badgers have loose skin. Loose skin allows you to turn around and bite whatever is holding your ass.
Mel got a handful of badger ass and gave it a good tug.
Later I'd learn that what happened next is normal. Time slowed down. When in the presence of danger or stupidity (or both) the human brain processes information more rapidly than normal causing perceived time to move more slowly. The resultant effect is like watching everything in slow motion. Psychology majors call it "tachypsychia." Badgers are couldn’t care less about the psychological aspects of this sort of thing, preferring to be more pragmatic and direct-action oriented. Badgers are funny that way.
That badger nearly broke his spine turning around in his skin and focusing his effort on trying to bite Mel's hand clean off. Mel pulled his hand off that badger's big ol’ butt with about one nanosecond to spare. The badger bit thin air with a *snap* that sounded like a rat-trap being tripped. Mel pulled his hand away so violently that it almost spun him around from the momentum.
The badger must’ve decided to change strategies, because he started coming out of his hole toward us. I guess he'd had enough of our reindeer games.
So four wet rednecks and a surfer-dude turned their collective chlorine-smelling asses and ran like hell back to the car. And peeled rubber....well, we peeled as much rubber as a Carter-era Dodge Colt could peel. Let's round it up... Call it four inches of rubber.
I have no idea what that badger thought about the whole thing (I can probably guess), but he ended up showing us a thing or two that night. Teeth.
Richards couldn't stop talking about it. "Whoa! I've NEVER seen anything like THAT, dude..."
You guys are crazy...Did you see the gnarly old TEETH on that thing? By the way, what's that thing called? A llama? Can we do it again?"
Over a couple of years of intensive, exhaustive training Ken Richards turned out to be a pretty good redneck. And we MADE him.
We were so proud.
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