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It is 1954 and America is still mostly its old self. Television has not yet gotten our culture fully in its relentless electronic stranglehold and the Beatles are still restless schoolboys in the quays of grimy old Liverpool. Rock and roll hasn’t yet loosened its marauding hordes on the land and drugs are what you buy from the pharmacist.
High Diver is 16 years old and a junior at Wildwood High School. He wears his collar up and his black hair is slicked back, but he is no James Dean or motorcycle hood; simply a seemingly ordinary young man who likes the look.
High diver has been a water bug all his seashore life, learning how to swim at age 4 when his father took him to a dock on the bay and treaded water about eight feet from the dock. High Diver jumped gaily into the water, doggy paddled to his dad and caught a breath as his father pushed him toward the ladder. He would doggy paddle over, clamber up and do it again. Each time his father moved a little further away and soon little High Diver gave up the doggy paddle and broke into a brisk, efficient Australian crawl like a miniature Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic gold medalist who went on to become the most famous Hollywood Tarzan.
High Diver at 16 felt star stirrings himself. The summer before he had begun hanging about at the Keogh Brothers Aqua Follies water show that was playing at the Sportland Pool. A diving tower with three levels — 35, 55 and a sky-scraping 85 feet — rose dizzily above the shimmering blue waters and three times daily the professional divers would thrill the always eager summer crowds with their hilarious and death-defying performances.
That summer, High Diver became part of the Aqua Follies scene. The Keogh Brothers troupe began to notice that he was dependable and an accomplished swimmer. One day Billy Keogh, the oldest brother, said to his younger brother, Ralphie, “That kid’s gonna grows gills if he stays in the water much more. Think we could use him?”
“Maybe next year,” Ralphie said. “We got enough to think about finishing this year up.”
For his part, High Diver had absorbed the inner workings of the water show. He knew secrets, too. He knew was that Carmen Oswego, the fire-diver himself, was never in any particular jeopardy as a he plunged from the 55-foot platform engulfed in a sheet of flames. It was simple physics: Carmen dove as soon as his suit caught fire. The motion of his body through the air pushed the flames away from him and they were extinguished as soon as he hit the water. Still, it was a thrilling sight to see the human fireball plummeting through the summer night like a comet. Carmen almost always got a standing ovation.
High Diver knew two secrets about Superman. Jud Nickels, one of the clown divers who had a marvelous phsique, played the Man of Steel. He would be framed by a spotlight, in an exact replica Superman costume, complete with cape, flexing his muscles and then there would be total darkness for a split second before the spotlight flashed back on to the stage where Superman was standing heroically. The crowd howled and Superman resumed his kingly bowing.
But High Diver knew the secret behind the water show miracle: a body double, Jud’s twin brother, Jed, who had been crouched, hidden, under the stage while all attention was directed at his preening brother 85 feet above the crowd.
The Superman game didn’t end there. Superman issued a challenge.
“Bring me your fastest swimmer and I will beat him to the distant end of this magnificent pool swimming with only one arm,” he said.
This guy must really be Superman because there were some really fast swimmers in the Keogh Brothers entourage. At this point, one of the three fancy divers would step out to accept the challenge. The diver stroked with both arms while Superman kept pace with just one arm. Midway across the Olympic-sized pool, Superman would begin to pull away and usually beat his rival by one or two body-lengths, climb out and hoist his beaten rival out of the pool with the same arm he had used to vanquish him. Then Superman would lightly trot offstage, every inch the conquering hero.
High Diver knew the secret: While he stroked furiously with one arm, as promised, the hand of the other arm was tightly grasping a rope that pulled him through the water.
The next year High Diver officially joined the Keogh Brothers Aqua Follies as one of three clown divers jumping mostly from the 35-foot tower. Start fairly slowly, they staggered out to the platform’s edge, teeter, loose their balance, catch themselves, proudly preen, trip and end their fall in giant cannonballs that would spray water on the delighted crowd.
High Diver’s signature dive was a wince-producing belly-flop that rang out like a rifle shot. After he hit, he would struggle through the water and limp up the ladder, obviously in great pain, holding his belly. The crowd was usually silent. Then High Diver would collapse into a handy stretcher and be carted backstage by two husky male nurses. Once there, he’d remove the heavy stomach pad he wore to absorb the shock of his belly-flop.
In the middle of the summer, Carmen Del Sol, the featured fancy diver, who worked solely from the 85-foot platform, abruptly left the show. A replacement wasn’t an immediate necessity, but the Keogh brothers were looking to the future.
“Want to try it kid?” Billy asked.
“Why not? He can only break his neck,” Ralphie said. “Lefty can show him the drill.”
Lefty Beisel was the second banana fancy diver. In his mid-thirties, he’d been working water shows since he was High Diver’s age and had a five-inch scar on his left cheek to show for it.
The very afternoon that Carmen Del Sol departed, before the matinee, Lefty said to High Diver, “C’mon, kid. School’s open. Let’s go.”
Following Lefty up the ladder, he was shaken to see that his teacher kept on climbing after they reached the 55-foot platform, which High diver had tried successfully several times previously. When they reached the top, the whole view of Wildwood and the mainland beyond was endless and the horizon of the sea seemed to stretch to Europe. High Diver had never been this far off the ground and he felt a slight dizziness.
“Okay, kid. Hit the silk,” Lefty said.
“What?”
“Go ahead. Jump or dive. Your call.”
High Diver tiptoed to the edge then backed up.
“I don’t think I can do this right now,” he said.
“Only one way down, my man.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you ain’t goin’ back down that ladder. It ain’t no big thing after the first time, believe me,” he said as he put his arm around High Diver’s shoulders.
“Do you remember your first time, Lefty.”
Lefty chuckled. “Yep. Like yesterday. They had to push me. Like this.”
Thus High Diver became, indeed, High Diver.
