Beaches are Open

Because I grew up on Lake Erie, summers were all about endless shores, sand in your toes and the pulse of steady waves. Beach #10 was our favorite out on the very end of the channel. Teen years would mean bike rides out from the water taxi over to Waterworks. Always music; someone in the gang had a major boom box and plenty of size D batteries tuned to WJET. Sunshine and long days!

Even later in MN, there were hours spent at Calhoun on an aluminum mat getting as tan as possible, lemon juice in the hair for highlights. It seemed like we were the cast of Friends who never worked, but spent days a week just meeting up and drinking pop or eating watermelon. I still live for summer days on the water. But now it is kayaking, Bandshell concerts or just watching a sunset on Lake of the Isles. It is a fixture I cannot imagine not having. It IS summer.

The heroes were always the lifeguards! I remember having crushes on the pool guards at summer camp long before I knew what a crush even was. I can swim to save my life, but a water athlete - I am not. To me, they were always the Summer gods with bronze skin, red trunks, a whistle around their neck and cool shades.

I have been saving this New Yorker article for over 5 years now waiting to post a story around it. The article features the photography of Joseph Szabo and the Milieu of his inspiration was the 6 mile stretch on Long Island known as Jones Beach. He started documenting the annual tide of summer back in the late 1960s. This would have been the same time capsule of my youth. His photo album has continued into recent years. The focus always on those lifeguards. I have only seen the photos highlighted in the noted article and not the full table book of his 30+ years of black and whites. They are certainly hard-bodied hunks reigning over throngs of crowds in the hot heat of July and August. Plenty of waves. Various degrees of tight red trunks. Some lounging and others active in rescue. I find they trigger me back to the lore of my youth at the beach. Timeless and a bit glossy in black & white.