Lifeguarding for the Township in the 1950's
In my high school and college years I spent a total of six seasons lifeguarding on Island beaches, three of them at Surf City when my parents had a summer home in North Beach and three on the Long Beach Township Patrol after we'd moved to Beach Haven. If was all very different then when the population of this Island was so much smaller. In 1952 when I joined the Township patrol there were 16 guards on the entire force. With only a single man at each location we covered the ocean beaches from 15th Street in North Beach Haven to 37th Street in Brant Beach, five blocks short of the Ship Bottom line.
The Township territory north of Surf City was not covered at all because the beaches there were mostly privately owned, and only a handful of people used them. Loveladies, with only one or two houses in it, was a desolate stretch of mountainous sand dunes where we'd been going to beach parties since we were 15. As for Holgate, the southermost part of the Township, there would have been no guards, either, except that the owner of the trailer camp there asked to have one.
We hated working at Holgate, so much so that it became the punishment beach. If you were caught reporting late to your own beach more than once or leaving early or missing one of the weekly meetings, you got sent to Holgate. We called it "Siberia". Not until 1954 did Captain Art Jocher find someone who actually liked Holgate, and the pressure was off. The reason for Holgate's poor reputation among us guards was the large number of day trippers there who, unused to the ocean, took too many risks and swam on nearby unprotected beaches despite warnings. This required grueling rescue work and even though that was what lifeguarding was all about, we were, all of us, trained to prevent the possibility of accidents. That's why we cherished our individual beaches where we were used to the same families returning year after year. They watched their own children, and they knew and respected the ocean. The transient crowds at Holgate made our job difficult and dangerous. Also, they were less likely to buy tickets to the Lifeguards' Ball, which was a factor of some importance to us.
It was pleasant work being outside all day, getting a nice tan and being near the water. For our efforts we were paid from $45 to $60 a week, and although that doesn't sound like very much now you could, in those years, rent a decent room for $15 a week anywhere on the Island. We worked six days from 10:00 until 5:00, and we were luck indeed if it rained, because we never had to go to the beach at all and we still got paid. We didn't even have to report to the captain, but if the sun came out we were expected to show up, and we did. All of us felt strong obligations to the families who used our beaches, and we got to know them very well.
The people in the three to four blocks on either side of our beaches took pretty good care of us, too. They provided lunches for us and bought tickets to the Lifeguards' Ball, which was held twice a summer, once at the end of July and again at the end of August. These dances were an important source of additional revenue to us, and we sold tickets house to house in our territories.
With only 16 guards— compared to over 180 now— these affairs were easily managed. We on the Beach Patrol were expected to wear white dinner jackets which we owned or rented, and our dates wore long gowns and corsages. The dance was held in the assembly room of the Municipal Building in Brant Beach. We hired an orchestra, and the place was decorated with fish net and balloons. The front lawn, which was much wider then when the highway was only two lanes, was set up with tables and chairs. It was a lot of fun, and all of the people that we knew and saw on our beaches every day looked strange in coats and ties and dresses.
Everyone on the Township Beach Patrol got new equipment at the beginning of each season which was then ours to keep. We got a sun helmet, a blue, canvas bathing suit and an Acme Thunderer whistle, but our prized possession was a heavy, woolen lifeguard jacket. These jackets were beautifully made, all in red with the white letters "LBTBP" across the front. Being 100 percent wool, they were fairly comfortable in all kinds of weather, and we wore them morning, noon and night. They were great for hitchhiking. No one ever passed up a lifeguard, and these red jackets seemed to make us irresistible to the girls in the bars. When we went out at night we usually wore khaki trousers and a white T-shirt with the red jacket, and we were always barefoot. No one, and that included the girls, ever wore shoes at night except to the movies, where they were required. It was OK then to wear a lifeguard jacket in a bar, but later some people complained that lifeguards shouldn't be seen out at 3:00 in the morning, and after 1954 we were forbidden to wear gear that would advertise our presence in a tavern.
We were on good terms with the Beach Haven Patrol, which had a complement of 12 men in the early 1950s. Their red jackets were similar to ours, and we all used to gather in the evenings at our favorite bar, the Antlers on Dock Road in Beach Haven near the present-day Ketch. The Antlers was where all the college girls went. Beer was 10 cents for a ten-ounce draft, and a pitcher of ten beers cost only 85 cents. We used to order by the tablefull. We played a lot of darts and shuffleboard, but mostly we just sat and talked. Red-jacketed, lifeguards were everywhere. One standard item of lifeguard equipment you seldom see now was the white sun helmet. We wore them all the time on the beach. When I first started guarding, we were all issued a canvas-covered cork ring buoy and a hundred feet of line. These rings were eventually replaced with a lightweight, diamond-shaped buoy which floated better. We kept all this equipment and our flags in a convenient oceanfront garage or back porch and picked them up each morning at 10:00.
I don't recall ever being bored with lifeguarding. There were wonderful conversations with all kinds of people, and I especially remember men who had been former lifeguards themselves. They had delightful yarns about guarding in the 1920s and 1930s, a period which seemed impossibly long ago to me than but which was no farther away than the 1950s are now. Old lifeguards when they visit the beach can't resist identifying themselves to the current guard on duty. I find myself doing it all the time. It's all part of a noble tradition, I suppose. I'm proud to have been a Long Beach Township lifeguard.