While on a brief visit to my home town, I passed by The Tenafly Swim Club. A scene of abandonment, it didn’t occur to me that it might be permanently closed. It always closed right after Labor Day, then reopened Memorial Day. Then it dawned on me. The brick wall at the entrance was covered with graffiti. The office looked like it had been ransacked. Amidst the overgrown lawn stood tall weeds. Cracks scarred the empty pool.
A little research and I learned the club emptied its pool for the last time in 2015. That was the year it filed for bankruptcy. All across the country swim clubs are shuttering their doors. Those still open struggle with declining membership and rising maintenance and insurance costs. Like country clubs and churches, Cub Scouts and Pee Wee Football, swim clubs head towards extinction.
Originally introduced to the community in 1960, the club was a summer camp alternative, and a less expensive one.
My family was invited to its open house. My dad was in.
Neither my older brother and sister, nor my mother and father ever used the club. But I was their poster boy. I used it every single day, Saturdays and Sundays included. It was my hang out, my summer. I was proud of my chocolate tan, not a drop of sunscreen used.
The morning directive from mom was “I don’t want to see you until dinner.” After a sweaty morning playing three on three basketball, I raced home on my bicycle for lunch. Mom prepared a white bread sandwich with potato chips and celery sticks. I raced back downtown to the club, about three miles away, and met up with my friend, Alfie Ward. There I’d stay until dinner.
Afternoons were filled with nok hockey, ping pong and girls, not so much talking with as ogling.
And yes, we’d swim. But here’s the thing. I couldn’t swim, and I never learned. I thought about it; believe me, I thought about it alot. I even tried to pass me off as a swimmer. In order to use the diving area, I had to pass a swim test. All I had to do was swim from one side of the pool to the other. I swam like someone drowning. It looked like a splash fight between me and me.
The life guard invited me to take a swim class. I looked into it. The beginners class was filled with five year olds with their moms in tow. I was in seventh grade. I couldn’t bear that kind of humiliation. So, the secret would have to live on. I stayed where my feet reached bottom, splashed around and played Marco Polo.
Nok hockey was a simple game complicated by our rules: If the puck leaves the board, the other person gets one banana shot – the disc rolls down the side of the stick, when it stops, there’s an extra shot; no licking the thumb before shots; the puck must be at least halfway through the goal slot to be a goal. Boy, we had some heated arguments about that.
Ping pong was more straight forward. We split our time between the two games.
For a break, we’d treat ourselves to ice cream. The Good Humor truck camped outside. My favorite was the Strawberry Shortcake Bar with the Chocolate Eclair Bar not far behind. We’d lay our towels on the hood of the truck and lean against the windshield, savoring our treats. The ice cream man didn’t seem to mind. There was a process to eating. We’d start off with small bites of the brick hard confection. As it melted, we had to speed up, doing our best not to have it drip all over. It didn’t matter, we were a mess after it was consumed. We smacked on the popsicle stick like we had just had a three course meal.
We amused ourselves with invented word games. One was called Kenny Dog Doo Breath. It was a call and response. Alfie would say a word or two from the game’s name, and I would have to supply the missing words. Sound simple? It’s not. As the game continued, the pace increased, till finally a flub was made and both of us doubled over laughing.
Then there were girls. I mean, think about it. Here we were, walking around all these revealing bikinis. Amidst awkward flirtations, the first sparks of romance flared. Licia Eidus comes to mind, bobbing in the water with her yellow duck bathing cap. With her sparkling smile and infectious laugh, I was drawn to her like a nail to a magnet. And then there was Barbara Kanski. I fell for her softball questions, an ingenious form of flattery: Why does the sun rise? Where will we all end up?
Most of all, it was the conversation. We never stopped talking, and we talked about everything, from religion to pencils, from minutiae analysis to expansive opinion, like a Seinfeld episode. Relationships deepened.
And then came Labor Day. Like a Bedouin tribe, the swim club community, set up at summer’s beginning, vanished the day after.