Bal

Most of us in Orange County used the name Bal meaning Balboa Beach. It is near Newport Beach, California. Bal is a sandy peninsula, reaching from Newport Beach, south to the Newport rock jetty, where my dad took me to fish off the rocks. Sometimes Dad took me to nearby Anaheim Landing where we fished all night in the bay. He closed his sewing machine shop Saturday evening, and put on clothing similar to what train engineers wear. Along with blue and white striped overalls, he wore an old dress shirt, a heavy black or white sweater, and old black kangaroo leather dress shoes. His fishing rod was a hand wrapped bamboo pole. All his equipment was old except the hooks and a few sinkers. He said he didn’t mind it when he was not able to catch fish, because he enjoyed the solitude. He parked his 1937 Willis sedan on a bay front street close to the water at Anaheim Landing.

One evening at Bal we fished from a small pier, where Dad cast his green string line into the dark blue waters of the bay. I used a long bamboo pole with a string longer than the pole. With a hook and sinker tied on the end of the string, the bait reached out easily, and I fished for small fish. Dad used a large hook trying to catch a big one. He was a natural gambler, always going for a big payoff. I would grow sleepy before midnight, and take a nap in the back seat of the little car. In the morning before sunrise, it was refreshing to dive into the salty water, and wash the sleep from my eyes. Late Sunday morning, Dad drove home, speeding up to sixty miles per hour on Harbor Boulevard. Open been fields, and only a service station and fruit stand were there when we sped past Costa Mesa. If we caught fish, we cleaned them in the back yard on an old board, and washed off the meat with a hose. Mom didn’t eat it, but she fried the fish, and it tasted good for supper that night.

Years later, when Bob Finch and I were fifteen, we stood outside the pool hall in downtown Anaheim. It was almost dark on a summer Saturday evening. Finch knew a fifty year old pool shark who was frequently found at the pool hall. Finch asked his friend to buy us a half pint of whiskey. We gave him some money, and he came out of the drug store, and handed us a paper sack that hid a pint of whiskey. Finch and I took turns guzzling down the booze. Finch said, “Lets walk over to Hind’s house. I hear he’s having a party before they go dancing at Bal tonight.”

We walked seven blocks and met Red Hamilton at the door. Red was a nice person, but he was always getting blamed for things because he had freckles and red hair. He invited us into the kitchen. There were no girls, and the four guys celebrating in the living room were three years older than us. Red said, “We’ve been drinking pink ladies. You want some?”

Finch declined but I said, “Sure, what’s it made out of?”

“Don’t you know what a pink lady is? I pour in some vodka, and fill the rest of the pitcher with grapefruit juice. You want some, Johnny?”

I chug-a-lugged a malt sized glass-full and said, “I didn’t taste any booze. You must have forgot to put in the vodka, Red. We had a bottle of whisky downtown, and I can still taste it. This stuff you have here is weak. I don’t think you put anything in the juice.”

Red filled the large glass again and called to the older boys in the living room. “Hey, you guys. Come on out here and see Browne. He just drank a glass-full of this stuff as if it was nothin’, and he’s gonna drink another big glass.”

They watched as I poured down the innocent tasting yellow mixture. I wondered why they called the drink a pink lady. I had never seen pink grapefruit. They should have called it a yellow lady. I wandered out the front door and noticed I was urinating on the lawn. I was shocked! I couldn’t believe I was doing such a stupid act.

It wasn’t long before everybody piled into an old sedan, and we headed south traveling through Santa Ana. We passed through Costa Mesa and Newport Beach on our way to the Rendezvous Ballroom Dance Hall. Bal was a favorite hangout for the teenagers of Southern California in nineteen forty four. There was a long, high pier over the ocean waves that went straight out for quite a ways. Folks went fishing at Balboa Pier south of town. The north side of the narrow strip of sandy dirt was the Newport Harbor. The fun zone by the bay was crowded in summertime with young people using the bay water for swimming. People bought live bait at the Pavilion. The Pavilion was built partly overhanging the bay, and was held over the water by wooden pilings. Fishermen boarded deep sea fishing boats at the large, circle-shaped Balboa Pavilion held over land and water by long heavy telephone poles. The Pavilion was located next to a penny arcade, a ferris-wheel, and the merry-go-round. The penny arcade had pin-ball and other game machines. One machine was like a rolodex with pictures on the cards. You looked through a peep hole as you cranked a handle that flipped the cards, making the pictures appear to move like moving pictures. It cost a penny to watch the moving picture. Small buildings were used to sell fast food and carnival stuff.

There were long piers at Newport beach and Balboa Beach. I remember seeing sport fishermen get off boats at the end of the piers in 1939. Many of them carried gunny sacks full of fish at least four feet long. That was before most of the big fish were netted and eaten after being canned. I worked in a Newport Beach cannery when I was sixteen. The fish smell saturated my clothing. My mother was glad when I changed jobs after working only one week.

A strip of sand by the bay was used for sunbathing. A bather’s float was anchored thirty yards from shore with a diving board for adventurous show-offs. An underwater cable pulled a car ferry-boat back and forth across the bay from Lido Isle. People with waterfront homes on Lido Isle included movie stars like John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Bogart had a big sailboat he used in races to Ensenada, or Honolulu. He seemed to spend all his spare time on the sailboat. He sailed back and forth from Balboa to Catalina Island when not acting in movies.

Teenagers, who spent most of their summer days at Bal, were known as beach bums, and were envied by everyone who had to work. I knew boys who spent their nights sleeping on sand, rolled up in a towel, wearing nothing but old jeans cut off at the knees. They gathered pop bottles from the beach and turned them in at the grocery store for money to buy junk food. I knew one boy who took bottles out of boxes behind the store, walked around front, and sold the empty bottles for cash or goods. The older boys met girls on the beach or outside the dance hall, and the girls gave them money to enter the dance. Most of the boys dreamed of having sex someday. The majority graduated into their twenties before they found out how to get sex from a girlfriend. Some guys were shy, afraid of being turned down, and they waited until they were thirty or forty before they married to consummate a relationship.

The Rendezvous Ballroom was a large hall, with a second story balcony circling the floor. People stood or sat at the rail looking down at the bandstand. Sixteen piece orchestras played on week-ends. Bands included top names like Harry James, Les Brown, and Stan Kenton who was my favorite.

After driving from the party in Anaheim, our carload of six drunken boys arrived at the dirt parking lot of the Rendezvous Ballroom. All but two of us bought tickets and entered. Harley and I were kept out and told to go get some coffee. We drank coffee from a paper cup as we walked back to the parking lot. Harley stared with hatred at a tall blond boy. The handsome boy was walking in the dark alley toward the dance hall with a beautiful girl on each arm. Harley picked a fight with the taller boy. The boy was muscular. His blond hair and fair complexion reminded me of the Hitler Youths we saw in war movies. The girls and I watched the fight. Soon Harley found himself decked and unable to get up from the dirt. His white shirt was covered with blood from his own nose. I helped him stand, and we sat down on a telephone pole that was lying flat next to the sand. The pole was used to keep cars from getting stuck on the sandy beach that stretched down to the breakers by the pier.

A few minutes later a police car stopped, and two officers stepped out of the car. They questioned my friend Harley and sent him on his way to get cleaned up. They asked me, “What’s the matter with you? You look like you’re sick. Have you had any alcohol to drink?”

“No, sir.” I lied. “All I had to drink was some black coffee. It must have made me sick, and I’ve been sitting here trying to throw it up, and get the poisoned coffee out of my stomach.” One of the officers ordered me to stand. I stood up fast, fell over the telephone pole backwards, and was immediately arrested. The policeman put me in the back seat of the squad car.

On the way to jail I lied to them, “I hope I grow up to be a policeman.” They laughed.

The small jail cell had bars in the front and three concrete walls. There was a single bed, a small sink, and a toilet without a wooden seat or lid. There were no other prisoners, no pictures on the wall or anything. The police left me alone, and I was frightened. I stretched out on the bare mattress, and continued to feel sick and dizzy. I couldn’t tolerate closing my eyes, because it made me feel like I was spinning. I felt tired, and wanted to sleep. I sat up on the edge of the bed trying to get over the dizziness and nausea.

It was after midnight when my mother drove from Anaheim to get me out of jail. I was sick, and vowed never to drink vodka again. Mom laughed at my condition, and said, “It serves you right to be sick. It is disgraceful, but you do look funny to me. I don’t see any good in trying to punish you. You are being punished enough. Maybe you will think twice before you try this again!”

During the next few years, I danced often at the Rendezvous Ballroom. I practiced the dance steps at home with my friend Dick Trent. Younger girls like Lucy Mazza taught us new steps. Our favorite steps included the New Yorker, the Balboa Hop, the Lindy Hop, and the Santa Ana Demolay. We learned many variations of Jitterbug dance steps. Some of the dances included gymnastic moves, and only a small percent of dancers were proficient. Often people formed a circle to clap hands as a pair of dancers performed. Some guys brought spare shirts to change into when their shirts became drenched with perspiration.

Once, I spoke with a band singer, who later became one of the greatest jazz singers in history. Mel Torme complained to me that he had to work singing while his rich friends played on their yachts. I wondered how many of his rich friends were jealous of Mel’s talent as a singer, piano and drum player and conductor.

Teenagers crowded around the bandstand to get a closer look at the performers. One time, instead of having the usual big band, the music was played by three black musicians. It was The Nat King Cole Trio formerly known on the Al Jarvis radio program as The Make Believe Ballroom Trio. The musical jazz produced by this trio was superior. I had been listening to them on live daytime radio during the early forties. Anyway, during a bandstand break, I spoke with Nat Cole. He had freckles on his quiet, dark and friendly face.

During the short conversation, I complimented him as a great singer. He wrinkled his forehead and smiled at me sideways, “Well, I’m glad if you like it, but I am not a singer. I am a piano player. I have worked very hard to become a piano player. That is what I work at. If you want to compliment me, I would rather have you say something nice about the way I play the piano. Singing is easy.”

Some of the songs he sang were cute or funny, like the first one I heard. It was about a buzzard taking a monkey for a ride in the air. The monkey was afraid he might be dropped and said, “Straighten up and fly right.”

Nat sang a song written by a bearded man who lived in a tree in Hollywood in someone's back yard. He wrote a song called Nature Boy. I love the tune and the lyrics about a very wise boy, who said, “The greatest thing ---- you’ll ever learn ---- is just to love ---- and be loved ---- in return.”

I realized this was the beginning of the end for big bands. Everyone was perfectly happy dancing to a trio. Why should dance hall owners want to pay for sixteen musicians. Folks were satisfied with dancing to three instruments.

Nat King Cole starred in a movie about the life of a song writer named W. C. Handy. The cast included Ertha Kitt, Pearl Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, and Cab Callaway. The movie became a classic.

Fifty years after I met Nat Cole, his daughter Natalie Cole sang his old songs, and she was a world wide superstar like her daddy.

As far as I was concerned the greatest band in the world was the Stan Kenton orchestra. The best white female jazz singer was one of Stan’s vocalists, June Christy, who was known as the Misty Miss Christy. I saw June walking alone on the dance floor in 1945. I asked her, “Are you going to sing tonight?”

She said, “I sure hope so. I hope he lets me sing.” She didn’t sing that night. Stan wouldn't let her. Perhaps he was punishing her for arriving late.

During the dances Stan Kenton seldom spoke to the crowded dance hall. When he did speak, everyone kept quiet. You could hear a pin drop when he spoke. He cast a spell on us, and the people in his band respected him. His clothes were unique. He wore tan or yellow business suits with matching ties, white shirts and expensive yellow or tan shoes. His hair was carefully groomed, and the handkerchief in his breast pocket was a perfectly matched color.

One night I stood close to him as he played the piano, and I said, “I sure like to listen to you play the piano.”

He said to me, “I am not a great piano player. There are many people who play much better than me. I just fool around with modern chords. The important thing is, we play progressive jazz, and it takes all of us in the band to make that kind of music. We stage our numbers so they will be interesting. Sometimes we start out very quietly with me playing a theme. Everyone else in the band except the drummer and bass player goes out and takes a break. Gradually, the reed section returns, and the volume increases as they join in the theme song. Then, the trombones and finally the trumpet players return. As they arrive, the sound builds to a loud cacophony. After we reach the climax, the band members gradually disperse into the audience. First, the loud trumpets and trombones leave. Then the reed instruments like saxophones go. Everyone on the bandstand deserts me except the rhythm section, and the bass fiddle. The music softens to a whisper until the final notes. All the musicians standing around the dance floor, join in for the ending. It is showmanship, but I don't think my piano playing is very important.”

Stan Kenton’s piano playing sounded wonderful then, and it still sounds wonderful on his recordings. He pointed out to me that the whole sound of the band was more important than the music played by any individual. He described some of his music, especially the amazing high trumpet sounds of Maynard Ferguson, as “screaming, crashing dissonance.”

Before Stan Kenton died, he performed and lectured at the great universities of the world. He and his music will be studied, and remembered for a long time. And because he played there first, and played there often, he called Bal, and the Rendezvous Ballroom his home.

In August 1952, I stood on a downtown Balboa roof covering a night club at eleven P.M. I was kissing a pretty young lady who pointed over the Pacific, and she showed me a flying saucer. We had a perfect view of the object as it flew north toward Long Beach, then it banked back out to sea. She said, “When I first saw it, the thing was bouncing around the sky like a flying insect.”

The U.F.O. appeared to be seven miles away, and at that distance looked half the diameter as the moon looked. As it crossed the horizon, it appeared to be banking toward Los Angeles. Then as it banked back toward the Channel Islands, the dish shaped object disappeared. This led me to believe its lighted surface was only on the top. It looked solid and its lighted top half surface was the color of the moon.

One night in Anaheim, Gene Noe, Minard Duncan and I went to a night club to dance with girls. After about an hour we walked out to the dark parking lot. Gene Noe was thirty paces ahead of Minard and me. Suddenly, a sedan car sped out of the parking lot almost hitting Gene. He cried out to us, “Come on, lets get those guys! One of them stayed in their car with the motor running while the other was in my car looking in my glove compartment. When the guy in my car saw me, he jumped back in the other car with his buddy. They almost ran over me! They had an Oklahoma license plate.”

The three of us jumped in Gene’s car and chased the sedan. Gene drove like a race driver, and within a mile or so, he was able to overtake them. He pulled up even to them on the left side and, when they refused to stop, Gene crashed the side of his car into theirs. They were forced to stop. The five of us stood talking on the dark, lonely road. They had an Oklahoma license plate. Gene asked them, “What’s the idea of you breaking into my car. Were you trying to steal something?”

The larger of the two short haired marines answered, “No, we didn’t have anything to do with your car. We were just driving around. You must have the wrong guys. And what's the idea running me off the road?”

“You are a liar,” said Gene. “Now, I am going to fight you. Come to the front of my car so we can have some room in the street.”

The pair walked away and started fighting in front of Gene’s car. I addressed the smaller of the two marines. He was my height but more stocky. I said, “ We might as well fight, too.”

“It’s not fair. You’re two to my one.”

Minard said, “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m not going to help Johnny fight you. He won’t need my help, anyway.”

I attacked the young man and forced him against the back fender of his car. He was leaning back, off balance. I took advantage by hitting him in the face and chest as hard and as fast as I could. While I was fighting, Gene knocked the other guy unconscious, left him lying in the street, and hurried back to where I was fist fighting. Just then I felt a powerful blow smash my nose. Tears came to my eyes, blinding me, and I was thrust back by the blow. Immediately, Gene stepped forward, pulled the man toward him by the shirt front, and knocked the guy out with one punch.

We drove off, and left the two marines lying on the street. I had a bloody nose, and my white shirt was stained with my own blood. I felt a little guilty leaving the two marines lying on the dark street. Minard and I were more polite to Gene after that night. He had become a hero. We drove to Freddy Hayes’ bar and went in to drink some beer. I was proud of my bloody nose, and wanted Freddy to see it. Freddy enjoyed street fighting, and he would fight anybody just for the fun of it.

That same summer, my friend Sam Bogoshian took some of us for a ride in his boat after a night of dancing at the Rendezvous Ballroom. We decided to go to Catalina. We took our dates home after the dance and returned to Bal to prepare Sam’s narrow hulled iron cabin cruiser for the trip.

The gray marine engine would not start, and the battery ran down. We were forced to wait until daylight to get the battery charged. After charging the battery, the motor would not run. Larry Zabel knew a little about motors, but he had no luck fixing it. People who lived on their boats at the dock warned us not to leave for Catalina late in the day because the water is rough from wind and waves in the afternoon. The distance to Avalon, Catalina from Balboa is about thirty miles. Time was slipping away, but we were all drinking beer, and we were not concerned about time. Eventually, Sam bought a bottle of wine for a local alcoholic who fixed the motor. It was three in the afternoon before we headed out through the Newport jetty onto the open sea.

The metal boat was narrow, so we were careful to balance the boat with our bodies. Sam told us not to stand up, as that would rock the boat allowing water to splash in and sink us. The freeboard was so low, we could sit in the bottom of the boat and dangle our hands in the chilly water. It was crowded, with five of us, so, Tom Hartley and I crawled into the little cabin to keep out of the way. Sam stood at the wheel, looking over the top of the cabin and down at the compass. At first, the wind caused ocean spray to cover the boat, as it chugged along full speed at eight knots. Once out of sight of the mainland the swells grew larger. We began crashing through the waves, and Sam was forced to slow down to five knots. The bilge pump squirted out the water, as it splashed onto the deck. We were all sopping wet, and felt cold from the wind.

Eventually a large wave came over the top of the cabin, and swamped us. The motor sputtered to a stop. Some of us got busy bailing water with tin cans. Larry Zabel took the cowling off the engine, removed and dried the spark plugs, and replaced them. He primed the carburetor by dipping a sleeve from Sam Bogoshian’s sweater into the gas tank. He squeezed drops of gas through the choke opening. No luck. The gray marine engine would not run, and it was getting late in the afternoon. We sighted Catalina but were out of sight of the mainland. The current carried us south toward Mexico.

Larry climbed to the roof of the cabin, tied a blanket to our bow line, and threw the blanket into the water. This was to act as a drag line to keep us headed into the waves and prevent the boat from being swamped by waves crashing into us sideways. If the iron boat filled with water, we knew it would sink. As Larry climbed off the cabin roof, he lost his footing, fell on the side rail, and tumbled into the cold water. His fall caused severe pain to his leg, judging from the expression on Larry’s face. I felt secure we would not drown, but Larry was mad at himself for putting himself in this kind of danger.was in the U. S. Navy Air Corps stationed at the Naval Air Base at Agana, Guam, one of the Marianas Islands, in the South Pacific. He and three friends sailed a small boat, far from the shore off Guam, in an attempt to visit tiny Cocos Island. As they sailed toward it, they saw only the tops of coconut palm trees, because the sandy soil of the atoll is just above the water. The boat swamped from the choppy water. Whitecaps were all around, and the little sailboat tipped over. The wooden boat sank from the weight of the heavy aluminum mast, and two metal keels that hung over the side. Larry and his buddies watched the boat disappear in the depths of the clear water. A minute later, two heavy wooden floor grates popped up from the bottom where the boat was still sinking. Each grate had enough buoyancy to help one person rest and stay above water and breath. But there were four people with only three swimmers. By placing one grate on top of the other, buoyancy was created to allow one sailor to stay afloat. Blacky Pride was chosen to rest on the float because he couldn’t swim. The others took turns sharing two swim fins that had not been lost when they tipped over. Using one fin makes swimming easier than using bare feet. The three swimmers tried to push their cargo toward the island, but the strong current swept them past the south end of the island, into the open sea.

“Keep swimming,” shouted Larry to his good friend, Norm Julian. “We will make it if we try hard enough.” The hours passed, and the boys felt the chill of the ocean water. They had plenty of time to think about their folly. Luckily for them, a Guamanian had been watching their little white sail as they headed out to sea. Suddenly, he was unable to spot the sail on the horizon. Alarmed, the Guamanian notified the authorities. A pilot from Larry’s squadron refused to give up the sea search after other planes gave up. The pilot decided to take a final pass, and he spotted them in the water. He used his radio, and contacted a rescue boat. He gave the skipper directions, and dived his plane toward the boys several times to show their position. After the rescue, Larry vowed to stop taking chances with his life on the open sea.

Now, back to the Bal story. The sea was rough between Balboa Beach and Catalina, and Larry was angry with himself, as he felt the pain in his leg from falling off the cabin. Larry was exhausted from being awake all night working on the motor.

The sun was going down, and boats coming from Catalina made a wide curve avoiding Sam’s iron boat. They didn’t want to get involved. Sam used a flash light to signal for help, but it wasn’t dark enough to do much good. He got a bright idea, and used a lid from a mayonnaise jar to reflect light from the sun. He sent dot,dot,dot, dash, dash, dash signals that meant S.O.S., the signal for HELP! Finally, at sunset, a commercial fishing boat rescued us. The skipper was on his way to Long Beach. He went out of his way, and pulled us to that wonderful place we called Bal in Newport Harbor. He saved our lives.

You may wonder what became of the other fellows on the Catalina trip. Sam Bogoshian worked his way through the official ranks of the Anaheim fire department, retired, and bought a big sailboat. Tom Hartley became an entrepreneur in the landscaping business. Minard Duncan became a school principal in Fullerton. Larry Zabel worked as a government artist, produced movies for the federal government, and retired on his Montana ranch. He became nationally known as a western art painter. Few people can afford to buy his best paintings, but prints of them are acquired for a few hundred dollars.

(During the Korean war, Larry and I met a teen aged actress named Debbie Reynolds in the hallway of a Navy hospital. I didn’t know who she was, but Larry did. Many years later, after Debbie Reynolds became world famous, Larry’s daughter married Debbie’s son. Small world, ain’t it?)

In the mid nineteen fifties, while attending Orange County School Of Nursing, I spent my spare time skin diving. After school, I often drove to the Newport Beach jetty. I ran, jumping from rock to rock to reach the end of the jetty, where the water was often clear and sixty feet deep. The waves rolled by from the northwest. Small ships and boats entered or left the harbor through two jetties. The rocks reached toward Catalina Island into the Pacific Ocean. Some of the large pieces a granite had holes drilled in them. The holes may have been used to anchor down a wooden walkway that had been washed into the sea by huge waves during a 1930’s storm.

I am not a trusting soul, and I would not trust anyone swimming close to me with a loaded spear gun. It might go off by accident. The thought of a spear piercing my body was more than I could bear, so I dove alone.

In summer the water is cold, but not too uncomfortable. In December the water feels very cold. You need a wet suit to keep warm. The suit gets wet, but your body warms the wet suit, and it keeps the cold water off you. Wet suits were not yet available in those days, so I used long-john underwear or basketball sweat suits to ward off the cold water. Swimming on either side of the jetty, I used a snorkel to breathe while looking for fish. Sometimes I dove to look under the piled up giant granite boulders or the caves they formed. There was beautiful, brilliant green eel grass, and tan, yellowish colored kelp growing from the bottom in long thin stalks that reached to the top at low tide and branched out with thick, heavy leaves. When I looked closely at a leaf underwater, the leaf was speckled with gold, silver, bright green, blue and purple.

The opal-eye perch grew almost two feet long. Sheepshead, bass, and many other good eating fish lived there. One day I saw several fifty and eighty pound halibut resting on the sand. Another time I speared a lavender colored trigger fish common in the Sea of Cortez but rare north of Baja California. Larry Zabel skinned the trigger fish and helped me preserve it to this day. Bright orange colored garabaldi fish swim around the kelp and rocky areas at the Newport Jetty. Garabaldi fish are protected by law as a natural treasure of California. When they are tiny babies they are a gorgeous fluorescent blue color, with flecks of silver and gold peppered on the brilliant blue scales. As golden adults, they jealously guard their cave front doors, and make a popping sound to warn other fish of danger.

Sometimes while resting and warming myself on the rocks, I looked down in the water and daydreamed. I wondered what it would be like if I could breath under water and stay on the bottom more than a few seconds. In my mind I invented a thing like an upside down bath tub, held near the bottom with chains tied to the boulders. I dreamed of using a hand pump to push air through a hose under the side of the tub, and the air would force out the water. Then a person could dive down, and stay there, while catching breaths of fresh air from under the tub.

My future wife Barbara Cohn gave me SCUBA gear for my twenty-fifth birthday. It was too expensive for me to buy for myself. I taught myself to use the underwater breathing tank. I dove frequently at Newport Beach, Laguna, and a few times at Catalina Island. Barbara often came with me to the beach, and I was impressed by her courage on many occasions. She never complained about the steep cliffs, cactus, cold, hot, or lonely places we went. I guess she tried to impress me or to impress herself. Anyway, I admired her. Besides that, she was a beauty in a bathing suit.

A tank of air lasted half an hour to fifty minutes depending on how deep I dove, and how hard I worked. Sometimes off the end of the jetty, I swam more than sixty feet deep and ran out of air. I would be down on the bottom sucking hard on the rubber mouth piece, trying to stay down just a little longer to spear a fish. When you go back to the surface, you are supposed to stop before you get to the top to allow the air in your body to expand slowly, and avoid getting the bends. When you let your tank run out of air, you have no way to surface slowly. Sometimes you become ill from coming up too fast, and it causes you to vomit, and to get a severe headache.

Once I was diving a hundred feet in crystal clear water along the coast of Baja California, south of Ensenada. I scraped my arm on a sharp coral reef, and watched my arm bleed. The color of my blood was green. It was a strange sight to see. Later, I learned the water filters out red rays, and you can't see red in deep water without a flash-light. Everything red looks greenish gray. It's like seeing a movie in black and white. When they make underwater movies, they usually have lights, so you see colors. When you go deep without artificial light, it's all greenish gray light, but not dark. There are heat layers in the water. Every ten or fifteen feet deeper, it gets colder, and it's a sudden change each time you enter a new temperature zone. I hear a constant sound under water, perhaps like you will hear if you cover your ears with your hands. So, it is not the "silent deep" you may have heard about. There are other sounds, and one that irritates me is the squeaking sounds my own aqua-lung makes when I breathe under water. Something else I notice is, when I watch air bubbles go up from the deep. At first the air bubbles are small, compressed by deep water pressure. As the bubbles rise to water with less pressure, the air expands, and the bubbles inflate to many times their original size. New SCUBA divers have a lot to look forward to.

At times, I think back to when Bal was a haven, where I scuba or skin dived, fished, swam, or just slept in the car, while my dad fished.