ENCOUNTER WITH AN UNKNOWN SAVIOR

ENCOUNTER WITH AN UNKNOWN SAVIOR

Christopher Nyerges

[Nyerges is a writer and teacher of self-reliance topics. This article is part of a book Nyerges is working on about his youth, tentatively titled “Out of the Loop.” For more information, go to www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com.]

On average, about 10 people die from drowning every day in the United States.  About 20% of those deaths are children under 14 years old.  When I was 6  or 7 years old, I almost became one of those statistics.

I was the youngest of five boys and all of us had a history of attending the Boy’s Club down on Villa Avenue, just west of Los Robles Avenue where we lived. Since a bus stop was located just across the street from our home, we could easily hop on the bus and take the approximately two mile or so ride closer to downtown Pasadena, exit on Villa, and walk to the Boy’s Club. 

I enjoyed the Boy Club and the complexity of life that occurred there.  There was a small train that could be ridden around the back 40, there was the art classes, the metal shop, the wood shop, and the game room.  Every summer, they held a Tom Sawyer Day with numerous special events.  And there was the swimming pool, which was the center of social life at the Club in the summer.  When the Boy’s Club was still fresh and new to my young eyes, it was exciting to walk down the long corridors, enter the noisy locker room, and then enter the pool.

On this first time swimming there, the pool area was a cacophony of men, women, boys, girls – I presume that the Club opened the pool to anyone and everyone who wanted to swim there on the hot days of the early 1960s.  It was crowded!

I was there with one or two older brothers, and some friends of theirs.  I was told to stay in the shallow part of the pool since I didn’t know how to swim.  Since I had never been in a deep pool before, I assumed that I probably didn’t know how to swim and so I agreed to stay in the shallow side. 

The pool was very long – I remember about 150 feet by perhaps 50 feet – though this is just a memory-guess.  The shallow section was where you could enter by means of these cement steps, where you just walk into the water. And for me, that meant the water would come up to my waist in the shallowest section.  Once I was in the pool, it was very crowded.  I didn’t know anyone, and my brothers and their friends were off somewhere having a good time.  So I just walked around, and noted that the pool very gradually got deeper as I walked westward.  So eventually the water was up to my chest.   I walked back into the shallow area, and back to the deeper part of the shallow area.  How far out could I go before it was too deep? 

I tried to look into the water, to see the bottom, but it was not easy. For one, there were a lot of people moving around in the water, and so the water was not still and clear.  So I just kept walking.  Suddenly, the shallow section rather rapidly became deep, and even though I could feel my feel slipping out from underneath me, there seemed to be nothing I could do to prevent going under. I went under, and I don’t recall if I panicked or not, but I remember flailing and trying to get my head above water.  It seemed like an eternity and I felt that everyone who was good in the world had abandoned me.

As I flailed about, suddenly a hand grabbed me and pulled me into the shallow water, and I could touch the ground again.  The man looked at me with concern – actually, he was an older boy, older than me, perhaps only 14 or 15.  He looked at me and asked me if I was ok.  He told me to stay in the shallow water, and then he disappeared.   I stayed in the water, and looked around for a bit.  No one seemed to have been aware of what just happened.  And the boy who saved me seemed like a god in my eyes.  He was a handsome black boy, obviously in good physical shape, and I remember the neat trim of his hair, and his serious expression.  Now he was gone, and there was no one to tell about how he rescued me, no name to put to the deed.

After I got out, I never saw the boy again.  He either merged into the crowd, or he’d departed.  I told one of my brothers what happened, and he just said “Oh,” as if maybe I was making it up. I never told my parents.

The Boys Club of that day was like a United Nations gathering. About half of the boys who went there were black, and the Latino and white boys were more or less equally divided. Asian boys were a minority.   The Boys Club was a good introduction for me to the world as it is, and whenever I encountered overt or subtle racism, I often thought back to my many interactions at the Boys Club, including the camp adventures in the San Bernardino National Forest.  Bad behavior came in all colors, and obviously, so did good behavior.  The nameless boy who saved me from drowning that day didn’t know me, and didn’t hang around to receive any praise.  He did not ask my name, age, race, or religious when he saw me flailing in the water.  He did a good deed and he moved along.  I learned more from him that youthful day than I ever did from the vast majority of preaching preachers, and philosophizing philosophers, and other teachers who purported to tell me how to live my life.  

It’s sad that racism is still such a viable part of the American way of life.  I still look forward to the day when we can treat everyone the same, based on the quality of their character, and what they do, and not on their origin or racial characteristics.  Though it is obvious that we have a long way to go, the solution lies not in some governmental edicts, but in the choices of individuals to go beyond their mostly mental barriers, and get to know people outside of their own groups.   In that sense, my active participation in the programs of the Pasadena Boy’s Club was one of the most positive formative experiences of my life.

In time, I spent a summer with my older brother learning how to swim.  We went through the swimming program from rank beginner to the highest rank, which took us nearly to the end of summer.  My brother and I were the only two students who stuck with the program week by week, five mornings a week,  until the very end, until we could do every stroke forward and backward, stay under water a few minutes, and have no more fear of ever drowning.  The cost of the swimming program was a few dollars for each week, for five days of instruction of about an hour and a half each class. It was perhaps one of my parents’ best investments ever.