SWCS, Second Floor - I never really got to know Harold T. "Doss" Johnson when we were students in high school.
He taught special education, though exactly how special the students were is missing from our yearbook - at least in my thumbing through the pages.
I did get to know "Doss" after graduation, when I went to work at Lakewood Beach as a lifeguard. My cousin Gordy had worked for Doss and recommended me for the job, no doubt because my mother coerced him. (Gordy "Mr. Puls," taught junior high math for a few years at SWCS as we were getting ready to graduate and it was embarassing to run into Gordo in the hall).
It wasn't until I started the job that I realized that Doss was Pam Johnson's dad! (Pam Johnson from Lakewood.) She showed up at the beach one day and luckily I didn't start bitching about Doss right away.
If you came to the beach at all those first few years after we graduated, you would see the Doss-mobile - a metallic blue Corvair convertible with a small puddle of oil underneath it. It made trips up the hill to the American Legion several times a day so Doss could go 'check the mail.' He was the second guy I worked for who was a compulsive mail-checker. The other one was Dick Merleau (sp?) who owned Maple Bay Marina and had the nickname Martini Charley.
But Doss ran the beach with a stern hand and gave us lifeguards more authority than we probably should have had. I was a pretty skinny specimen to be a lifeguard that first year - though I did my share of pulling out people who couldn't swim. But the other part of lifeguarding - being able to order people to do things (or not do things) was better handled by guys like Dan Harp who intimidated people by sheer bulk.
When I had my first serious run-in with someone from (Gasp!) Jamestown, a fellow who outweighed me by at least 30 pounds and was probably three or four inches taller, Doss came out as I was about to get my head handed to me and said, "You forgot your wrench, Fitz." Then he handed me a shiny 14-inch Crescent wrench, one of several we used to put up the derrick and slide every spring.
His next words:
"If this guy takes a swing at you, hit him in the head with it."
Holy crap!
I didn't have to even raise the wrench, because a moment later - seeing that I was probably going to be required to demonstrate my forehand - Doss ordered my antagonist to haul his ass out of Lakewood Beach and never come back. For a few seconds, while this guy from Jamestown gave Doss the hard stare, I was afraid Doss was going to order me to whack him like a scene from Gladiator.
The guy left - mad and embarassed - and broke the radio antenna on the Doss-mobile on his way up the hill.
Although that was a tense moment in my lifeguard history, a year or so later I did something that really made my life flash before my eyes in a very different way.
Mr. Anderson, Mr. Gunnard Anderson from SWCS, a science teacher who many of us had in 7th or 8th grade, came to work for the Lakewood Recreation Department and would wander into the beach house from time to time to bullshit with Doss or flirt with the female lifeguards, the cashier and the gazillion other cute things wandering around in bathing suits. (It was a beach, remember?)
And Doss, of course, always called Mr. Anderson, Mr. Gunnard Anderson by the familiar sobriquet "Gunny."
Oh no!
Oh yes!
One day, it just came out of my mouth, a short sentence that a few years before would've made a life sentence at Guantanamo seem like a good alternative:
"Hey Gunny, how the hell ya doin' today?"
My fellow lifeguards dove for cover as if I had just told a gang of Hell's Angels that their motorcycles were shit and their women ugly.
But Mr. Anderson, Mr. Gunnard Anderson, Gunny Anderson just looked at me with shock and said, "Well, just fine, Mike. Just fine. How the hell are you doing?"
Breathe, breathe, breathe...
Lakewood Beach touched a lot of the Class of '66 in a lot of different ways and I'm sad to report that the slide and derrick that I built each spring (and tore down each fall) was taken out of service at least 20 years ago - no doubt the victim of a village nervous about liability.
Not a week went by that we didn't end up patching up kids who got hurt on the slide, and several times we got to borrow the Doss-mobile to drive kids to the WCA Hospital to get a few stiches.
We knew one thing when we drove to WCA: one drop of blood on the Doss-mobile seats and our passenger wouldn't be the only one who would need stitches.
Even if Gunny was your buddy.
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