7/24/06 Clomp. I'm sitting on a landing on the wooden steps that lead down to Atwater Beach, and I can't decipher the sound approaching from behind. Clomp, clomp, closer. I turn my head slightly: a dog on a leash tugs past, pulling his master, a boy around twelve. He's the clomper!145 steps, on roller blades. He grasps the railing, turns his feet sideways. Once he makes it safely to the bottom, he takes off his roller blades, rushes to the water, wades in, and lifts the dog over the waves.
A young woman trots up and down the flights as if she were weightless, yet she must have lungs and legs of steel. Every few minutes she passes me as I sit on a bench to write. Now there's a loud panting coming from behind, another dog, hot and struggling. I watch to make sure his owner knows enough to give him water. Once down below, his owner unleashes him, and he joyously dashes into the lake, bounces in circles on the sand, the pain of panting overshadowed by the freedom to prance. Meantime the young woman continues to trot, up and down, now two steps at a time.
Last night some friends were worried about allowing their children to go to Atwater Beach. Shorewood stopped hiring a lifeguard a year or two ago. "What are they saving?" commented Sarah G, "Six dollars an hour? I wanted to at least sign my kids up for a water safety class. There wasn't one till the end of August! They said take swimming. Swimming isn't water safety."
I look down on the beach. The shoreline's full of Sunday evening swimmers. The young woman is still yoyoing up and down the flights that so many can barely navigate. I once asked someone else who was running up and down how many round trips he makes in one day. Thirty.
Thelma L just came up, "That was great!"
"I notice there's no lifeguard anymore" I say.
"Oh, they're cutting back on all sorts of services," she replies.
I think about that. Last winter the village stopped clearing the sidewalks when the snow's more than four inches deep. Too bad it can still afford to hire the landscape company to poison public land. What would people prefer if they had to choose, pesticides or plowing? I'm not too sure.
"Oh, hi," says a friend.
"Hi, how are you?" I reply.
"My pants are ready to fall down," he says, as he tugs at the waist of his bathing suit and continues down to the beach.
The trotter trots past, the rollerblader, blades on once again, trudges back up with his dog, and I walk to the bottom, then up 145 steps. At least I've walked the full round trip.
