The second year I worked at the Island Villas I got fired. I lied to my boss, and one thing you didn’t do with Mr. Olsen, was lie. I told him I had to go back to the mainland to take a draft physical.

He said, “OK”.

I wasn’t going for that reason, I was competing in a spearfishing competition. (See the mistake). He found out I lied when he saw my picture in the paper. My team won third prize. I have a lot of third prizes to my credit during my life. It was early in the summer.

I was packing up to go back home, very heavyhearted and embarrassed when the local hard hat diver, Al Hansen, asked me if I would finish out the summer putting on a show underwater in his tourist attraction. He had a 27 foot diameter, 8 foot deep, Aquarian tank there in Avalon.

Al Hansen dove in hard hat gear, and took care of the moorings in Avalon Harbor. They had to be inspected, I think every year, and that was what he did. He had a small 22 foot boat named the, ‘Jeannie’. It had a compressor on it and supplied air through a hose to the diver on the bottom in the hard hat dive gear. I would be using the same gear in the tank. The tourists loved it. They thought they were watching John Wayne in an old movie.

Of course, I jump at the chance to be a hard hat diver. I had never done that and I wanted to learn how. I finished my summer working for Al, and his wife, Norma, also a diver. I dove not only in the tank but off the ‘Jeannie’ inspecting moorings in the Avalon Harbor. By the end of the summer I had logged well over 100 hours in the hard hat.

Two of my three near death experiences in diving happened when I was in the hard hat gear. They both happened not in the ocean, but in the tank in the center of town.

The gear we were using was called a Jap Hat. It came from Japan I guess. Not exactly politically correct name in today’s world.

I came to work at the aquarium and Al’s two children were there. They were in their very early teens. Their parents were both busy somewhere else and they were taking care of the aquarium that morning. They helped me get into my dive gear, started the compressor, which Al normally did, and put the ladders into the tank so I could climb up, and then down into the water.

I was not feeling very well that day and not paying attention like a good diver should, which is a cardinal sin for any diver, but a really big bad no-no for a hard hat diver, because your life depends on your tender and the people out of the water not just on yourself. The kids helped me up the ladder into the tank. They closed the faceplate, and down into the water I went. They pulled up the ladder, and went out to take care of the small tanks in the yard.

I started walking around still really not feeling very well when I realized there is no air coming into my helmet, that means get out of the water in about five minutes or die.

I had a microphone in my helmet so I could talk to the tourists looking into the window at me. I called to the kids to get me out, but they were not paying any attention to me, because they were used to my chattering all day long on the loudspeaker.

To the couple of people looking through the glass I asked over the speaker, “Can you understand me?” They nodded their head yes. I said, “Get those two kids over here, I have no air. I only have a couple of minutes to live. This is not part of the show.” The man ran over and told the kids and they came running back, put the latter back into the tank, and I climbed out. They opened up the faceplate just in time as I was getting ready to pass out.

I had another scary few minutes in the dive tank, when I was first learning about hard hat diving. I had been using the gear for about a week and started feeling comfortable in the suit. The air came in the top of the helmet and the suit would fill with air because there is no automatic exhaust to let it out

There was a valve in the helmet that I needed to push by putting my head on it and pushing backwards, it was on the back right side of the helmet. When I started to get too light because of the buoyancy the air in the suit was creating, I would tilt my head back, and pushed the valve. Being a novice without any instruction book I couldn’t tell when the air was all gone unless I felt the water coming in and running down my back.

My system worked quite well. The water would just accumulate around my feet. This particular day I had been in the tank for about four hours and we had a big crowd watching me through the window.

I was showing off , (I know that’s hard for you to believe), and reached out to grab the tail of a very big stingray. It wasn’t dangerous because we had cut the stinger off the tail. I caught the tail and held on. I had a lot of air in the suit at that particular moment because I was concentrating on the ray instead my suit, and was light in the water. The ray pulled me along and I was laid out flat as he did. The air in my suit shifted from my helmet to my feet. Instantly, I was upside down. I started to laugh, and then I felt the water that had accumulated in my feet was now running down my back into my helmet, filling it up.

Not becoming inverted in a hardhat ring is one of the first things you learn in a diving school. As the water rapidly filled my helmet, I used every stroke I knew from skin diving for what seemed like for hours, and finally managed to get one foot down. The air rushed back into my helmet giving me enough head buoyancy to get the other foot down. The water was flowing down my back into my feet again. I was a happy camper once more, and a lot smarter than I was just a few minutes earlier. The people outside looking in the window were happy, and clapping as well as laughing. I was just hoping that my comments, while all this was going on, didn’t go out over the speaker, but I think maybe it did, and that’s why they were laughing. We learn by experience, if we live.

My Summers at Catalina Island

Catalina Island is a great place to dive. The water is clear, calm, and not too cold. The giant kelp beds are as beautiful as any coral reef. When I was only 10 years old I dreamed of diving there. It was a different country as far as I was concerned. It was only 26 miles away, but totally out of reach for me.
I was at one of the family’s Easter gathering, (see an Easter to Remember), at my aunt Aggie’s house. My uncle Leo was a chef and worked at many high end places all over the country. I was talking about diving and how I would love to dive at Catalina, my uncle Leo was listening to me, (I was now 16 years old), and said, “Why don’t you work over there in the summer in Avalon, when you’re on vacation from school?”
I was shocked by the suggestion. I have never lived away from home and in fact, had never had a full-time job. My jobs had been mowing lawns in my neighborhood, and part-time work at the local photography shop.
I said, “That would be fantastic.”
Leo said, “I know the manager of a hotel in Avalon, called the Island Villas, I used to work for him; maybe he can find a slot there for you this summer.”
My uncle went to the phone, made a phone call, and came back and said, “Ollie said he will hire you, on my recommendation, as a yard boy in the hotel, if you can be there all summer. You had better not embarrass me”
It was my life dream come true and it all happened in about 15 minutes. That’s when I learned it wasn’t what you know, but rather who you knew.
I went to work there that summer and swept the grounds, cleaned the bathrooms, and carrying luggage for the visitors when they came in on the big white steamer.
After work I went skin diving every day. Soon I became known in town by the locals as the diver. My nickname the hotel staff gave me was Rusty. There was already a John on staff, and a red on staff. I had read hair at the time, so they came up with the name Rusty. I worked summers on the island for seven years, and the only name I was known by was Rusty. When I go back to Catalina now, 60 years later, and see the friends that I made there I’m still known only as Rusty.
I had many part-time jobs on the island. I would do anything I could find that I could get paid for. I was working my way through college. I learned how to clear the weeds in the vacant lots, clean the bathrooms in several different hotel at night, worked as a doorman/bouncer at several bars on weekends and even worked as a security officer for the hotel at night, several years after I got fired for lying to Ollie, my boss.
One of my security jobs was at the Casino Ballroom. I worked the dance floor and was in uniform. My boss, Dale, came to me and asked me if I could dance, I said “Yes I can.” I had taken a dance class at East LA College and at the request of the instructor, Eva Crum, stayed on for two more semesters as an aid. The classes were Ballroom and Round dancing.
He said, “Why don’t you come to work in plainclothes from now on instead of the uniform and dance with the ladies. You can still be our security guard, you’ll just be in plain clothes. There are so many more women here than men that many of them never get a dance. Dance with as many different ones as you can, and don’t just pick out the good looking young ones. Dance with their mothers too.” It was probably the best assignment I have ever had. I came every weekend and danced with 15 or 20 wonderful different ladies and had a great time, while I was working, and got paid for it too.
One of the funnier things that was involved with my casino job was the band. It was Les Brown and his ‘Band of Renown’. They were a famous band in the Big Band days of the1930s, 40s, and 50s, and played at the Casino every weekend for the whole summer. I of course got to know some of the members. When they found out that I was the cop on the floor dancing with all of the ladies every night, and I was doing it while I was getting paid, the first time I stepped out onto the floor each night, they would stop whatever they were playing and say, “We have a special request.” Then they would play ‘Just a Gigolo Everywhere I Go’. I never explained to the lady I happen to be dancing with at the time that it was a request for me, but not by me.
Bolg 8 Summers at Catalina dance