South Philly Review

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It is 1954 and America is still mostly its old self. Television has not yet gotten our culture fully in its relentless electronic stranglehold and the Beatles are still restless schoolboys in the quays of grimy old Liverpool. Rock and roll hasn’t yet loosened its marauding hordes on the land and drugs are what you buy from the pharmacist.

High Diver is 16 years old and a junior at Wildwood High School. He wears his collar up and his black hair is slicked back, but he is no James Dean or motorcycle hood; simply a seemingly ordinary young man who likes the look.

High diver has been a water bug all his seashore life, learning how to swim at age 4 when his father took him to a dock on the bay and treaded water about eight feet from the dock. High Diver jumped gaily into the water, doggy paddled to his dad and caught a breath as his father pushed him toward the ladder. He would doggy paddle over, clamber up and do it again. Each time his father moved a little further away and soon little High Diver gave up the doggy paddle and broke into a brisk, efficient Australian crawl like a miniature Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic gold medalist who went on to become the most famous Hollywood Tarzan.

High Diver at 16 felt star stirrings himself. The summer before he had begun hanging about at the Keogh Brothers Aqua Follies water show that was playing at the Sportland Pool. A diving tower with three levels — 35, 55 and a sky-scraping 85 feet — rose dizzily above the shimmering blue waters and three times daily the professional divers would thrill the always eager summer crowds with their hilarious and death-defying performances.

That summer, High Diver became part of the Aqua Follies scene. The Keogh Brothers troupe began to notice that he was dependable and an accomplished swimmer. One day Billy Keogh, the oldest brother, said to his younger brother, Ralphie, “That kid’s gonna grows gills if he stays in the water much more. Think we could use him?”    

“Maybe next year,” Ralphie said. “We got enough to think about finishing this year up.”

For his part, High Diver had absorbed the inner workings of the water show. He knew secrets, too. He knew was that Carmen Oswego, the fire-diver himself, was never in any particular jeopardy as a he plunged from the 55-foot platform engulfed in a sheet of flames. It was simple physics: Carmen dove as soon as his suit caught fire. The motion of his body through the air pushed the flames away from him and they were extinguished as soon as he hit the water. Still, it was a thrilling sight to see the human fireball plummeting through the summer night like a comet. Carmen almost always got a standing ovation.

High Diver knew two secrets about Superman. Jud Nickels, one of the clown divers who had a marvelous phsique, played the Man of Steel. He would be framed by a spotlight, in an exact replica Superman costume, complete with cape, flexing his muscles and then there would be total darkness for a split second before the spotlight flashed back on to the stage where Superman was standing heroically. The crowd howled and Superman resumed his kingly bowing.

But High Diver knew the secret behind the water show miracle: a body double, Jud’s twin brother, Jed, who had been crouched, hidden, under the stage while all attention was directed at his preening brother 85 feet above the crowd.

The Superman game didn’t end there. Superman issued a challenge.