One-of-a-Kind-Job : Her Only Duty Is to Keep an Eye on a Hole in the Sand

It is perhaps the strangest baby-sitting job in America as Linda Brower sits on the beach in Oceanside and watches the hole, the swirling, sinister, child-swallowing hole.

Brower drops her eyes to scan passages from her usual science fiction or real estate books, yet she remains ever vigilant, mindful of her sole duty as sentry to this 20-foot-wide, 6-foot-deep hole at the seashore.

Her job is odd and wonderful at the same time. It is both unbearably boring and spiritually exhilarating. It is peaceful and perilous. And monitoring this hole in the sand for eight hours a day, two days a week is also infinitely better than what Brower was doing before.

For 15 years back in Kansas City, Mo., this blond, 41-year-old grandmother hand-cut stencils for lettering on bowling shirts. “Then a computer came in and did a better job than I could, so that was the end of my career,” Brower said.

She and her husband, now an unemployed construction worker, moved to San Diego County, and one day last year Brower learned of the hole.

It is caused by Oceanside’s novel sand bypass project, which restores eroded beaches by sucking up sand from the city marina and distributing it southward along the coast via a lengthy pipeline.

When the pumps are fired up, sand and water are forced out at places along the pipeline. But, at the point where the pipeline narrows south of the Oceanside Pier, the pressure is more ferocious, creating a powerful jet of water that bores a hole in the sand. It’s like squirting a garden hose into soft dirt.

This turgid, roiling creation needed an alert, stolid master to warn the innocent to beware.

So reasoned the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the sand bypass project, and Healy Tibbitts Builders, the subcontractor that operates it.

Brower was hired early in October for $8.50 an hour to embark on a new career adventure as possibly the nation’s only hole sitter. After all, as Dana Whitson, a city official, pointed out, there is but one such sand bypass in the entire United States.

“It’s one of a kind,” Whitson said.

And perhaps so is Brower.

Tending a hole for a livelihood may be slightly absurd, and even Brower concedes “it is a little strange. I never would have thought of this back in Missouri.”

Yet it is an occupation ideal for a person such as she, who craves sunshine and the gently mesmerizing sea. The hole is a place for Brower to eat her apples and oranges and read half a book a day when things are quiet. They aren’t always, though, because the hole is a relentless tempter.

“Sometimes it gets real tense, you get 40, 50 kids who want to get in that thing at one time,” said Brower, who usually manages to ward off the unduly inquisitive before it’s too late.

Still, the hole beckons, and children have on occasion suddenly vanished into the dark water just feet from where Brower stations her low beach chair. But, before the hole could have its evil way, Brower boldly plunged in, and she knows from experience the depth of her adversary.

“Not by choice, but I’ve been in there a couple of times,” she said. “In the center, where the water pressure is highest, it’s been over my head.” She is 5 feet, 5 inches tall.

There have been other frights for Brower, like the time she spotted fins cutting along the ocean. “The first time I saw a dolphin, I thought it was a shark. I’m from Missouri,” she said.

Sometimes the monotony is maddening, but then the familiar characters will wander along to keep Brower company.

There’s Bruce, the bird. “I like to feed the birds, they’re quite humorous. One sea gull, I call him Bruce, he squawks loud and chases the other birds away. He’s a big hog,” she said.

And there is the usual cast of local street people who know they always have a friend to talk to.

One man, “he would act like a bird and have fistfights in the air with whoever. But he never did anything obnoxious,” Brower said. “He said the Army made him crazy.”

Many times she just dawdles in easy conversation with strangers. “I like people, so it doesn’t bother me. I’ve heard so many life stories and sad stories. They know I’m not any threat to them, and they can tell me anything they want,” she said.

Still, the hole is ever and silently demanding, and, even when it rains, although Brower retreats to the cover of a nearby public restroom, she manages to keep the hole under strict surveillance.

By mid-afternoon, after an eight-hour shift, the sand bypass project stops pumping, and the hole fills with sand and becomes dormant. That is, until the next time.

Brower heads for home, usually at peace.

“I used to feel career-motivated, you know, make the real money. But I guess I’ve mellowed out in life,” she said.