Learning a Lesson About Staying Afloat : It isn’t just his livelihood that is being threatened, he says, but the very lives of the children who may not learn to swim if not for services like his.

One of the smaller prices of living in Los Angeles is the drone of the freeway. Many of us live within earshot, and when visitors from out of state make rude comments, we say you get used to it--that it sounds like the murmur of a river or surf on the beach.

But at Jim Herrick’s place, the Ventura Freeway is just beyond the back fence, and there’s no sound wall to muffle its roar. This, and the jetliners from Burbank Airport that rumble overhead, make the sign on his west wall seem a bit funny. “Out of consideration of my neighbors,” it says, “please try to keep the noise to a minimum.”

That means you, kid--the toddler afraid of the water.

Jim Herrick operates a back-yard swim school, much to the annoyance of the woman who lives behind the sign that says hush. Herrick has described Marty Mendenhall as “my neighbor from hell.” The feeling is probably mutual. Herrick and Mendenhall have been going round and round for more than five years now, campaigning for the allegiance of neighbors, zoning officials and the Los Angeles City Council. And now they’re at it again.

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This is a different kind of NIMBY issue. Prisons, landfills, halfway houses, toxic waste dumps--these are things that make people shout, “Not In My Back Yard.” So it isn’t likely the battle over the swim school at 11846 Kling St. will ever make the 11 o’clock news.

To the combatants, however, the dispute is fraught with deep meaning. Talk to Marty Mendenhall or Lori Dinkin, president of the Valley Village Homeowners Assn., and you’ll hear a tale about a man who has flouted the law and a city that fails to enforce its own zoning ordinances. You’ll hear about the political clout of an “elitist” clientele who can afford Herrick’s one-on-one service in favor of lessons at the local Y.

Talk to Jim Herrick, and you’ll hear about how silly rules and regulations are ruining our quality of life. It isn’t just his livelihood that is being threatened, he says, but the very lives of the children who may not learn to swim if not for services like his.

The tale begins in 1987, when Herrick first bought the home on Kling Street with the swimming pool and the long lot. A burly man with red hair and a beard, Herrick had operated the old Sherman Oaks Swim School on Ventura Boulevard for many years until his landlord sold the property out from under him in the early ‘80s. When he bought the house on Kling Street and opened for business, he says, “I never realized it was illegal.”

Two years later, he found out when Marty Mendenhall made her first complaint. Mendenhall does art restorations in her home. This can be painstaking work, and while freeway and jetliner noise is predictable, the occasional tantrum of a child or the encouraging shouts of a proud parent can be a headache. She tolerated Herrick’s operation, she says, until construction began on a second swimming pool.

So off to City Hall they went. The Valley Village Homeowners Assn. sided with Mendenhall, determined to keep commercial operations out of a residential zone. But Herrick secured the support from most of the neighbors in the immediate area as well as his clients.

Herrick has stayed open by adhering to a variety of conditions, such as the construction of an 8-foot-high cinder-block wall to buffer the noise, and limitations on instructional hours. But in June, 1992, officials made it clear that Herrick should try to find a new location by Sept. 30, 1993.

So now it’s April, 1994. Last month, Herrick and Mendenhall squared off again before the Board of Zoning Appeals. Herrick’s plea is that the price of commercial property is prohibitive and no bank would grant a loan for a swim school.

The panel’s chairman seemed inclined to pull the plug on Herrick’s pools. Then another board member pointed out that, in a recent meeting, approval had been granted for a day-care center in an R-1 neighborhood that would accommodate up to 35 children all day long, 365 days a year. What, she asked, is so intrusive about a swim school?

Mendenhall was not pleased, not even by the board’s order that Herrick replace the bougainvillea vines along his wall with “mature trees.” A zoning official pointed out that trees would lower the noise by one or two decibels.

“We’ll just appeal it,” Mendenhall muttered.

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One person who’ll be rooting for Herrick is Barbara Burwell, whose own back-yard swim school in Northridge fell victim to the county’s officiousness last year after 30 years of operation. Mrs. B’s Swim School, as it was known, had taught thousands of children without incident before a county inspector determined that the slope of the pool violated safety standards.

One parent visiting Herrick’s school was dismayed by Mrs. B’s fate.

“That’s the kind of stuff that just fries me,” Lisa Goldberg said as her 4-year-old daughter, Hannah, was receiving her first lesson of the season. The lessons aren’t cheap--$17 for a 20-minute session. But Goldberg, a Studio City resident, figures it’s well worth it--and she hopes the baby she’s expecting will have a chance to learn to swim here as well.

Must be one of those elitists I’d heard about. How would she feel, I asked, if somebody opened a swim school next door to her?

“If it was this swim school,” she said, “I don’t think I’d have a problem.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may write Harris at The Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Ca . 91311.