CANNONBALL!(The Talk of the Town)

Neddy Merrill, the hero of John Cheever's story "The Swimmer," "had an inexplicable contempt for men who do not hurl themselves into pools." Neddy would have been troubled by aquatic developments over the past two decades. After a golden age in the seventies--a decadent, late-Roman last hurrah--the American pool has suffered a gradual decline: thanks, for the most part, to concerns about safety and liability, diving boards have been removed and deep ends undeepened. At municipal pools across the country, the once-ubiquitous one-metre springboard has become an endangered species; and the three-metre high dive--the T. rex of the community pool--is now virtually extinct.

Such developments have consequences. In recent years, the fortunes of the formerly dominant United States Men's and Women's Diving Teams have suffered, too. In the last two Olympics, medal counts for American divers reached their lowest levels since the 1912 Games, in Stockholm. In Athens, the Americans are underdogs to the Chinese and the Canadians (the Canadians!). Ron O'Brien, U.S.A. Diving's national technical director, and the former coach of Greg Louganis, said last week, "You can't put your finger on any one thing, but having so many diving boards taken out around the country has had a serious impact on our sport, no question about it."

Putting aside the matter of competitive decline, though, what does the increasing scarcity of springboards--and of opportunities for young Americans to display their talents for contortion and water displacement, as well as for freaking out their mothers and annoying lap swimmers--augur for American pool culture?

Last week, a friend with a heavily chlorinated past was asked to recall the jumps and dives of his youth. After a moment, he said, "Well, of course there's the cannonball family: The can opener." (A cannonball with one leg extended.) "And then the hammerhead, and its close cousin, the watermelon." (Cannonballs landed head first, and on your back, respectively.) "There's the jackknife." (Touch your toes in midair and then kick out into a dive.) "The sailor's dive." (Head first, arms at your sides.) "The Superman." (Body straight, one arm extended.) "The Watusi." (He was a bit foggy on this one.) "The ballbreaker." (Maintain a cross-legged, seated posture in the air.) There was a long silence--an unwelcome flashback, perhaps. Finally, he added brightly, "The flying squirrel." (Head first, arms behind your back, hands grabbing your ankles.)

At the John Jay Pool, on East Seventy- seventh Street, diving has been relegated to a small, deep-bottomed pool tucked away behind the main pool; it is open only intermittently. On a recent visit, the moment the diving pool opened, all swimmers between the ages of eleven and twenty-five cleared out of the main pool and crowded in front of the ...