This guy - we'll call him Bob - grew up on an Atlantic City beach in the 1950s. His father was a lifeguard. His father's brother was a lifeguard. His friends were lifeguards. Naturally Bob became a lifeguard mascot and then a lifeguard. Then came Vietnam. Bob, being the type who liked to jump out of airplanes, got sent over to fight. He did so honorably. But even in the jungle there are calendars, and one year when June rolled around, Bob decided it was time to get back in a lifeguard stand for a few days. So he flew back from Southeast Asia, worked the beach for 14 days and flew back to the war - all at his own expense.

"I'll do anything to come back to the beach," he said.

Now that's a person with perspective. That's a beach bum. That's what this story is about.

The man we call Bob is Robert Levy, who now heads the beach patrol in Atlantic City. He is proud to call himself a beach bum, and we are proud to dedicate this story to people like Levy - people with a passion for the beach and the ocean, a passion that draws them with gravitational force. How to tell a beach bum? It's difficult. Some have jobs. Some have sort-of jobs. Some don't have jobs. Some have families, some don't. Some migrate to Florida in the winter, some stick. But there are guidelines for identification.

Their lives are constructed around the beach. They visit it often, in their heads and for real. It gives them something, and while that something is virtually indescribable to civilians, it is nevertheless real. Can you see gravity? No. Does it govern our lives? Yes. So it is the beach and with beach bums.

A real (beach) bum

Say the phrase "beach bum" in Margate and the words "Christopher Cook Gilmore" come back faster than the echo of wave slapping a steel-hulled boat.

"I take my measure of a man by how much time he spends on the beach," Gilmore said recently. Gilmore, 58, is the son of the late Eddie Gilmore, who won a Pulitzer in 1947 for his dispatches from Moscow for the Associated Press. Christopher Cook Gilmore is a writer of note himself, having published six novels and hundreds of short stories and articles. If there is an occupation made for beach bums, it's writer.

But Gilmore has become many other things to support his beach habit. He is a carpenter, mechanic, substitute teacher and, occasionally, a sailing instructor for topless French women.

When he's not traveling abroad he rises at maybe 6 a.m., writes until 10 a.m. or noon and then is free to pursue that which interests him, and that which interests him usually involves something on the beach. His skills in the waves on his 14-foot Hobie catamaran are near legendary. Sometimes it's the women walking by that interest him, and his skills with women are ..... well, who knows what's true and what occupies local storytellers? Suffice it to say that Gilmore appreciates natural beauty.

"A day without love," he said, "is a day without sunshine."

He has held only three "real" jobs, as an Associated Press correspondent for a year and, for two years, as a teacher in Absecon, and as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, his way of honorably avoiding fighting in Vietnam.

He was a lifeguard during high school, but he doesn't count that because it wasn't year-round. ""That's what ruined me for working during the summer," he said. "After that I would never do anything that would keep me off the beach on a hot sunny day."

The best he can do now is to substitute teach for Ocean City High School. "I tell them don't call me more than twice a week and only when it rains," he said.

He has learned to live simply. His car is a '71 Triumph Spitfire. He lives in a wing of his mother's house in Margate a block from the beach. He has no children and no ex-wives, but he does have a steady girlfriend. He owns a small motorboat, a garvey. He does have a cell phone, which he sometimes uses to order subs while he's on the beach, which he gets delivered to the bulkhead.

Come cold weather all he needs is an airline ticket to someplace warm - Bali, or Borneo or Madagascar or maybe Southeast Asia. For a time he lived in a tent on a beach on St. Martin, next to a Hobie, which was also next to a rasta bar, His job was to give sailing lessons to topless French girls. He has a fondness for the French language, which he attributes to his ability to consort with the natives.

"I've lived with a lot of French women," he said. "I've lied in French, made love in French ..."

This is what being a beach bum can be like if you are really, really good - and dedicated. But this style of beach bumming cannot be pursued from an office in center-city Philly. It requires commitment, retraining and a willingness to give up the suits, the cars, the fancy houses, the kids, the spouses, the retirement, the security ... but, hey, we're talking topless French women here.

If there's anybody who can explain what it is about the beach, it's Gilmore.

"It's a Zen thing," he said. "It's the confluence of the sea and land - where they meet, the synthesis of land and sea. When I'm there I feel the immense power of the sea. The thing is, all the problems we have happen on the land, and when we look out at the sea they vanish, and we realize the only thing that matters is the right now."

Thanks, Gilmore, thanks for giving us that look into a style of beach bumming that most of us will only dream about.

A woman, a daughter, a lot of sand

Most of us have adopted a more practical style. We have children, we have jobs - sorry, Gilmore, most people don't believe writing and catering to topless French women are real jobs - and we somehow make it to the beach anyway.

Rose Ann Cahill, who works in the library at the Union Avenue School in Margate, believes she became a beach bum "in my mother's womb."

"She was a beach person," Cahill said. "I have womb memories of the shore."

So there you have it, a definite answer to the "nature vs. nurture" debate over how beach bums are formed.

Cahill, 51, wife of Ventnor Fire Chief Dan Cahill, takes her bumming seriously. She takes it often, too. She likes to read on the beach and she also enjoys swimming and body surfing. And, she notes, it has been an excellent year for waves. Like any good beach bum, she enjoys the beach all year, even when the tourists come.

"There's a definite strategy," she said. "You have to get there first and stake out your land. The influx of tourists has cut down on squatters' rights. Always check the tides. And you want optimal chair placement for sun and personal space."

We hope we're not giving anything away here, but Cahill has a strategy for keeping the water clear of tourist debris. "I tell people the water is much colder than it is," she said. "This guarantees a shoobie-free zone."

Her daughter, also named Rose Ann, 26, has been a beach tag checker for eight years and is employed in the winter as a teacher. Many true beach bums hide in a fog of respectability by teaching in the winter.

The beach gives mother and daughter a place to hang out. They're often out by 10 a.m., every day if possible, and they may stay until 4 p.m. or "until I have to go home and cook," said the mother. "And everybody in our house gets skinny in the summer."

A tough life huh?

"Practice, practice, practice," said the mom. "It's beautiful, it's peaceful, to us it's probably the best thing God made," she said.

Pray for sun

A Catholic priest as a beach bum? Believe it.

Meet Father Mike Matveenko, of the Church of the Resurrection in Upper Township. Sometimes he gets material for sermons on the beach. It gives him time to reflect. But let's not get too heavy about this. He also body surfs and kayaks, which helps .... well, it's got to help with something religious.

"It's my private chapel," said Matveenko. "I think you can hear the voice of the Lord in the ocean."

He gets to the beach maybe twice a week, winter and summer. He has even called himself a beach bum from the pulpit. That was the day he used the beach to get into a sermon about fatherhood.

"I happened to be down on the beach and one of the things I like to do is people-watch. I was watching a father with a 5-year-old boy and it gave me some material. It really gave me a good launching point for father's day.

"There is a sense of peace I get from being near the ocean,'' he said.

A lifeguard for 49 years

Bob Brown is a dentist. Well, he's dentist sometimes. He practices dentistry for six months out of the year, then takes off to work the beach for the Atlantic City Beach Patrol. He's been on the beach for 49 years. He's 66 now. but it seems like not long ago when he had just graduated from dental school.

Brown's patients know the schedule. Apparently they understand. Heck, they're probably beach bums too. Anyway, he makes no apologies.

""I'm a beach bum,' he said. "When the summer comes I couldn't stand to be in an office.'' What is it about the beach?

""I don't know, but I love it," he said. "When you come back the next summer, except for being pale, it's like you never left. I know years ago there were times when I wondered whether I would ever believe I did the wrong thing, but I can tell you, so far I have no doubt, I did the right thing. So yes, I'm a beach bum, in that I love the beach.''

Give him waves - now!

Bob Morris also has the look and sound of a person with no regrets. He runs a store on the Ocean City Boardwalk called Christine's Sports Wear Inc. He doesn't call himself a beach bum. He calls himself a seashore brat. Same thing, different generation. Now his daughter is a seashore brat too, and a fourth-generation Boardwalk merchant."

Talk about a job made for a beach bum - Morris can check the waves while he's working!

He started surfing when he was 52. He used to have a waverunner but decided he liked surfing better. He swims the ocean regularly and even does some spearfishing off the jetties.

"It's a lifestyle," he said. "There are generations of families coming to the shore and they get sand in their shoes and they never want to leave. It's relaxing and they unwind and they walk the Boardwalk and go on the amusements with their kids, and the kids grow up on the boards. It's a healthy, nice kind of clean environment for young people growing up. Growing up at the Jersey shore is a real unique experience.''

He owes it all to his grandfather, who opened a jewelry store in 1900 at 2029 Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Morris opened his Ocean City store 30 years ago, and his children grew up right in the store .... and on the beach.

"If I wanted to make a fortune I'd be in another business," he said. But he does have a year-round tan, being a Florida resident in the winter.

A good life, this kind of beach bumming.

Sand in the veins

It may look like blood that's running through Fred Burwell III's body, but it might actually be sand. His father was on the beach patrol in Atlantic City. So was his grandfather. So is his brother. He's been on the beach since high school. "You can't have a better job in high school,'' he said, and he kept at it in college, and pretty soon the money got better ..... Now he's 28, and guarding full time, including Delray Beach in Florida in the winter.

"It's definitely more fun here,'' he said. "The Atlantic City patrol is much bigger and there's more wave here which means more rescues and more action."

In Atlantic City, to give one example, a 10-year lifeguard makes $100.46 a day and is eligible for a pension in 20 years.

Sometimes it seems like the more money a person makes, the more they miss the beach. Maybe they're missing what the beach means: Freedom. Burwell said he knows a nurse anesthesiologist who makes probably $90,000 a year, and he's trying to figure out a way to get back on the beach. The world is littered with doctors, lawyers and high-powered business people who used to work as lifeguards. Many of them secretly - and not so secretly - regret leaving the beach. Levy, the head of the Atlantic City Beach Patrol, hears it all the time. They walk up to him and laugh and say: "Bob, you have the best job in the world."

He doesn't argue. He just smiles. Beach bums do that a lot.