Monthly Archives: July 2023

Comment on Comment and Update on Updates

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

I received this comment on my latest post, more from the serializing of my novel, “Swamis.”

Going through your posts is like Deja Vu. Graduated Vista High 67. Moved to Leucadia 69 on Phoebe street. Surfed Beacons daily. Surfed off and on until my early 60s. Dad we a Sheriff/Detective in Vista. Took me for first surf at Oceanside harbor and a baseball career went poof. Our group surfed Carlsbad north and south. Jeez, the stories. Love your Art and writing. Randy

My first response: Whaaat?

The narrator of “Swamis,” Joey, is the son of a detective stationed in Vista. So… What? Wow! Here is my somewhat calmer written response:

Randy, 

Thanks for the comment. Very excited by your father having been a deputy/detective with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office AND (even more so) by your not saying I was way off in anything I’ve posted from “Swamis” so far. I want the story to seem authentic. My wife, Trish, worked as a records clerk for the Sheriff’s Office downtown, at the jail, starting out on graveyard shift in the mid-70s. When I began writing the novel, I thought the most obvious folks to put suspicion on for the (upcoming) deaths were detectives. Because she worked around some of the detectives there at the time (may have dealt with your dad at some point), Trish said, “No way,” and, perhaps, made me promise that none of the fictional detectives would be responsible in my (fictional) manuscript.  

I’m sort of keeping my promise, bringing in the detective from Orange County and others as suspects.

I did have some interaction with the Sheriff’s Office in real life; got busted with some dickhead Fallbrook surf friends for heading over to South Carlsbad State Park to look for girls. Curfew violation, we were busted mostly because 15-year-old Billy McLean shot off his mouth. Five of us in the back of a CHP cruiser and taken to Vista.  Also, because Trish wanted to move up, I took a couple of night classes in Police Science (mostly to protect my wife from other cops/students). From Police/Community Relations class I did discover some cops and cop wannabes had some issues.

My vision (fancy word for idea) of Joseph DeFreines is of someone dedicated to his job, old-school cop, who, like a lot of fathers from our dads’ generation, worked long hours to provide for his family. I included in earlier versions the stuff that once happened in Fallbrook on Halloween, kids gathered downtown and egging passing vehicles. I participated once, 1968; got busted with Bill Birt and his stash of rotten eggs by, if memory serves, a plainclothes cop and a deputy before we made it to Main Street. We got to break all the eggs and go our way, with a comment/warning by the detective that he knew both of our fathers. On my way to the school library, where I had told my parents I was going, two of my brothers jumped out and egged our family station wagon. I made them wash it the next day.

Hey, Randy, I was busy studying and surfing and having a girlfriend and working. Still, at probably one the most revolutionary times in surfing, I did know times were changing, rapidly, more like catching up with the North County. One of my brothers followed friends to Northern California for ‘farming,’ another eventually went to work for ICE. The other brother may have taken a few too many hits of something. Blissfully unaware, I worked and surfed and got married and had kids.

I will be posting more from “Swamis,” taking this opportunity to do a, hopefully, final polish on the manuscript.

It is very important to me that the characters and what they do seems real. If you read anything that just seems wrong, feel free to write. Or write anyway. Because I wasn’t planning on writing this extensively, and because, with an even more than usual lack of nearby surf, I am going to post this on my site. Again, thank you so much for the comment. 

Oh, Wait! My next posting, Wednesday, will feature an incident at your spot, Beacons. Fiction, of course. Erwin

SURF RIG UPDATE- I am hoping that, with my stealth surf rig sporting its first new alternator since it was new, 1994, and three faulty rebuilds back at O’Reilly’s, and four new tires (went in for two- got too good a deal on a full set) to replace the Michelins that stayed too long under the car under a tree (sidewall blowouts are not fun), and a new fuel filter, and a repurposed, industrial strength rack on top, maybe the timing might just, just work out. Waves. Yes. Please.

I would include a photo, but I’m going to wait until I get a few sessions in.

MEANWHILE, I’m working on a flyer to go with the board now on display at the PORT TOWNSEND PUBLIC LIBRARY. The ‘plankholders’ are, left to right, Keith Darrock, Joel Carbon, me, and Adam James.

It is a one-of-a-kind. Guaranteed. The current thought is to sell it, with half of the proceeds going to the nonprofit FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY (and Libraries do need friends right now), and half going to the (also nonprofit) OLYMPIC MUSIC FESTIVAL (which, full disclosure, my daughter, Dru, works for).

I’m thinking $3,000.00. You are free to think whatever you want. Yes. But, if you want to make a sincere offer, contact the library. We’ll see. Raffle? Hmmm.

$3,500.00 is what I’m actually thinking.

“Swamis” Chapter 5, Part 2- Memorial for Joey’s Father, Spilled Casserole, Mr. Dewey, Lee Ransom

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, surf fiction

I backed my way through the middle of the semi-circle and back to the window. I didn’t look around to connect faces with questions and comments. I was somewhere else, imagining what magical waves were breaking beyond the hills that were my horizon, running a mental slide show of photos from surfing magazines, little movies of things I had seen. I kept one image a bit longer. It was from above highway 101, above the railroad tracks, across the empty lot just south of the Swamis parking lot. There were the dark green trees, two palm trees beyond them, one of the large gold lotus blossoms on a white stucco wall; and there were distant swells, on that horizon, already bending to the contours of the underwater rocks and reefs, ready to wrap into Swamis.

I didn’t bother to consider how long I had been detached from the reality of an event as surreal as this wake, or memorial, or potluck. That was me, detached. Everyone seemed to know this. Damaged. Some knew the story, others were filled in. There had to be an explanation for why I was, so obviously, elsewhere.

Standing at the window, all the conversation was behind me; the clattering and tinkling, the hushed voices telling little stories, the sporadic laughter. 

The yellow van with the two popout surfboards on top pulled out of the driveway, a black Monte Carlo behind it. I didn’t recognize the car. I looked around the living room. Wendall and Dickson were holding court with someone over by the sideboard, a two-thirds gone bottle of some brownish liquor between them. Langdon was gone. A black Monte Carlo seemed about right. Oversized. Pretentious.

A yellow Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, top down, was coming up the hill. It passed the Hayes Flowers van. Different yellows, softer, warmer than the van’s. There was a woman at the wheel, very colorful scarf over her head, sunglasses. The Monte Carlo stopped. The VW stopped. Langdon. Yeah, it was him. He had an am out the window. The gesture was ‘turn around.’ The woman in the Karman Ghia gave Langdon a brush back with a raised hand, followed, when the Monte Carlo moved on, with the woman’s right hand, up, middle finger out. She moved her arm halfway back down, then up again.

“Yeah,” I imagined myself saying, “Fuck you… with a half twist.” I may have added the half twist with some later recalling of the day. It doesn’t matter, it’s there now.

I had seen Deputy Wilson before, at the Vista substation. He was the latest in a line of deputies identified as “New Guy.” Those who lasted long enough got to be referred to by their last name. A nickname was a higher honor. Wilson didn’t have one that I had heard. I hadn’t caught or bothered to remember his first name.

Wilson half-leaned into the Karmann Ghia once it stopped in the driveway. The woman looked away from the deputy. She saw me in the window. She pointed. She waved. I took a second, then waved back. Wilson gave me a gesture, hands out, palms up, chest high. As in, “Really?” I mimicked his gesture, palms facing each other. The New Guy let her proceed.

            After several adjustments, the Karmann Ghia was pointed out, getaway position, the passenger side almost touching the two-by-six fencing on the corral. She removed her scarf. Afro. Not huge, but out there enough to make a statement. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, pushed the sunglasses up into the Afro, prescription glasses remaining.

The woman swiveled in the seat, picked up a thirty-five-millimeter camera with a medium length telephoto attached, used the top of the windshield to stabilize it, and aimed it at me. Snap.

            I was in the center of the window, my arms still out. I moved backward and sideways, back into the room, bumping into a man I knew from somewhere; someone from the PTA or the School Board, or somewhere. “It’s that pushy Negro reporter woman,” he said. “Writes for that hippie rag. She did a big… ‘expose’ on the water district. Don’t know how she got past the Deputy.”

            “Wilson. The Deputy,” I said, suddenly realizing where I had seen the man’s photo. “The hippie rag, the expose; favorable rates for certain… constituents, as I recall. The Enterprise didn’t run the story for another two weeks. And… wait; you’re still the director.”

The Water District Director looked at me for a moment before turning away. “Wendall,” he said, brushing past Mr. Dewey. I didn’t look away quickly enough. Mr. Dewey smiled. He may have mistaken my look for a nod. He was already headed my way as I turned back to my spot in the middle of the picture window.

“I heard that, Joseph,” he whispered. “Good one. We need an alternative to the war mongering, corporate loving press.” Mr. Dewey was somewhere over half-sloshed, sloshing some sort of brown liquor in one of my father’s cut crystal glasses. “The North County Free Press. I should make it required reading for my Social Studies class.” Mr. Dewey leaned in a little too close to me. “I mean…” I leaned away. “…You read it… right?”

            I tried to correct my overreaction by leaning in toward Mister Dewey as if I was ready to share a secret. “You know, Mister Dewey…” I looked around the room, back to the teacher. “Most of these people do, too.” I whispered, “Also. And… there’s some… nudity. Sometimes. Hippies, huh?”

            Mr. Dewey nodded and went into some forgettable, mumbled small talk. War in Asia, civil rights, threats to the middle class. It was less than a minute later when Mr. Dewey pointed my father’s glass, with Detective Wendall’s whiskey sloshing around in the bottom, toward the photograph of my parents. “Never understood… guy like Joe DeFreines; almost a John Bircher… conservative. He was a Marine, fought the Japs, big war hero.” He took another sip. “Korea, too. Also. Another war we didn’t win. And then…”

            Mr. Dewey seemed to realize he had gone a bit too far with this. He tipped the glass up high enough to get the last of the whiskey.

“Well, Mr. Dewey, Sir; it’s traditional, really, isn’t it? Kill the men. Take the women.”

Mr. Dewey looked into my father’s glass. Empty. I looked around the room, past the dining room, and into the kitchen as if I was looking for someone in particular; long enough for Mr. Dewey to notice, to feel just a bit more uncomfortable. I turned back toward the window.

“You know, Joseph; your father was a busy man.” I knew he was looking from the unfinished garage to the unfinished fencing. “I’m not teaching summer school this year.” I shook my head a bit, trying to understand. “I have time, that’s all. If I had a place like… this, I…”

“Yeah. Needs… time. Work.”

Mr. Dewey tapped the empty glass on the window. “The Falcon wagon? That yours… now?”

“I am making…” A chuckle stuck in my throat. “Guess so.” Mr. Dewey cleared his throat. “I passed the… driving tests.”

“You. Of course.”

I whispered, “They didn’t ask, I didn’t admit… anything. I am getting… better.”

“Of course, Joseph.” Mr. Dewey turned and looked at the selections of food that were still on the table as three different women brought in an assortment of desserts. He patted my shoulder as fourteen other men and seven women had done, coughed out some whiskey breath, and headed to where my father’s partners, Wendall and Dickson, were filling glasses no one had yet asked for.

“Better,” I whispered to myself and the window and the Falcon and the property that needed time and work.

… 

            The reporter woman was standing next to my father’s partners. She declined a drink in a fattish sort of glass, three-quarters full, offered by Dickson. “Smooth,” he said, offering it again with a look that was really a dare. She was asking questions I couldn’t quite hear; questions that seemed to make the detectives uneasy.

            The reporter was holding out a notepad, three quarters of the pages pushed up, and was tapping on the next available page with a ballpoint pen. Dickson made a quick grab for the notepad.  She pulled it back. Quicker. Dickson pulled a very similar, palm-sized notepad from his inside coat pocket, opened it, went through some pages, shook his head, closed the notepad, put it back into the pocket. The reporter closed her notepad.

            “So,” the reporter asked, “The official word is no word?”

            “Correct.”   

            Wendall pulled a pack of Winston non-filters from his left outside coat pocket, a Zippo lighter with a Sheriff’s Office logo, exactly like my father’s, from the right pocket. He opened the top with a forceful snap on his wrist, looked around the room, pointed toward the kitchen. Partway through, Mrs. Wendall tried to stop him. He pointed to the cigarette in his mouth with the lighter and headed to and out the open sliding glass door.

            I moved a bit closer to the reporter and Dickson. “No, Detective Dickson, I am not getting any help from Downtown,” she said. I moved closer, between the pineapple upside down cake and a plate of frosted brownies. I took a brownie. “You could just tell me how an experienced driver could…” Dickson looked at me. The reporter looked at me, took the glass from the sideboard, downed it in one gulp, stepped toward me. “You,” she said. “Lee Ransom.” She extended a hand before the alcohol she had thrown down her throat forced her to spread her fingers, lean back, and open her mouth wide enough and long enough to emit a totally flat and involuntary, “Haaaauuuuuh.”

I made a quieter version of the sound she had made, leaned back at the waist, and said, “Oh. The Lee Ransom.”

Dickson laughed and said, “Smooooth.”

Lee Ransom moved closer to me. “Oh?” She paused for the exact same time as I had. “Meaning?”

            “Oh, as in, I thought Lee Ransom must be…”

            “White?”

            “A… man.”

            “Do I write like a… man?”

            “Yes. A… white… man.” Lee Ransom couldn’t seem to decide if I was putting her on. “College educated, new journalism, ‘I’m part of the story’… white… writer. Good, though. I read you… your… stuff.” I looked at Dickson. “He reads it.” I made a quick head move, all the way left, all the way right, and back to Lee Ransom. “They all read it.”

            Lee Ransom may have wanted to chuckle. She didn’t. She extended her hand again. “Thank you, Jody.” Dickson snickered. I took Lee Ransom’s hand, trying to use the grip my father taught me, the one for women. I imagined him, telling me; “Not too strong, not too long, look them in the eye. No matter what they’re wearing… cleavage-wise.” Lee Ransom was in black; tasteful, one unbuttoned button short of conservative. I didn’t look at her cleavage or her breasts. I was aware of them.    

“I was hoping to speak to your mother, Jody.”

            “Joey. I go by… Joey.”

            Dickson laughed. “Pet name. Jody.” He laughed again. “Private joke.” Laugh.

            “My friends call me Joey.” I did a choking kind of laugh. “Private joke.”

            Lee Ransom gave me a ‘I don’t get it’ kind of smile.”

            “You. My mom. Talking. Probably… not.” I nodded toward the hallway. A woman was leading a couple toward the living room. “Sakura Rollins,” I said, “Since you’re taking notes.”    

“Thank you… Joey.” Lee Ransom tapped on her closed notebook. “She and her husband, Buddy, own a bowling alley. Oceanside. Back Gate Lanes.” She nodded toward the couple. “Gustavo and… Consuela Hayes. Flower people. Poinsettias…. Mostly.”

Sakura Rollins came into the living room from the hallway, stopping close to Dickson. Mrs. Hayes turned to thank her, taking both of Mrs. Rollins’ hands in hers for a moment. Mr. Hayes exchanged a nod with Dickson, declined a drink, put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, turned her toward the door, walked with her toward the foyer. Neither of them looked to their left, into the living room. The husband walked to his wife’s left, between her and the rest of us. They both bent, slightly, to look at the flowers. The woman rearranged the pots and vases, slightly, before they went onto the porch.

I mouthed, “Flower people.”

Lee Ransom turned toward Sakura Rollins. Mrs. Rollins, her expression blank, shook her head before Lee Ransom could ask her anything.

Theresa Wendall walked up to Dickson from the kitchen, leaned around him to look down the hallway, then looked at Sakura Rollins as if asking for some sort of confirmation. Dickson set down a glass and wrapped his right hand around Mrs. Wendall’s upper arm. She took a breath, gave Dickson a look that I didn’t see, but one that caused him to release his grip.

Sakura Rollins followed Mrs. Wendall down the hallway. Mrs. Wendall stopped, allowing Mrs. Rollins to open the door and announce her. “Theresa Wendall.” Permission. Access. Mrs. Wendall went into my parents’… my mother’s room. Sakura Rollins closed the door, leaned against the wall between that door and the door to Freddy’s room, and pointed toward me, twisting her hand and pulling her finger halfway back.  

Mrs. Rollins met me halfway between the door and the open area. She put a hand on each of my shoulders. “Ikura desuka,” she said, her voice soft and low. “It means… ‘How much does it cost?’ Not in a formal way. Slang. Soldiers. It is… can be… insulting. Thank you for not asking your mother.”

“I didn’t… ask… you.”

“No, and you wouldn’t.” She tilted her head. “Your mother…”

“I have… other questions.”

“Yes. There’s time.” Sakura Rollins released her right hand. “You’re… doing well, Joey.” She pointed toward the living room. “Your parents… strong.” I wanted to cry. “As are you. As strong as you need to be.”

            I backed up, three steps, did a half bow, unreturned, turned, and headed back toward the living room.   

Lee Ransom was declining Dickson’s latest drink offer, a half glass this time. She walked over to my father’s lounger. I followed. “Shrine,” I whispered. She looked closely at the scar on the palm of my father’s left hand. “It’s just… just the one hand,” I said. “Half stigmata.”

Lee Ransom may have smiled as she leaned in toward the portrait. I almost smiled when she looked back at me.

…

I had to sit on my mother’s little bench on the porch to put my shoes on. Lee Ransom stepped down onto the concrete pad, the part of a sidewalk my father had completed. “Optional today,” I said.

“I… should have,” Lee Ransom said, “to show proper respect.” We both looked at her practical black shoes. She looked toward the many cars parked on the lawn and in the driveway. She pulled her sunglasses down and over her regular glasses. She pointed at the Falcon. “You just… keep the board on top?” I nodded, stood up, jumped off the part of the porch without stairs. “So, Joey; which one of these cars is your mother’s?”

Freddy, a toy revolver in his hand, ran past Lee Ransom, jumped off the porch, swung around me, and fired five shots as the younger Wendall brother ducked behind someone’s car, making a mouth sound with each shot, following the volley with “Got ‘cha!” 

“I think he ducked,” I said as Freddy crouched and hurried down the lawn and took shelter behind the Wendall family station wagon. Wendall’s kid popped up, took a shot at Freddy. “Dick Tracy model. Snub nose 38.” Lee Ransom and I had made it down to the flatter, gravel and bare earth part of the property. She was still looking at the various cars. “I gave it up. Guns. Switched to…” I went into some version of a swashbuckling stance… “Swords.”

The younger Wendall brother ran in front of Lee Ransom and me. She swiveled, threw back her coat, drew two fake pistols from fake holsters, and shot at the kid. Two shots. The younger Wendall kid looked surprised, but instantly grabbed at his chest, both hands, staggered dramatically, and fell to the ground.

“Regular Annie Oakley,” I said.

“Well,” Lee Ransom said, blowing the fake smoke from the end of each fake pistol, “Where I came from, we played cops and robbers with real… cops.” She fake-holstered the fake pistols. “Real guns, too.” She shook her head and laughed.

I was about to tell her I never played the cop, always the robber, but we both turned when we heard someone being slammed up against someone’s car. “Surrender, Jap!”

Larry Junior had Freddy off his feet and pinned against the Wendall’s red station wagon. Freddy dropped his pistol and looked at me with a desperate, ‘You have to help me’ look. Larry Junior’s expression, moved from Freddy to me, was a defiant, “Do something, Jap” look. The younger Wendall kid leapt to his feet. Lee Ransom took a step back, then a few more, in the direction of her car.

Theresa Wendall, carrying a large Corning Ware serving dish with a glass cover in both hands, came out of the front door. Wendall and Deputy Wilson came around from the back of the house. “Lawrence Oliver Wendall, Junior,” Mrs. Wendall said, quite loudly.

Lawrence Oliver Wendall, Junior looked at his mother, stepping off the porch. He looked at his father, throwing a cigarette butt onto the lawn. He looked at Freddy. My brother’s expression had become something close to a smirk. Larry Junior looked at me, just coming around the front of the Buick, left hand out, right hand in a fist. He let go of Freddy.

Theresa Wendall’s high heels failed to make the transfer from concrete to lawn. She fell forward, the dish ahead of her. Launched.

None of this happened in slow motion. All of us on the lawn and the porch were frozen when the Corning Ware dish hit the splotchy lawn, the glass lid skimming like a rock on the water before skidding to a stop on the gravel. The contents of the Corning Ware dish were belching out as it hit on one edge and flipped forward just enough to hit the next edge. Then the next. It landed upright, one-fourth full, amazingly close to the lid.    

A few moments later, in slow motion, I mentally replayed what I had seen. Ten seconds, maybe. I was standing at the hood of the Wendall’s station wagon, my right hand still in a fist.

Everyone else had moved.

Freddy and Larry Junior and Larry’s younger brother were on their hands and knees, scooping food and bits of grass and gravel into the Corning Ware dish, chipped but unbroken.

Deputy Wilson was crouched down but not helping. He was looking at me. “I said, Jody, I notice you have chickens.” He nodded toward an unpainted plywood chicken coop with just enough of a fenced yard for six hens and a rooster.

“Chickens. Yes… we do.” I looked toward the porch, expecting to see a crowd. No one. I looked at our chicken coop, back at Deputy Wilson. “We don’t let them out, Deputy Wilson. Coyotes.”  

Deputy Wilson nodded, stood, straightened the crease in his uniform pants. “Scott,” he said, “Scott Wilson, Jody.” He adjusted the tilt of his hat, turned away, showing his clean hands to the three kids whose hands were lasagna sauce colored.

“Scott,” I said, quietly, “Joey. Joey, not Jody.”

“I worked on cases with… Your father knew his shit.”

I had already looked away, but turned, nodded, and smiled, then turned away again. Polite enough, I thought. Deputy Scott Wilson took the dish from Larry Junior and walked toward the DeFreines family chicken coop.

Theresa Wendall was sitting in the driver’s seat of the station wagon, door open. Her husband was standing between her and the door, leaning over rather than crouching.  Her left hand was on his right arm. She was crying. Detective Larry Wendall removed his left hand from the door and put it on his wife’s left hand. He kept it there for a moment, then lifted her hand from his arm, shifted slightly, and opened the back driver’s side door.

“I can help you turn around. Okay?” Mrs. Wendall didn’t answer. “Theresa?”

Theresa Wendall made the slightest of gestures with her left hand before moving it and clutching the outside ring of the steering wheel. Her husband waited a moment before coming closer. This time he crouched. “I shouldn’t have talked to her, Larry.” It wasn’t a whisper.

“Probably not.”

Deputy Scott Wilson came back with the emptied dish, took the glass lid from the younger Wendall kid, handed it to me. Toward me, as if I should be the one returning it. I looked at the three kids before I took possession of the dish. Both hands.

I approached the station wagon. Theresa Wendall looked past her husband, used the left sleeve of her dress to wipe both of her eyes before regripping the steering wheel. Detective Wendall stood up, stepped back, turned toward me. He looked embarrassed, almost angry. He slammed the back passenger door, reopened it as he passed, turned, and took the dish from me. Lid in one hand, dish in the other. He set them on the roof and turned toward his kids, Freddy, Deputy Wilson, and me. He lit up a cigarette, went around to open the very back door.

“Lasagna and Bermuda grass,” Mrs. Wendall said, breaking into the half-laugh kind of crying.  “Probably improved the taste.” She looked at me for some reassurance, some sort of sympathetic response. I barely knew the woman. Cops’ wives. I knew something about what that meant, what it required. “Your mother,” she said. “I am just so… sorry.”

I have no idea what I look like in these situations. Not cold and uncaring is my hope. Helpless is what I was.

A few moments later, I was over by the Karmann Ghia trying to convince Lee Ransom this wasn’t worth taking notes on or photos of. “Personal,” I said. Larry Junior and the younger Wendall kid were in the red station wagon, now, with some direction from Deputy Wilson, turned and pointed down the driveway. Freddy was leaning into the back seat window. All three kids were laughing.

Only a small percentage of those coming out of the house had to put their shoes back on. Deputy Scott Wilson was back directing traffic. Wendall lit up a cigarette with the butt of his previous one, waved at his children, and headed back up to the house. Theresa Wendall, eye makeup mostly wiped off, waved at me, and because I was standing next to her, Lee Ransom, on her way out. The younger Wendall kid did a finger shoot at Lee Ransom on the way by.

Lee Ransom jerked to one side, shot back. Just one finger gun, this time. She looked at me. “Regular Annie Oakley, huh?” She looked at the horse that was leaning over the barbed wire and over the front seat of Lee’s car.

“Tallulah,” I said. “My mother’s… pet. Mostly.”

“Like the actress; Tallulah Bankhead.”

“Yeah. From the old movies.” I stepped over to the little room adjacent to the covered stall, all constructed of plywood, still unpainted. I pulled out a handful of grain, closed that door, pulled up the plywood cover on Tallulah’s stall. The horse looked at Lee Ransom. Both walked over toward me. “My dad called her Tallulah Bankrupt.”

Lee Ransom held out both hands, cupped together. I transferred the grain. She fed it to Tallulah, the horse’s head through the opening, with me still holding the cover up. I stuck the hinged two-by-two onto the sill to prop the cover as Tallulah ate and snorted, and Lee Ransom giggled.

“Joey, what do you know about… grass; that whole… thing?

I looked back at the house, looked at the cars passing by. I took out a pack of Marlboros from the inside pocket of what had been my dad’s black coat, lit one up with two paper matches. “I’m the wrong person to ask, Lee Annie Ransom. No one tells me… anything.”

Lee Ransom brushed at Tallulah’s mane, ran her hand down the horse’s face, held the horse’s head up. “Someone told me that… if you…” She leaned over, blew a breath into Tallulah’s nostrils. “They’ll remember you.” She let go of the horse, pointed to my pack of cigarettes.

I pushed the pack toward the reporter, took the cigarette out of my mouth to light Lee Ransom’s. I blew some smoke into the stall, inhaled, blew a semi-clean breath into Tallulah’s nostrils. The horse reared back, hitting my face on the way up and back. I reacted. Lee Ransom took a drag on her borrowed cigarette, let out most of the smoke, and observed.

Though I didn’t do anything to Tallulah. I must have looked as if I wanted to. I did… want to. The effects of washing out the stall had rotted out the plywood just enough that my shoe punched through. I had to kick it back and forth several times to get my foot back out.

Lee Ransom came up very close to my face. She blew a very slight bit of breath toward me. Cigarettes and the vague remains of the whiskey, a bit of the skanky cheese and vinegar from a salad. “I don’t fucking believe you. Joey. You see, you observe… everything.”

“No. Not nearly.”

“Enough.” Lee Ransom turned away. “Tallulah, lucky Joey didn’t hit a stud, huh.”

“Lucky.” I turned, started walking toward the Falcon.

“Joey.” I stopped. “When your dad got that… wound… You were there. Correct?”

I stopped, crooked my left leg, butted the cigarette out on the sole of my shoe, turned halfway around, twirling the filter between a finger and thumb. “I was five, as you know, but that is the story.”

“It is. Yes. Your dad saved your life.”

I almost waited too long before responding. “He is… was… it’s his nature to be… heroic.” I turned fully away from Lee Ransom.

“Yeah. And, uh, which car did you say is your mother’s?”

“I didn’t say.”

“No, you didn’t. But, Joey, really, I could use a quote… from you.”

“Make up one. Fine by me.”

Lee Ransom had her camera up and aimed at me. “Half stigmata!” She took a photo.

“Swamis” copyright 2020, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. All rights to the original work and all revisions held by the author.

COMING UP in the next chapter, next Wednesday: Joey and Dangerous Dave confront DUDE/HEAD JERK bullying JULIA COLE at BEACONS.

MEANWHILE, still dealing with bad alternators for my eventual surf rig. I will probably still be whining about it next SUNDAY. Hope you’ve got swell coming your way.

What I Wrote but Didn’t Read

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

The plan was for me to talk at the recent SURF CULTURE ON THE STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA AND THE SALISH SEA EVENT, with my stealth plan to recite a poem I wrote when I still was thinking the show of a wide range of surf-centric art would be part of something bigger, bringing in other lovers of the Pacific Northwest waters, scientists and environmentalists and people who fish or harvest oysters, tugboat captains, and we had some of those… but they weren’t talking about their special connections… and either did I.

Chickened-out. Or, throwback to the 60s, “Haired-out.” I did talk, kind of off the cuff. Here, and I’m not saying it would have been better, is what I wrote:

photo courtesy of Sideslip Surfboards

Art, Surfing, and Barrel Dodging

IMAGINATION connects surfing and art. Surfers imagine how they’re going to cruise or glide or dance on waves… or rip them up. Artists look around, or they, perhaps, stare at a blank canvas and imagine some piece of artwork. It starts with the IMAGE.

The image is, quite possibly, perfect, perfectly rendered, real. Or there are variations, slight or major changes, embellishments, color, perspective, shape, shading, formatting.  

REALITY. This is tougher. Image to reality.

Surfing requires getting your gear together and heading out. Maybe you have reason to believe there will be good waves. EXPECTATION. ANTICIPATION. Even if someone broke a major rule of etiquette and called you, you can’t be entirely certain the waves are chest high and perfect. So, you’re anxious, excited.

You arrive, gear assembled. It’s time for the GREG NOLL MOMENT. Not at third reef pipeline. I’m sure you have that image cataloged in your brain somewhere. Every surfer takes that moment, mind surfing a few waves, putting yourself in the picture. You will wait for a lull, jump in and… surf. Timing, timing, COMMITMENT. You either wade or you leap.

For a writer or an artist, a blank page or an empty canvas can be daunting, even frightening. Getting started can easily be put off with real life chores and commitments. Eventually you make the first sketchy strokes. Wading. Or leaping.

It shouldn’t really be surprising that things don’t go as you hoped. Your words or colors or that six wave set that catches you inside, or wave selection, or just plain PERFORMANCE don’t go as you had imagined. Almost never. Still, you’re doing… okay.

Okay. Let’s say you have a piece of art that you’re pretty satisfied with. Not fully stoked, not ready to sign your name to it. You could do more to it, maybe improve it. But you could also, by continuing, destroy it, lose some quality you almost accidentally, but happily achieved.

Twisting and squeezing this metaphor; you’re surfing down the line, high on the wave face. The wave is getting critical. You could tuck into a barrel you may not make it out of, risk getting pitched over the falls, or you could drop down, attempt to go under and around that section, maybe connect back with the green wave face on the other side.

BARREL DODGING. The result is a less than memorable, could-have-been great ride. And you still might have been wiped out by the broken wave.

The rides that are memorable, the ones that make whatever sacrifice we tell ourselves we’re making to surf, or write, or pursue some sort of artistic accomplishment, are the sections we didn’t think we would make, barrels we didn’t think we would come out of. But we did. Sometimes, even if we didn’t make the wave, we were in there.

I believed I would be a successful artist, or writer, or both, at about the same time I started surfing. If I was grateful any time I got a good ride, I wasn’t satisfied with anything but getting better. I would get frustrated and even angry when my performance in real life, hard, tedious, overwhelming, that Cinerama, surround-sound, twenty-four-seven real world didn’t live up to my great expectations. Pretty standard story.

There are waves, specific rides I remember. Name a spot I’ve surfed, and I will tell you my best ride there, or a perfect wave on which I blew the takeoff, or I didn’t grab the rail when I might have made it if I had; or, here’s an example: Warmwater Jetty, 1970. I pulled out, over the top of a steep section, and watched from behind it peel off perfectly for fifty more yards.

There are things I drew or painted or wrote that I hold, or held, in high regard. And there are all the other drawings and paintings and stories. If I go back and check out works from my past, I am occasionally surprised. Time has given me a chance to be more objective. Some are good enough I can’t believe I did them; others are not.

If we actually had movies, videos, some actual real-time, real-life visuals of any of us surfing, we would learn something our mental GoPro misses. Not as smooth, not as graceful, not as deep in the barrel as we imagined.

With art, there is something to read, or look at, or touch. Almost none of it is perfect. Or sacred. The truth is almost nothing is perfect. If we insist on perfection to be happy or satisfied, we won’t be. Still, we don’t want to settle for ‘good enough.’ We can set a project aside, repaint, redraw. Or we can hit ‘save as’ and keep writing, keep editing. Or we can take that step of putting the brush or the pen or the pencil back onto the surface, boldly going somewhere just past where our imagination has taken us. Or we can tuck in and hang on.

Wipe out or come out.

Either way, the possible gift is another moment we might remember. Art, surfing, life. If our memories aren’t as tangible, as real, as any story or song or painting or sculpture or assemblage, our mental images are what remains, and almost all that remains, of anything we’ve seen or read or experienced.

As surfers, as workers, as artists, as people who are in this real world with other real people, we seek to form new images, future memories.

The best memories, of the near perfect and near-weightless, blissful moments, allow us to forget the anxiety, the fearful and the hateful times we’ve experienced, the real and psychological pain we’ve felt.

These images are our personal art collections, and, hopefully, they last as long as we do.  If there’s a message in here it’s this: Be brave when you can.

STEALTH SURF RIG UPDATE: First, the GOOD NEWS: The ladder racks that never really fit on my work van, with some blacksmithing and cursing, fit on my (equipped with gutters) surf rig. Heavy duty, yes, but the racks I bought for the van were only $65, and I couldn’t find any surf racks for anything near that. BAD NEWS: My second rebuilt alternator developed a high-pitched squeal (not of delight), first heard when I took George Takamoto to Dialysis. “Bad bearing,” George said, with no slack given to me for purchasing cheap. I took it to the auto electric specialist the next morning. He agreed with George. I took it around the corner to O’Reilly’s. Their guy tested it, said it was working, noise (varied in intensity- pretty quiet at this time, must be from something else. SOMETHING ELSE! WHAT?! Later that day, I started the car, opened the hood, stuck my finger on the back of the alternator. I could lessen the squealing. Stephen Davis and I went down with the info to Colin (I’m just going to spell his name the M-Word accepted way). He agreed the alternator was the problem. I went around to O’Reilly’s. The manager agreed, ordered another one. NEXT DAY, third alternator installed with the usual amount of drama and irritation. Worked fine… for about twenty miles. Maybe.

Same squeal. Same lack of compassion from George, same shock from Steve, same questioning from Trish. SOOO, checking out the ratings (now) on the rebuilt alternator, I discovered it has a one out of five. SOOOO, I ordered a supposedly new one through Amazon, four-plus rating, though it looks suspiciously like the ones that failed. To be delivered Monday; the bad part being if it’s another bad part, I don’t think I can exchange it. Should have listened to George. “I’d have bought the BOSCH… Erwin.” “Of course you would have… George.”

I will update on WEDNESDAY when I add the next pages from “SWAMIS.” Hopefully, neither the car nor I will be squealing.

All rights to original work on realsurfers are reserved.

“Swamis,” Chapter 5, Part One- Memorial

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

CHAPTER FIVE- TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1969  

It was still early afternoon. I was in the living room, ignoring everything behind me, facing but not really seeing anything out the large, west-facing window. A Santa Ana condition had broken down, and a thousand-foot-high wall of fog had pushed its way up the valleys. The house was situated high enough that the cloud would occasionally clear away, the sun brighter than ever. The heat and humidity, raised by the number of people in our house, caused a fog of condensation on the plate glass.

Below me, cars were parked in a mostly random way in the area between the house and the separate and unfinished garage, and the corral. Continued use had created a de facto circular driveway up the slight rise from the worn and pitted gravel driveway and across the struggling lawn to the concrete pad at the foot of the wooden steps and front porch.

A bright yellow 1964 Cadillac Coupe De Ville convertible, black top up, was parked closest to the door. This was the car my mother and brother and I rode in from the funeral. Other vehicles were arranged just off the driveway, on the clumpy grass that filled in areas of ignored earth on its own. Later arrivals parked on the lower area.

Parking. I have some sort of obsession with getting in, getting out, getting away.

I was vaguely aware of the music coming from the stereo radio and turntable built into the Danish modern console in the living room. I was slightly more aware of the conversations among the increasing crowd. Little groups were spread around the room, some louder than others. Praise and sympathy, laughs cut short out of respect. Decorum.

Someone had put on a record of piano music; Liberace, or someone. This would not have been my father’s choice of music. His would have been from the cowboy side of country/western; high octave voices capable of yodeling, lonesome trails and tumbling tumbleweeds, the occasional polka. It wasn’t my mother’s choice, either. She preferred show tunes with duets and ballads by men with deep, resonant voices, voices like her husband’s, Joseph Jeremiah DeFreines.

 These would not have been my father’s choice of mourners. “Funerals,” he would say, “Are better than weddings.” Pause. “You don’t need an invite or a gift.”

Someone behind me was repeating that line, mistiming the pause, his voice scratchy and high. Not high, just not my father’s voice. “Joseph,” the man said. I turned around. Yes, it was Mister Dewey. A high school social studies teacher, he sold insurance policies out of his rented house on Alvarado. His right hand was out. I was not shaking hands on this day. I didn’t believe it was to be expected of me. “You know my daughter, Penelope.”

“Penny,” I said. “Yes, since… third grade.” Penny, in a black dress, was beside Mr. Dewey, her awkwardness so much more obvious than that of the other mourners. I did shake her hand. “Penny, thanks for coming.” I did try to smile, politely. Penny tried not to. Braces.

 Remembering an incident in which Mister Dewey was involved, I stared at him too closely, for too long, trying to determine if he was remembering it. Also. I believed he was.

Ten seconds, maybe. When I refocused, Mister Dewey and the two people he had been talking with previously, a man and woman who wasn’t Mrs. Dewey, were several feet over from where they had been. The woman and Penelope Dewey were looking at me. Mr. Dewey and the man were not. I smiled at the woman. She half-smiled and turned away. She wasn’t the first to react this way. If I didn’t know how to look at the mourners, many of them did not know how to look at me, troubled son of the deceased cop.

If I was troubled, I wasn’t trying too hard to hide it. I was trying to maintain control. I moved, more sideways than backwards, to the window. It was not a good time for me to freeze, to disappear into a memory at the memorial for my father. The wake.

Too late.

“Bleeding heart liberal, that Mister Dewey,” my father was telling my mother, ten-thirty on a school night, me still studying at the dinette table. “He figures we should teach sex education. I told him that we don’t teach swimming in school, and that, for most people, sex… comes… naturally. That didn’t get much of a laugh at the school board meeting.”

“Teenage pregnancies, Joe.”

“Yes, Ruth.” My father touched his wife on the cheek. “They change lives. But…”

“Freddy and I both took swimming lessons at Potter Junior High, Dad. Not part of the curriculum, but…”

“Save it for college debate class, Jody; we grownups… aren’t talking about swimming.”

  Taking a deep breath, my hope was that the mourners might think it was grief rather than some affliction. Out the big window, a San Diego Sheriff’s Office patrol car was parked near where our driveway hit the county road. The uniformed Deputy, Wilson, assigned to stand there, motioned a car in. He looked around, went to the downhill side of his patrol car. He opened both side doors and, it had to be, took a leak between them. Sure. Practical.

The next vehicle, thirty or so seconds later, was a delivery van painted the same bright yellow as the Cadillac. I noticed the surfboards on the roof as the Deputy waved it through. Two fat, early sixties popout surfboards, somewhere around nine-foot-six, skegs in the outdated ‘d’ style. One board was an ugly green, fading, the other had been a bright red, now almost pink. Decorations, obviously, they appeared to be permanently attached to a bolted-on rack. The van was halfway to the house before I got a chance to read the side. “Flowers by Hayes brighten your days.” Leucadia phone number.

Hayes, as in Gustavo and Consuela Hayes. As in Jumper Hayes.

A man got out of the van’s driver’s seat, almost directly below me. Chulo. I knew him from the beach. Surfer. Evangelist. Reborn. Jumper’s friend before the incident that sent them both away.

Chulo’s long black hair was pulled and tied back; his beard tied with a piece of leather. He was wearing black jeans, sandals, and a t-shirt with “Flowers by Hayes” in almost-chartreuse, day-glow letters. Chulo looked up at the window, just for a moment, before reaching back into the front seat, pulling out an artist’s style smock in a softer yellow. He pulled it over his head, looked up for another moment before limping toward the back of the van.

The immediate image I pulled from my mental file was of Chulo on the beach, dressed in his Jesus Saves attire: The dirty robe, rope belt, oversized wooden cross around his neck. Same sandals. No socks.

That wasn’t enough. I looked into the glare and closed my eyes.

Though I was in the window with forty-six people behind me, I was gone. Elsewhere.

I was tapping on the steering wheel of my mother’s Volvo, two cars behind my Falcon, four cars behind a converted school bus, “Follow me” in roughly painted letters on the back. The Jesus Saves bus. It was heading into a setting sun, white smoke coming out of the tailpipes. We were just east of the Bonsall Bridge. The bus was to the right of the lane, but moving forward. One car passed, the Falcon passed, the car behind it, all disappearing into the glare. The cars in front of me were going for it. I gunned it.

I was in the glare. There was a red light, pulsating, coming straight at me. There was a sound, a siren, blaring. I was floating. My father’s face was to my left, looking at me. Jesus was to my right, pointing forward. This wasn’t real. I had to pull out of this. I couldn’t. Not immediately. The Jesus Saves bus stopped on the side of the road, front tires in the ditch. I was looking at the ditch, at the bank beyond it. I backed the Volvo up, spun a turn toward the highway. I looked for my father’s car. I didn’t see it. The traffic was stopped. I was in trouble. My mother, in the Falcon, was still ahead of me. She didn’t know. I pulled into the westbound lane, into the glare.

When I opened my eyes, a loose section of the fog was like a gauze over the sun. I knew where I was. I knew Chulo, the Jesus Saves bus’s driver, delivering flowers for my father’s memorial, knew the truth.

…

Various accounts of the accident had appeared in both San Diego papers and Oceanside’s Blade Tribune. The Fallbrook Enterprise wouldn’t have its version until the next day, Wednesday, as would the North County Free Press. Still, the papers had the basic truth of what happened. What was unknown was who was driving the car that Detective Sergeant Joseph Jeremiah DeFreines avoided. “A gray sedan, possibly European” seemed to be the description the papers used. Because the San Diego Sheriff’s Office and the California Highway Patrol had shared jurisdiction, a task force had been formed with officers from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. Detective Lieutenant Brice Langdon was heading the unit, actively seeking the driver of the gray sedan.   

Chulo knew the truth.

Chulo would be depositing the four new bouquets in the foyer, flowers already filling one wall. I looked in that direction, panning across the mourners. The groups in the living room were almost all men. Most were drinking rather than eating. Most of the groups of women were gathered in the kitchen. One woman brought out a side dish of, my guess, some sort of yam/sweet potato thing. Because I was looking at her, she looked at the dish and looked at me, her combination of expression and gesture inviting me to “try some.” There was, I believed, an “It’s delicious” in there. I returned the favor with a “Sure thing” gesture and smile.

I wouldn’t. I didn’t. Yams and dark green things, drowning in a white sauce. No.

Two kids, around ten and twelve, Detective Lawrence Wendall’s sons, Larry Junior being the elder sibling, were shooed out of the kitchen by Mrs. Wendall. She looked at her husband, temporarily promoted to Detective Lieutenant, leaning against a sideboard with a drink in his hand. He was chatting with the other detective at the Vista substation, Daniel Dickson, and one of the ‘College Joe’ detectives from Downtown. War stories, shop talk. Enjoyable.

Wendall waved his glass toward his wife as if kids running through a wake is normal. Mrs. Wendall noticed me and pointed to the food and the plates and smiled. Again, I went with the “Sure thing.” Response. Freddy ran out of the kitchen, past Mrs. Wendall, and toward the door. Normal.

Mrs. Wendall may have wanted me to notice that the concerned neighbors and friends were using real plates that members of another group of wives and daughters were busily bussing and washing and making available for new guests. She may have been checking to see if I was doing anything other than “Holding up.” I mouthed “Fine,” and nodded, and made gestures suggesting I was already full, and that the food was delicious.

If it was expected that children of anyone only recently deceased should let mourners know they shouldn’t let our sorrow ruin their day, I was trying.

Freddy pushed the door from the foyer to the porch open, sidestepped Chulo, and leapt, shoeless, from the porch to what passed for our lawn, Bermuda grass taking a better hold in our decomposed granite than the Kentucky bluegrass and the rapidly failing dichondra.

Chulo, holding a five-gallon bucket in each hand, walked through open door and into the foyer. He was greeted by a thin man in a black suit coat worn over a black shirt with a Nehru collar. The man had light brown hair, short and slicked down, and no facial hair. He was wearing shoes my father would refer to as, “Italian rat-stabbers.” Showy. Pretentious. Expensive. Fashion investments; need to be worn to get one’s money’s worth.

Langdon was my guess. He must have been at the funeral, but I hadn’t felt obligated to look any of the attendees in the eye. “Langdon,” one of the non-cop people from the Downtown Sheriff’s Office, records clerks and such, whispered. “Brice Langdon. DeFreines called anyone from Orange County ‘Disneycops.’ Especially Langdon and his… former partner.” Chuckles. “They put people in ‘Disney jail’,” another non-cop said.

Langdon looked across the room. Chulo lowered his head when their eyes met.

“Joint task force,” one of the background voices said. “Joint,” another one added. Three people chuckled. Glasses tinkled. Someone scraped someone else’s serving spatula over another someone else’s special event side dish. Probably not the yams.

Chulo took the arrangements out of the buckets and rearranged the vases against the wall and those narrowing the opening to the living room. He plucked some dead leaves and flowers, tossed them in one of the buckets, backed out onto the porch, closed the door. I became aware that I had looked in that direction for too long. Self-consciousness or not, people were looking at me. Most looked away when I made eye contact.

Langdon didn’t. He gave me a sort of pained smile.

“If you have to look at people, look them straight in the eye,” my father told me, “There’s nothing that scares people more than that.”

The other two detectives at the Vista substation, Wendall and Dickson, Larry and Dan, did not look away from me. They looked at Langdon. I didn’t see his reaction. My father’s partners were wearing their funeral and promotion suits, with black ties thinner or wider, a year or two behind whatever the trend was. Both had cop haircuts, sideburns a little longer over time. Both had cop mustaches, cropped at the corners of their mouths, and bellies reflecting their age and their relative status. Both had worn dress uniforms at the funeral.

 Wendall was, in some slight apology for his height, hunched over a bit and leaning against the far wall next to the sideboard that usually held my mother’s growing collection of trinkets. Dickson had moved some of my mother’s collectibles and was acting as official bartender. The hard stuff, some wine, borrowed glasses. The beer was in the back yard.

Langdon had been carrying a bottle of obviously expensive wine, as if he was cool enough to not need a glass. He offered Dickson a drink. Shared, no glass. If you were cool, you’d take the offer. Dickson took the bottle, took too long a drink, and handed the bottle back, almost empty. Dickson saved the smirk until Langdon turned away. Wendall and I caught the smirks. Langdon finished the last of the bottle, set it on the main table next to the yams, and walked into the kitchen.

Wendall and Dickson looked toward me and smiled. So, I smiled. My father had been on some sort of investigation in Orange County involving Langdon. If there was an irony in his being at my father’s memorial, I was only partially aware.

 I looked at the mourners as I walked toward the foyer. I would try to remember each face. I walked around the borrowed table set where our couch would have been, to my father’s chair, moved two feet over from its regular spot, oriented toward the big window rather than the TV in the console. It provided a good place to look at the people in the rooms, foyer, hallway, kitchen, living room.

The lounge chair, oversized, for once, was uncovered. The fabric was practical; heavy, gray, with just the faintest lines, slightly grayer. There was, in the seat, a matted and framed portrait I had not seen before, a photograph blown up and touched up and printed on canvas, coated with several layers of varnish. A noticeable chemical smell revealed the coating had not yet fully cured. There it was, my father in his Sheriff’s Office uniform, oversized enough that the portrait was set across the armrests.

The pose was this: Stern expression; arms crossed on his chest, low enough to reveal the medals; just the right amount of cuff extending from the coat sleeves; hands on biceps, a large scar on the palm of my father’s left hand almost highlighted. No ring. My father didn’t wear rings. Rings might have suggested my father might hesitate in a critical situation, might think of his wife and children. White gloves that should have been a part of the dress uniform were folded over my father’s left forearm. Gloves would have hidden the scar.  

            I didn’t study the portrait. I did notice, peripheral vision, others in the rooms were poised and watching for my reaction. I tried to look properly respectful, as if I had cried out all my tears. Despite my father disapproving of tears, I had.

There was an American flag, folded and fit into a triangular-shaped frame, leaning from the seat cushion to the armrest on one side of the portrait. A long thin box with a glass top holding his military medals, partially tucked under the portrait, was next to the flag.

If I was expected to cry, or worse; break down, to have a spell or a throw a tantrum, the mourners, celebrants, witnesses, whoever these people were, the less discerning among them, they would have been disappointed. Some, who had never saluted the man, saluted the portrait. This portrait was not the father I knew, not the man the ones who truly believed they knew him knew.

No. I walked past the detectives without looking at them, went down the hallway and opened the door to what was to have been a den. By that time, it was more storage than den. My father’s oak desk, originally belonging to the U.S. Postal Service, was elsewhere, out in the garage. I returned to the living room with two framed photographs pressed against my chest. I did my fake smile and set the portraits on the carpet, face down. I took a moment before I lifted the one on top, turned it over, and leaned it against the footrest part of my father’s chair.

Several self-invited guests moved closer, both sides of me and behind me. One of the guests said, “That’s Joe, all right.” Wendall said, “Gunner,” and toasted. Others followed suit.

This was my father. An ambered-out photo of a younger Joseph DeFreines in his parade garb; big blonde guy in Mexican-style cowboy gear, standing next to a big blonde horse with a saddle similarly decked out with silver and turquoise, oversized sombrero at his chest. My father’s other arm, his left, was around the shoulders of a smaller man, his sombrero on his head. Both were smiling as if no one else was watching.

There was no wound on my father’s left hand.

“Gustavo Hayes.” Another voice. Another asked, “What’s with Joe in the Mexican outfit?”

I lifted, turned, and leaned the other photo against the footrest. It was a black and white photo. A woman’s voice said, “Oh, Joe and Ruth. Must be their wedding.” Another woman’s voice said, “So young. And there is… something… about a Marine in his dress blues.”

“It was… taken,” I said, “in Japan, color-enhanced… painted… in San Diego.” I looked at the photo rather than at the people. My father’s arm was around his even younger bride. She was in a kimono. “The colors of the dress, my mother always said, ‘are not even close to the real colors.’ She said our memories… fill in with the… the real colors.”

I had spoken. I wanted to disappear.

…

“Swamis” copyright 2020 Erwin A. Dence, Jr. All rights reserved

The Stealth Surf Rig Story So Far

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers

I transformed a rusted, ugly-color-painted lamp post into this, something that Trump (or Trump devotees) would definitely give a second look, probably a wink, and possibly a touchy/feel; all in exchange for a twenty-nine year old vehicle that had been parked under a tree for a couple of years. This car will soon, hopefully, be my new surf rig, latest in a long line of old cars and vans, most of which died of blunt trauma or were just driven until the cost of repairing the latest mechanical dealie to fail (and they all fail eventually) was greater than the replacement cost.

Or… maybe not. My last surf rig, a hard-to-kill Toyota, gave me well over a hundred thousand miles of mostly worry free driving (discounting when it broke down in front of Frank Krippen’s NxNW surf shop, mice damage in the dashboard, and I had to bribe the repair shop to get someone to reach a hand in there) before the waterpump (YouTubed as an expensive repair) went out and… yeah, if I were in any way mechanically inclined (not even a latent gearhead), or if I could get someone to work on it, I would probably not have given it to my favorite local tow-truck driver (shout out to Kirky).

What seems like MAGIC is when something that should work the first time actually works the second (or third) time.

SO, happy as (going through a list of possible metaphors, almost all of them too political) can be, I picked up the newly revived rig, drove it straight to JiffyLube, got a couple of lightbulbs replaced, oil change, new wipers, and advice on replacing the cap for the pressure relief bottle (the only way to refill the radiator on this model- weird). OKAY. So, fresh gas and on to O’Reilly’s, where, magically, they had the part AND it worked.

Drive home, wash the car, open all the windows so some of the overwhelming mildew smell might dissipate. NEXT DAY, move it over by my work van to transfer some tools. NOPE, wouldn’t start and was stuck in the driveway. OKAY, break out the Costco jumpstarter box. Started. Move it out of the driveway, call GEORGE TAKAMOTO, longtime friend and mechanic now with medical issues that backup his desire to not be working on and under other people’s broken rigs. ADVICE, yes. NEW BATTERY. “That should do it. Definitely. One hundred percent.” Okay. Costco. In the work van.

NEXT DAY (or the day after), the new battery installed, take the rig, surfboard on top on a (hopefully temporary) SOFT RACK. Cruise here, there, work, everything’s fine. Go to check out a sort of surf spot, down where the cell phones don’t work, and all these lights start coming on, the gages start failing.

SO, not the battery. ALTERNATOR, surfers who are also disappointed at the lack of even hope of something rideable say.

I’m skipping the part where I was afraid to drive it back to Quilcene. In the old days, yes, but even this car will start running rough (then not at all) if there isn’t enough juice to the COMPUTER. So, I parked it at a friend’s house, called my daughter, DRU, to rescue me for the (she and Trish keep count) sixth time. Trish did rescue me in Port Angeles with the surf shop breakdown. Trish said this was too much to ask, why didn’t I call my friend STEPHEN R. DAVIS for a ride home. Okay. Thanks, Steve.

So, order an alternator from O’Reilly’s, pick it up the next day, jump start the car at the previously mentioned and unnamed (because he wasn’t thrilled at my rig being there, even less thrilled that I might want to work on it there) friend’s house, cruise it over (barely made it- computer shutdown) to Steve’s place, install the rebuilt alternator. Not as easy as the last one I replaced myself, 1975 Chevy truck.

LITTLE HICCUP HERE. The cheaper alternator came without a pulley and, try as Steve and I did, we couldn’t get the old one off. SO, I went to three different places to see if they could. NOPE. OUT TO LUNCH. Okay, so I went to a guy who specializes in car electric shit, and he zipped the pulley off, no problem, said, “It doesn’t have a fan,” and added it would burn out quickly without one. SO, he added a turbo fan, reinstalled the pulley. Shout out to COLLINN (yeah, two ‘n’s, just like on his shirt, not sure about the ‘l’s).

Install. Hook up the battery and the tester. Boom. Worked. WAIT! No. NOOOO!

TESTING, testing. The next plan was for me to install the evidently-not-dead and recharged old battery, and either George or I would drive it to Quilcene after his dialysis appointment (part of the reason for his reluctance to wrench). BUT FIRST, test. “NOPE, alternator’s dead.” We left it, again, still, at Steve’s.

NEXT DAY- Back to O’REILLY’S. Trade out. Tomorrow. Morning.

I would have given COLLINN the pulley and the turbo fan, but he doesn’t work Fridays and doesn’t accept walk-ins after 12:30 on the days he does work. Too much chatter, not enough work.

I would give a shout out to O’Reilly’s for not charging me extra for the upgraded alternator, with fan and pulley, but that would mean forgiving them for selling me a bogus part the first time (and this wasn’t the first time- bad fuel pump for my van- drop the gas tank a second time- nightmare).

REINSTALL. Check the feedback with the tester thingie. PERFECT. 14 amps, even with everything on.

MAGIC! So, I’ve now driven it to Port Townsend and back. I am going to get it over to Takamoto’s house for a full going-over, but I am feeling a bit more confident. OH, AND I would have posted a photo of my new rig if I didn’t want to go stealth a few times before it’s too easily identified.

BEST OF LUCK TO YOU with your surf and non-surf rigs.

Remember to check out the next installment of “SWAMIS” on Wednesday. I am almost ready to attempt to have a second page at realsurfers.net to accommodate my novel.

“SWAMIS” Chapter Four

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

A reminder- “Swamis” is fiction. I will be attempting to put the chapters on another page, and will continue to post on Wednesdays with other content on Sundays.

CHAPTER FOUR- THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1969

Our house in the hills between Fallbrook and Bonsall was a split level, stucco house, aluminum sash windows, composite roof. Someone else had started building from some plans purchased from a developer. My parents could save money, they were told, by finishing the lower level and the garage. They could replace the plywood shed at the edge of a corral with a small barn, room for a horse, a side area for hay and tack. New fencing. More trees. A garden. A covered patio off the kitchen, or, perhaps, a bay window.

 My father promised the patio, and then the bay window. He was working on it, but he was working. Working. There was, outside the sliding door, a concrete slab, with paving stones leading around the corner and down to the driveway. The two-story portion of the house featured a plate glass window, four foot high and eight feet wide, in total, with crank out, aluminum sash windows on either side. This window offered a view to the west, over scrubby trees and deep arroyos, of the hills, some rounded, others more jagged, with ancient boulders visible on all of them. Mission Avenue was hidden below and between. Mission, the road that linked Fallbrook with Bonsall, Vista, Oceanside, everywhere west, everywhere worth going to.

Looking out this window, I felt almost level with the hills, a yellow light descending from the ridgeline. Morning. There were, I knew, waves of hills in irregular lines between my hills and the unseen ocean. I had spent time, looking away from my studies, imagining the hills in timelapse, the sun setting at one place in winter, another in summer, lines off clouds held back at the ridgeline, breaking over the top, torn, scattering. I had imagined the block as transparent, the ocean visible, late afternoon sunlight reflected off the water and into the empty skies.

… 

I was at the dinette table in the kitchen, head down, a bowl of oatmeal, a tab of butter on top of it, in front of me. There was a glass pitcher of milk between my setting and the other two. There were four lunch sacks on the counter. Two were a light blue, one was a shade more orange than pink, the fourth was the standard lunch sack brown. My mother, already dressed and ready for work, took a carton of Lucky Strikes from a cupboard, put a pack into the brown lunch sack.

She looked out the window over the sink. She sniffled.

My father, in one of his everyday detective suits; coat unbuttoned, tie untied; leaned over from the head of the table. “Go get it, Jody.” The ‘now’ part of the command was unspoken. His voice was calm. Almost always. I didn’t move. I didn’t look up from my oatmeal. “You didn’t think they’d send a copy to the school? Jody?”

I stood up, lifting my chair up high enough that the metal legs, even though they had plastic shoes at the bottom, wouldn’t scrape the oak flooring. I looked at my father. He was looking at my mother. She sniffled, again, but didn’t turn around.

My bedroom was at the end of the hallway, past my parent’s and my father’s den on the right, the guest bathroom, Freddy’s room, then mine on the left. There were pictures taken from surfing magazines on several walls, a cluttered desk between the closet and a bunk bed, the bottom bunk converted into a space for books and toys and cardboard boxes taped and marked, stuff from our house in Fallbrook, the middle-class starter home. The Magarian Tract.

Though we had been at the ranchette for more than four years, and because I really didn’t need the stuff, and because the garage had never become water and weather tight, most of the boxes in my room remained stacked and taped and marked. Grease pencil. Yellow, mostly. Some black. I lifted one marked “Cowboy stuff” and took out the legal sized envelope.

As I walked up the hallway, I heard my father ask, “You thought I’d just sign this, Ruth?”

“You always have.”

My parents almost never raised their voices. My father didn’t have to, my mother just… wouldn’t. I’ve been asked about my parent’s relationship many times. Japanese war bride, ex-Marine. My answer will always be, “They had a certain dynamic.” The answer could as easily be, “It wasn’t what you think.” Whatever they thought.

My parents were standing at the counter to the right of the double sink. I placed the envelope on the tablecloth, next to my father’s plate. Sausage and eggs. Uneaten. Cup of coffee. Half full. I sat down. I looked over. My father signed at the bottom of two pages. My mother refolded them into thirds and put them into an envelope. She set the envelope on the left side of the sink and said, “thank you.”

My father was looking at several other pages. Legal size. He looked toward his wife. Her back was to the sink, both hands behind her on the edge of the counter. She looked at my father’s hands as he folded those papers in half. He took in a breath, took two steps toward her, let out the breath slowly. He handed her the papers with his right hand. She took them with her left, picked up and handed him the brown lunch sack with her right.

“Not mine, Ruth. Never was. You could… this could give you… freedom. Ikura desuka?”

My father almost never spoke Japanese. My mother froze. My father’s expression was one of instant regret.

“Freedom, Joe?”

I replayed the words. “E’-kew-rah des-kah.” Again. “E’-kew-rah des-kah.”

…

My mother and the envelope and the papers were gone. My father set the brown lunch sack onto the counter, took two more packs from the carton of Lucky Strikes from the cupboard, unfolded the two folds on the lunch sack, put them in, refolded the sack. Not as neatly. He took two steps toward the sliding glass door, looked at his feet. “Socks,” he said. “Jody, you won’t be surfing… or working at Mrs. Tony’s; none of that shit.” He paused, looked at the envelope on the dinette table. “Stanford.” He threw his left hand out and down, ends of his fingers touching the Stanford logo. “You… you earned this. You’re going.”

“Going?”

My father looked toward the hallway, looked at me. “It’ll be… she’ll be fine. I have to…”

“Go. Yes.”

Freddy came into the kitchen. “Daddy?” Our father responded with a weak sideways nod. Freddy followed him through the living room, into the foyer, out onto the front porch. The front door slammed.

When Freddy returned, our mother was back in the kitchen. My brother, not even trying not to cry, looked at her, and then me, as if whatever was happening was our fault.

“Freedom,” I whispered, my left hand, in a fist, over my mouth.

The house phone was on a table just outside the formal dining room. Our mother picked up the receiver and dieled a number on the phone’s base. “No, I am well,” she said. “Annual leave. ‘Use it or lose it.’ I have accumulated…” She chuckled. Fake. “No. They’re both fine. I will be in tomorrow.” She looked at me. “Thank you.” She put the phone back on the base. “Joey, I will need the station wagon. You and Freddy… better hurry; you will have to take the bus.”

Freddy looked at me. “What did you do this time, Jody?”

…  

            Gary and Roger were my closest surf friends. Roger started board surfing the summer I did, 1965. Roger started the next summer. Though Roger lived closer to me, Gary offered to give me a ride home. I was riding shotgun. Gary’s sister, squeezed tightly against the passenger door, backseat of their mom’s Corvair, said, in an unnecessarily whiny voice, “I’m glad it’s all cool with you, Gary.”

“It is, Princess; cool with me.” Gary glanced over at me. “The Princess has a license, but our mom won’t let her drive without… supervision.”

“Well, thanks again for the ride, Gary; and for going by Potter for… Freddy. Oh, and thank you…”

“Princess,” Gary said.

The Princess blew air out of the side of her mouth. I looked around and over the seat. The Princess shook the wrist of her left hand, gave me a look I took as that the raspberry was meant for her brother rather than me. Freddy was not quite as tight against the door on the driver’s side. Neither tried to talk to, or even look at the other.

“So, Joey,” Gary asked, “what do you think of Roger’s latest girlfriend?”

“She’s a sophomore, you know,” the Princess said. “Sophomore.”

“Thanks for the info, Princess. Now, Joey, maybe, after school… days are getting longer. We could do Oceanside pier. Tamarack, if I drive.”

 “Four gallons of gas, two quarts of oil; that sound about right, Gary?”

“Or Joey; we could go in Roger’s stepdad’s Mustang.”

The Princess mumbled a quiet, “Fuck you, Gary,” as her brother downshifted, unnecessarily, at the first of several uphill curves. Freddy’s laugh and repetition of the words were louder and clearer.

“Or Princess and some of her friends… Juniors, no sophomores, could go with us,” Gary offered. The Princess let out a high-pitched, “Ha!” and a low-pitched sort of extended grunt sound. Freddy giggled. “Or, if we can’t go surfing after school, maybe me and you and Roger could ditch and go all day.”

Gary looked at me and winked. I shook my head, but I did smile. “Or maybe next week… or so, if we have all our stuff ready, boards loaded, we could make it to Grandview. Swamis. Somewhere… good.”

“Possible. Timewise.”

“Cool.”

The princess’s head suddenly appeared between Gary and me. “Most of you Fallbrook surfers aren’t even partway cool,” she said. “And besides, my friends won’t even cruise town in this crappy car; and besides that, it would be creepy.” The Princess looked at me and seemed to realize her face and mine were way too close. Still, she didn’t move away.

“Creepy,” I said.

“And they might find out Gary’s surfing just isn’t all that… cool,” the Princess said, almost smiling before she fell back into the seat and against the door.

We arrived at our driveway. The Falcon station wagon was still there, my nine-six pintail on the rack. The Falcon was backed up to the curved gravel pathway that went up the slight grade to the front door. Bender board and stakes had been installed for a while, ready for concrete.

“Board on the roof. Obvious Hodad move, Joey.”

I looked up at Gary’s Hansen surfboard hanging over the hood of the Corvair. “Obvious.”

Gary used the area between the unfinished garage and the temporary shed at the corner of the corral to turn around. The Corvair had barely stopped when Freddy jumped out and ran for the house. The Princess jumped out and ran around to the front passenger door. I took a few seconds to get my books and folders out of the seat. She leaned on the open door and checked out the ranchette. Disapprovingly.

Gary popped the clutch on the Corvair halfway down the driveway. There was a second cloud of black smoke as Gary, unnecessarily double-clutched, attempting, unsuccessfully, to get scratch in second gear. There were a few drops of oil soaking into and staining the insufficient gravel on the decomposed granite driveway.

My mom was standing at the front driver’s side door of the Falcon, Freddy pressed against her and between her and the seat. She was looking at me. “You know I’ll be back,” she said, for both Freddy and me.  She looked over at the old horse casually eating grain on the near side of what she called a paddock. “I can’t trust you boys to properly take care of Tallulah.”

The outside ringer for the telephone went off. We all looked toward the house. Freddy ran. I set my books down on the grass, walked around the front of the Falcon.

“Joey. I left some money… on the counter. Take the Volvo. You and Freddy can go to that Smorgasbord place he likes. You know how to find the Rollins Place; right?” I nodded. “No eating in the Volvo. Right?” I shook my head.

“Mom,” Freddy yelled, “It’s Daddy.”

“A couple of days. That’s all. You know I can’t really leave… my boys.”

“Or Tallulah.”

“Or Tallulah.” My mother got into the Falcon. She chuckled. “Stick shift. Hope I haven’t forgotten how.”

“Daddy! He wants to talk with mom. Joey!”    

“Three on the tree, Mom.” I closed the door for her. “You’ll be fine.”

My mom started the Falcon. “I called the station. Your father was out. I talked to Larry.”

“Larry? Wendall.” She nodded. “What did you tell… Wendall?”

“Nothing. I just… no, nothing. I said everything was… fine. Like always.”

 My mother had that determined look on her face; determined to be strong, to not cry; even if the strength wouldn’t last, even if the tears would flow as soon as she went down the driveway. She popped the clutch. Accidentally. The back tires threw some gravel and the Falcon stalled. She hit the steering wheel, restarted the engine, eased the clutch out, moved down the driveway and left, down La Canada.

I looked toward the west. The sun was high enough. There was enough time for a few waves between school and dark if I went to the pier. I wasn’t crying. Freddy, clearly, was.

“Jody. He wants to talk to you. Jody!”

            The doors to the Volvo were locked. Of course. I ran up the path to the door. Freddy was on the porch. The phone’s base was on the floor, three feet from the table. The cord to the receiver was stretched to its maximum length. Freddy tried to press the phone to my chest as I tried to pass him. The keys to the Volvo were hanging, along with other rings of keys and a rabbit’s foot, on a crudely shaped horse’s head Freddy had made at summer camp.

I grabbed the keys. Freddy pushed me. I pushed him down, the phone still in his hand. I took it from him. “Freddy, stop the blubbering. Dad?” I wasn’t really listening. I tried to direct Freddy toward the kitchen, rubbing my fingers together in the ‘money’ symbol. He was too busy blubbering. I leaned down toward my brother. “No, Dad; I couldn’t stop her.” Pause. “I am sorry about whatever Margaret, and Wendall, and everyone at the substation… thinks.” Pause. “Insolent? No.” Pause. “Dad, the clues were all there; you were just… busy.” Pause. “Hello. Hello.” Dial tone. “Dad?”  

I looped the long cord as I headed toward the kitchen, put the receiver onto the base, the base back on the table. Freddy stayed on the floor, his back against the frame of the opening between the foyer and the living room. “You could have stopped her, Jody.” I didn’t respond. Freddy screamed, “Everyone’s right; you’re a god-damned retard. Retard!”

“Let’s go then, Freddy.” My voice was as even as I could manage. I grabbed the cash from the dinette, walked back, stood over him. “Come on.”

Freddy laid out flat. He shook his head. “I’ll wait for Daddy. Dad.”

“There’s pizza in the refrigerator. You can heat it up in the oven or, I don’t know, god-damned retard like me, you can… goddamn eat it cold.”

The phone rang. Freddy rolled to his stomach, jumped up, and got to the phone on the second ring. “Uncle Larry.” Pause. “No, I don’t know where. Jody?” I shook my head. “Joey!” Out the door and down the path, Freddy still calling my name, all I heard was, “Retard.”

“Swamis” copyright 2020, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. All rights reserved

Barrel Dodging, Inspiration, and Eventual New Surf Rig

Posted on by under Seattle surfers

This is the piece I didn’t read at the THIRD SURF OCCASIONAL SURF CULTURE ON THE STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA AND THE SALISH SEA EVENT. I kind of free-balled on what the piece may or not say:

Art, Surfing, and Barrel Dodging

IMAGINATION connects surfing and art. Surfers imagine how they’re going to cruise or glide or dance on waves… or rip them up. Artists look around, or they, perhaps, stare at a blank canvas and imagine some piece of artwork. It starts with the IMAGE.

The image is, quite possibly, perfect, perfectly rendered, real. Or there are variations, slight or major changes, embellishments, color, perspective, shape, shading, formatting.  

REALITY. This is tougher. Image to reality.

Unless you live at a beach, surfing requires getting your gear together and heading out. Maybe you have reason to believe there will be good waves. EXPECTATION. ANTICIPATION. Even if someone broke a major rule of etiquette and called you, you can’t be entirely certain the waves are chest high and perfect. So, you’re anxious, excited.

You arrive, gear assembled. It’s time for the GREG NOLL MOMENT. Not at third reef pipeline. I’m sure you have that image cataloged in your brain somewhere. Every surfer takes that moment, mind surfing a few waves, putting yourself in the picture. You will wait for a lull, jump in and… surf. Timing, timing, COMMITTMENT. You either wade or you leap.

For a writer or an artist, a blank page or an empty canvas can be daunting, even frightening. Getting started can easily be put off with real life chores and commitments. Eventually you make the first sketchy strokes. Wading. Or leaping.

It shouldn’t really be surprising that things don’t go as you hoped. Your words or colors or that six wave set that catches you inside, or wave selection, or just plain PERFORMANCE don’t go as you had imagined. Almost never. Still, you’re doing… okay.

Okay. Let’s say you have a piece of art that you’re pretty satisfied with. Not fully stoked, not ready to sign your name to it. You could do more to it, maybe improve it. But you could also, by continuing, destroy it, lose some quality you almost accidentally, but happily achieved.

Twisting and squeezing this metaphor; you’re surfing down the line, high on the wave face. The wave is getting critical. You could tuck into a barrel you may not make it out of, risk getting pitched over the falls, or you could drop down, attempt to go under and around that section, maybe connect back with the green wave face on the other side.

BARREL DODGING. The result is a less than memorable, could-have-been great ride. And you still might have been wiped out by the broken wave.

The rides that are memorable, the ones that make whatever sacrifice we tell ourselves we’re making to surf, or write, or pursue some sort of artistic accomplishment, are the sections we didn’t think we would make, barrels we didn’t think we would come out of. But we did. Sometimes, even if we didn’t make the wave, we were in there.

I believed I would be a successful artist, or writer, or both, at about the same time I started surfing. If I was grateful any time I got a good ride, I wasn’t satisfied with anything but getting better. I would get frustrated and even angry when my performance in real life, hard, tedious, overwhelming, that Cinerama, surround-sound, twenty-four-seven real world didn’t live up to my great expectations. Pretty standard story.

There are waves, specific rides I remember. Name a spot I’ve surfed, and I will tell you my best ride there, or a perfect wave on which I blew the takeoff, or I didn’t grab the rail when I might have made it if I had; or, here’s an example: Warmwater Jetty, 1970. I pulled out, over the top of a steep section, and watched from behind it peel off perfectly for fifty more yards.

There are things I drew or painted or wrote that I hold, or held, in high regard. And there are all the other drawings and paintings and stories. If I go back and check out works from my past, I am occasionally surprised. Time has given me a chance to be more objective. Some are good enough I can’t believe I did them; others are not.

If we actually had movies, videos, some actual real-time, real-life visuals of any of us surfing, we would learn something our mental GoPro misses. Not as smooth, not as graceful, not as deep in the barrel as we imagined.

With art, there is something to read, or look at, or touch. Almost none of it is perfect. Or sacred. The truth is almost nothing is perfect. If we insist on perfection to be happy or satisfied, we won’t be. Still, we don’t want to settle for ‘good enough.’ We can set a project aside, repaint, redraw. Or we can hit ‘save as’ and keep writing, keep editing. Or we can take that step of putting the brush or the pen or the pencil back onto the surface, boldly going somewhere just past where our imagination has taken us. Or we can tuck in and hang on.

Wipe out or come out.

Either way, the possible gift is another moment we might remember. Art, surfing, life. If our memories aren’t as tangible, as real, as any story or song or painting or sculpture or assemblage, our mental images are what remains, and almost all that remains, of anything we’ve seen or read or experienced.

As surfers, as workers, as artists, as people who are in this real world with other real people, we seek to form new images, future memories.

The best memories, of the near perfect and near-weightless, blissful moments, allow us to forget the anxiety, the fearful and the hateful times we’ve experienced, the real and psychological pain we’ve felt.

These images are our personal art collections, and, hopefully, they last as long as we do.  If there’s a message in here it’s this: Be brave when you can.

Not me, obviously, and possibly a set up for the next section rather than barrel dodging the first section.

SIDE (SLIP) STORY- In between rides, I told BIG DAVE, who will sideslip a steep section, plow through a barrel or even a closing-down section rather than drop down and go around it, something like, “You know, sometimes, in order to make the wave, I kind of go through a slower section and then…” “Oh,” he said, “What part of __redacted___ are you from?”

FUTURE SURF RIG- I’ve been waiting for, and finally got my new surf rig. Great! Then, something wasn’t working. NEW BATTERY. Then, something else. Possible ALTERNATOR. I’m working on getting it worked on. I will update on WEDNESDAY, with the next installment from “SWAMIS.”

COPYRIGHT STUFF- Both local newspapers used stuff I wrote as a press release for the EVENT, edited it to suit their purposes, and published without giving me credit. IF YOU want to take anything from the above little piece, help yourself. THIS PIECE ONLY.

OTHERWISE, good luck in getting a few barrels, a few cruisers, and home safely.

“SWAMIS” Chapter three

Posted on by under Uncategorized

                                    CHAPTER THREE- WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1968

            It was Christmas vacation. I had surfed, but I wanted a few more rides. More. I had the time, I had the second-best parking spot of the now-full lot at Swamis- front row, two cars off center. It was cool but sunny. I was dead center on the Falcon, leaning over the hood. I checked the diving watch on my wrist. It was fogged up. I shook my wrist, removed the watch, set it on the part of the Falcon’s hood my spread-out beach towel didn’t cover, directly over the radiator, the face of the watch facing the ocean and the sun.

            Spread about on the towel was a quart of chocolate milk in a waxed cardboard container, the spout open; a lunch sack, light blue, open; an apple; a partial pack of Marlboros, hard pack, open, a book of paper matches inside; and three Pee-Chee folders. One of the folders was open. A red notebook, writing on both sides of most pages, was open to pages five and six.

            A car stopped immediately behind the Falcon. Two doors slammed. Two teenagers, sixteen, I guessed, to my almost eighteen, ran between my car and the car to my left and to the bluff.  Jumping and gesturing, they gave one-word assessments of the conditions. “Epic!” and “So… bitchin’!”

They looked at each other. They looked over me at their car, idling in the lane. They looked at me. The taller one, with a bad complexion, his hair parted in the middle, shirtless and with three strands of love beads around his neck, walked toward the driver’s side of the Falcon and asked, “Hey, man. You going out or been out?”

            “Both. Man.”

“Both?” Love Beads guy moved closer to me.

“Good spot,” the driver, with bottle bleached hair, Beach Boys striped shirt, and khaki pants, said, coming up the passenger side of the Falcon. I nodded. Politely. I smiled, politely, and looked down at my notebooks. “You a local?”

I shifted the notebooks, took out the one on the bottom, light blue, opened it, turned, and looked out at the lineup, half-sitting on the Falcon, I may or may not have scoffed.

 Short Guy stayed on the bluff. A car honked behind us. Not at me, at the Teenage Non-Locals. “At least go get the boards.” Love Beads Guy walked around me, close enough to give me what could have been an accidental nudge. “You fuckers down here are fuckin’ greedy,” he said, giving Beach Boys shirt an on-purpose nudge.

Beach Boy said, “Fuck you, Brian,” and, joined by Short Guy, ran out and into the lane to remove the boards. Love Beads Brian, moved directly in front of me. He puffed out his chest a bit. His expression changed. He looked a bit fierce. Or he attempted to. I twisted my left arm behind my back and set the notebook down and picked up my diving watch. When I brought my arm back around, very quickly, Brian twitched. I smiled. 

My left hand was on my watch band, close to its face. I shook it. Hard. Three quick strokes, then tapped it, three times, with the pointer finger of my right hand. “The joke, see, Brian, is that, once it gets filled up with water, no more can get in. Hence, Waterproof.” I put the watch on. “Nope, don’t have to leave yet… Brian.”

Brian was glowering, tensed-up. “Brian,” Short Guy said as he carried two boards over to the bluff and set them down, “You could, you know, help.” Brian raised his right hand, threw it out to his left and swung it back. I took the gesture to mean ‘shut up and keep walking, Short Guy.’ I chuckled. Brian moved his right hand closer to my face, pointer finger up.

I moved my face closer to his hand, then leaned back, feigning an inability to focus. “Brian,” I said, “I have a history…” Brian smirked. “…of striking out, and quite violently… when I feel threatened.” I blinked. “Brian.”

Brian looked around as if his friends might back him up. “Quite violently?”

“Brian. Yeah. Suddenly and… violently.” I nodded and rolled my eyes. I moved closer to his face. “My father says, there are times to react and times to… take a moment, assess the situation. I’m trying. Everyone… people are hoping the surfing is… helping. I am not… sure.”

“Brian,” Beach Boy said, “we’ll get a spot.”

“I can… watch your boards for you. Okay?”

“Okay? No! Fuck you, Jap!” It wasn’t loud. Brian moved back as he said it.

“Brian. I’m, uh, assessing.” I folded my hands across my chest. Brian was mumbling and swaying back and forth, closer and farther away. I couldn’t make sense of his words. His face was not in focus. He had become background, overlapped by, superimposed with, the faces of a succession of bullies, kids from school, third grade to high school. Each of the faces, each of them taunting, was too close to mine. I couldn’t hear them, either. I knew the words: “Retard!” “Idiot!” “What’s wrong with you?”

 I could hear my father’s voice. “They don’t know you, Jody. It’s all a joke. Laugh.” In this vision, or spell, or episode, each of my alleged tormentors, all of them boys, fell away. Each face was bracketed, punctuated with a blink of a red light. Every three seconds. Approximately.

One face belonged to a nine-year-old boy, a look of shock that would become pain on his face. He was falling back and down, blood coming out of his mouth. Red light. I looked at the school drinking fountain. A bit of blood. Red light. I saw more faces. The red lights became weaker, and with them, the images.

The lighting changed. More like silver than blue. Cold light. I saw my father’s face, and mine, in the bathroom mirror. Faces; his short, almost blond hair, almost curly, eyes almost impossibly blue; my hair straight and black, my eyes almost black. “Jody, just… smile.” I did. Big smile. “No, son; not that smile.”

I smiled. That smile.

Brian’s face came back into focus, two steps back from where he had been. He wasn’t going to challenge me. Short Guy was behind him and to his right. I asked, “Surf friends, huh?” Short Guy nodded. I unfolded my arms, looked at my watch, looked past the two teenagers and out to the kelp beds. “Wind’s picking up, Brian.”

I turned toward the Falcon, closed the notebook, set it on one side of the open Pee-Chee, picked up the light blue notebook from the other side. There were crude sketches of dark waves and cartoonish surfers on the cover. I opened it to the first page.

“Wind is picking up.” I may have spun around a bit quickly, hands in a pre-fight position. It was Rincon Ronny in a shortjohn wetsuit, a board under his arm. Ronny nodded toward the stairs. “They’re gone.” He leaned away and laughed. I relaxed my hands and my stance. “The one kid was carrying both boards. Scared shitless.”

“Oh.” I closed the notebook. Ronny nodded. I looked around to see if any of his friends were with him, then back to him. “I was… really… polite.”

“Polite. Yeah. From what I saw.”

“What you saw?” I had to think about what he did see, how long I was… in whatever state I was in. Out. I started gathering my belongings, pulling up the edges of my towel. “I just didn’t want to give my spot to fuckers from… I don’t know. Where are you parked… Ronny?”

“I’m… close enough.” Ronny looked at my shortjohn wetsuit, laid out over my board. “One thing; those two… fuckers, they won’t fuck with you in the water. Junior.”

“Joey.” I said, “Someone will.”

Ronny mouthed, “Joey,” and did a combination blink/nod. “Yeah. It’s… Swamis. Joey.”

Ronny looked at the waves, back at me. A gust of west wind blew the cover of one of my notebooks, a green one, open. “Julie” was written in almost unreadably psychedelic letters across pages eight and nine. “Julie.” Hopefully unreadable.

I repeated Ronny’s words mentally, careful not to mouth them. “From what I saw.”

“Swamis” copyright 2020. Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

After the (successful) Event

Posted on by under northwest surfing, real surfers

Oops; me, slightly before the Salish Sea Event. Portrait by CHIMACUM TIM(acum). Love the cropping; no visible baldness.

REGGIE SMART’S display. It’s not like Reggie disappeared into the crowd. He did have an RV (for sale) parked out on the street. Private tours, perhaps.

STEPHEN R. DAVIS’S wife, SIERRA, in the foreground, her husband’s painting on the back wall, with TUGBOAT BILL (red shirt, next to clam wood and, damn, I have some photos- I’ll put them in on Wednesday). ADAM ‘WIPEOUT’ JAMES is in the middle of the frame, talking story with JEFFRY VAUGHN. A couple of paintings by JESSE JOSHUA (I substitute Merle for his middle name, after the bluegrass musician, so I can remember it) WATSON are visible on the wall to the right. I didn’t take any photos, so I’m using shots by others. Oh, and the young VIOLINIST (REBECCA, I think) who played her heart out and was, mostly ignored. Good job, hope she was compensated. She is, incidentally, also involved in a young musician’s workshop that is connected with the OLYMPIC MUSIC FESTIVAL, which, coincidentally, my daughter, DRUCILLA, works for.

CHRISTIAN COXEN in the very foreground, NAM SIU beyond him, and one of my illustrations projected onto the screen. My daughter, DRU (Drucilla- I only have one daughter), set up my presentation, for which I thanked her almost enough times, and also set up slide shows from thumb drives for REGGIE, photographer DOUGLAS FIR (name de art, from his middle name, Christopher- forgot his last name), and did a little assist for the presentation for TIM NOLAN.

DRU and I (I’m in the Hawaiian shirt I wore to the other two events, probably was wearing for the Zoom event during Covid, and never otherwise wear) semi-hiding out next to NAM SIU’S display when I was supposed to be speaking. Too many people. I did speak later when a woman from Port Townsend, who I don’t know, but who knew so many people I have worked for, semi-shamed me (and semi-complimented me, saying I am [somewhat] famous for talking, talking, talking) into speaking to a smaller crowd.

TIM NOLAN speaking after I did. The crowd is all squeezed into this half of the big room, and, according to ADAM, paying rapt attention to two elder dudes. Yes, well received.

THE FOUR people who claim some stake in the board (bottom shown here, top equally fantastic)-Librarian/ripper KEITH DARROCK (who put the board back together and did some refining of the shape after he SHORTBOARD AARON, CHRIS EARDLY, and maybe JOEL CARBON tried to ride it); realtor/ripper JOEL CARBON (who was given the board with the thought being to sacrifice it on the Summer solstice, last and then this year), me (I finished the sanding, stained and painted and varnished it with what Keith now calls ‘leftover paint,’ all in what he now calls ‘spare time.’) and ADAM JAMES, who cut down the cedar tree, took the slam (and maybe other slabs- it was originally going to be a coffee table) to Seattle to be milled, spent time (spare?) shaping the board, attaching fins.

Unseen in the photo; our lawyers. SO, during the EVENT, a woman came up to Adam and asked what the board might be sold for (she may have offered $250- accounts vary). Adam told her she’d have to ask ERWIN. I said, quickly (and my imagined value on the board went up with every coat of varnish and/or paint, and even more with every compliment), “three thousand dollars.” She said, “Oh, but I’m a local.” Okay. “Actually, I’m from Washington… DC.” “Thirty-five hundred.” She didn’t write a check.

There has been discussion on what to do with the board. Keith said, “If she’d offered a thousand, you would have take it.” Yes. Probably, and then sort out who owns what percentage. But she didn’t. The board will be at the PORT TOWNSEND PUBLIC LIBRARY for a while. IF IT COULD BE auctioned off for a decent amount of money for some charity, I am pretty sure the stakeholders would be pleased. Sort of.

MEANWHILE, if you absolutely need It, and are willing to pay the three grand, contact Keith at the library. I sort of trust him, though I once gave him a board (5’9″ BIC) he was supposed to pass on to MIKE NORMAN as partial payment for finishing the shaping on and glassing a board for me; short version, Mike never got around to shaping the board, CHRIS BAUER would have (if he didn’t put his name on it), I shaped and glassed and painted the board, and when I asked Keith what happened to the Bic, he said he sold it. “WHAT?” “Well, a guy wanted it, and I did give you some plywood.” “Oh.” Jeez, it was leftover plywood Keith gave me in his spare time.

HEY, check out realsurfers on Wednesday. I’ll have some photos on the specialty wood TUGBOAT BILL brought to the Event. And more. To all those who attended the EVENT, mucho thanks. Great fun, no backpaddling.