Circumstances not entirely beyond my control are causing this post to lack illustration. It might just be beyond my ability. Or it might be that the fucking scanner just doesn’t want to scan no matter how many times I check the connections, turn it off and back on… you know, try to make it work. SO, though I have two illustrations I wanted to put out there… no.
UPDATE- I took the original illustrations to COJO PRINTING in Port Townsend, had them professionally scannned. RANDY, the owner, seems hellbent on making sure the scans are… I’m not sure, but I appreciate his concern. “It can’t get better than I drew it,” I said. “Well,” he said, and continued examining the line work. SO…
POSSIBLE T SHIRT design (top), and FICTITIOUS POINT BREAK
Hope the holidays aren’t stressing you out too much, and that, perhaps, you are finding a few waves.
I am still hoping to finish the many-ist rewrite of “SWAMIS” by Christmas. Hoping. I shouldn’t promise to have something really fun and unrushed on SUNDAY, but, yeah; Sunday; something.
Erwin Dence, Jr. claims all rights to original illustrations posted on realsurfers.net
LAST TUESDAY, my plans were to work on “Swamis,” which I did, watch a little of the possible running of the VANS PIPELINE MASTERS, do some house cleaning, go to the local recycling, load up all the food that got ruined during my recent five day power outage/failure, then go up to Port Townsend to do some work. I did work on the manuscript, in between checking the buoy readings, getting more coffee, feeding the birds, UNTIL I checked the tablet, and, after a lay day and a day of competition I totally missed, the show was ON.
I WAS AWARE that ripper on the mainland’s north shore, CHRIS EARDLEY was on THE NORTH SHORE. He’s in my contacts, so I texted him. HERE is how that went:
ME- Are you hanging at pipeline while I’m hanging in my living room watching pipeline?
CHRIS- Yes I was! Awesome event. Just got done surfing, though not there.
Me- I’m working for JOEL (another ripper). You probably have about 20 people you have to contact to say you were there.
Chris- Only the ones that have nothing better to do than text me about it.
Me- I had a lot of better things to do. I’m paying for it now working late.
Chris- Hahaha
Me- If you text me some shots of you hanging out on the North Shore with Scott Sullivan (PA ripper and, evidently, Pipeline photographer- water and, yikes, all) and Jamie O’Brien and all, I can put them on my site on Sunday and you would get TENS OF HITS. And I would appreciate it. It’d be great.
Chris- Jamie is coming over for beers later. I’ll see what I can do.
Me- Yeah. Um, what, yeah?
Chris- I kid. But I did just get out of the water on the WEST SIDE, n______ (yes, I know better than to name spots, even ones I will probably never surf). North shore is enormous and messy today..
Me- I actually was hoping you were serious, but a couple photos would be so lovely..
Chris- I’ll take some pics for you. I haven’t been taking many since I’ve been trying to leave my phone behind, and also due to being on the water or doing some work, which I’m also mixing in.
Me- You have probably already sent a photo of you working to your coworkers, so I don’t need that one.
Chris- (Upper photo) Here’s my morning.
Me- Other than the big ass hotel in the background on the one shot, beautiful and thank you. No shots of you ripping?
Chris- Nobody to take such shots. My surf missions are solo.
Me-Somehow you are making solo sound heroic. Solo, baby!
Chris- No complaints. Get to surf on my schedule.
Me- I think I want to surf on your schedule.
Chris- Obligatory sunset shot.
ME (to you, and to Chris)- My friends already know not to put me on speaker phone. Hopefully this won’t dissuade any of the few friends I have to be a little more… selective about texts.
I DIDN’T POST ANYTHING on Wednesday. I will this week. NO CONTEST to watch. OH, and I did get the garbage to the transfer station. Still have way too much recycling.. Getting close to Christmas. A nice present for a surfer might be… hope you answered waves.
…I do try to keep to some sort of schedule. I have been trying to have potential and actual readers ready for new posts on Sundays and Wednesdays, it’s just that… no, no excuses.
There is an old saying: “Never complain, never explain.” Since I constantly do the first, I should be willing to do the other. I’ve been trying to make up for the time (and money) lost during my recent power surge/outage. I’m still working on figuring out… things.
I did work on my manuscript for “SWAMIS” during my down time, the generator churning outside; picturing the starving artist alone in some freezing Paris garret, desperately trying to make those subtle adjustments that will bring… heat, light, shit like that.
So, power back on, off to do the work that actually pays the bills. Out of town job. While waiting for a submarine (maybe, couldn’t see) to go through the Hood Canal Bridge (forty minute delay in this case), I actually made a list of what changes I need to make to my novel in order for it to make sense, story wise.
BUT, FIRST, because I’m changing the ending a bit, and I’m never quite sure if I might make more changes mid chapter (of course I will), I must write the last seven pages. THEN go back.
I also have been working on some drawings. I will put one of several possible ORIGINAL ERWIN t shirt designs, and a sort of redo of a little cove/point, with some added, never-happen-in-real-life waves:
Please overlook or forgive my lack of scanning skills. “I’m here to surf” is pretty much my motto. I do have some other designs. If I am going to inv.est in making another run of ORIGINAL ERWIN shirts (and, if you own one… it’s a VERY LIMITED item), I want them to be as good as the ones I’ve already done.
I do plan on going to a print shop this afternoon, and, if I don’t post anything else, I will put up some new illustrations.
MEANWHILE, I’m putting out local surf-related gossip, spreading rumors, trying to verify other things I’ve heard, lots of surfers coming over to the Peninsula and getting skunked is a common one. Very common.
OH, AND I’m also working on a possible shirt design for Washington State’s WEST END. It seems like, out on the rugged coast (and, for some reason, locals don’t seem to include fan favorites HOBUCK and WESTPORT) are not all that enthusiastic about folks cruising in from, you know, non-west. I’m not really involved in this- Yes, I did once try to surf Ruby Beach (so many logs, so many rocks), and yes, I did have a logger/surfer, years ago (late 80s), when I was out at Kalaloch, three children with me, trying to find some gems I could surf as practice for the RICKY YOUNG WESTPORT LONGBOARD CONTEST; tell me where I could find an accessible almost-point break; but, other than a few trips to the cove of vampires, I try to contain myself to the north(er) zone.
SO, self-promoting a bit, do check in on realsurfers.net occasionally, like, just to make sure, hit on it on THURSDAY.
Ikeep telling myself I need, NEED to take more photos. And then I don’t. I don’t have any photos of the four young dudes from JEFFERSON COUNTY PUD who showed up in two big rigs to check out my power pole, their interest extending to the wire and components on their side of the power pole halfway (about 200 feet) down my driveway.
“Four guys?” “Sometime we have eight.”
SO, this was Monday, and the power flash happened very early last Wednesday. SO, that many days of running on a generator. Unsustainable. Way too much noise, inconvenience, MONEY, too many trips to the QUILCENE VILLAGE STORE (luckily only about a mile away) to fill gas cans at, fortunately, better per gallon prices (10 cent discount per gallon for cash) than elsewhere in the vicinity (Chimacum the next closest fuel). BUT, I have learned to pour the gas with minimal splash/waste.
I MUST give thanks to RON REED, an electrical contractor I recently did some work for. He called me back after a novel-length text, agreed that calling the PUD should be my next step. “Then we’ll see. It could just be a loose wire on their end.” “But, I mean, does that… happen?” “More often than you might think.” “Okay.” I had, at this point, already called them, left a message. It was about ten minutes after talking to Ron that a woman, formerly of Quilcene, called me back. “Do they have my phone number?” “I put it in the notes.” “Thanks.”
Just to be helpful, I went down, cleared some blackberry vines away from the area around the pole, and, having told others, including Trish, including myself that I wouldn’t, I looked into the electric box below the meter head. It seemed pretty normal. There were two big ass fuses. Hmmm. Since I had to get more gas and check the mail, I cruised into the local, independant HENERY’S HARDWARE. I talked to LEONARD. “No, don’t have any.” “Shit.” When I pulled up to the end of the driveway, talking to TRISH on the phone (luckily, still hanging at DRU’S place), telling her that, because we, at her urging, had paid a little extra to the IRS, we had received an official letter that, paraphrased, said, “Let’s call it even.” This was amusing, more to me.
THAT’S when the PUD showed up.
This is the burned connection on the neutral line.
The connection was replaced, they checked out the fuses I couldn’t replace without getting them, and scheduling an outage. They were fine. “Go see if this did the trick.” I did. It did. Mostly. I undoubtedly have issues to sort out, but things are working. When I got back to the crew, I shook each member’s hand, said I was as close to crying as I had been in the previous five days (I didn’t- almost), and, of course, asked if any of them SURFED. None did. “Good; we have enough surfers.”
ANOTHER sort of plus: I spent some of my time, in my under-heated living room, working on getting to the end of “SWAMIS.” I have managed to keep it to just over 100,000 words (yeah, that is longer than this post) and I am down to the last seven pages. I can imagine how to make the finale better when I go to work. WORK. Yeah. And I feel grateful to have it.
AS FAR AS SURF, it’s not like I hope there is none if I can’t go, and I do try, and fail, to think about what I might be missing while I am missing it, but… consider even really big but really south swells and their relationship to the mean direction of the Strait of Juan de Fuca; it might save you a skunking. And, as always, figuring out waves, finding that moment at that spot is, like electrical issues, is, possibly, more like… magic.
YEAH, I’m posting this just before I go to the next step in my attempt to bring full power back to my house. I replaced the burnt out shutoff switch, now I’m replacing the guts of the panel. This requires shutting off the main breaker down the driveway, and, once initiated, there’s no power until it’s all back together. SO… deep breath and…
I got this photo from Mike Squintz. He’s been dealing with a heavy work demand; too many hours. I’m pretty sure I told him I do whatever I can to avoid total meltdown. Or freeze-up. STILL, here I am putting off that walk down the driveway to the power pole. Another deep breath.
Here is something from my collection, “Mistaken For Angels:”
Close to the Ground
Not everyone knows how the heat gets trapped,
Close to the ground; Held by the grasses, caught in the trees,
Boxed-up, stacked hard against the back door. Not everyone knows.
But we do. You do.
We know how the cold stringy reach of the ocean can’t reach us… quite.
We are leaned hard against the cliff, Cold and wet against warm, dry rocks,
Afternoon winds streaming up and over the pocket; God’s pocket.
We know. You and I. We know, and we fling a laugh between us,
Out and up, Smashing against the cliff’s highest outward edge, Pieces falling back down, Just enough to cover both of us.
Not the iconic image from the movie “From Here to Eternity,” but, when I couldn’t find a suitable Googled image under, “Couple making out at the bottom of a cliff by the beach,” I thought of this. Perhaps I placed it after (under) the poem because I want any reader to get their own image, perhaps from some memory. Any romantic-ness is a bit optional.
While I have memories of hanging at the cliff side after surfing from California, feeling the trapped warmth, I have another from the Pacific Northwest. Not romantic at all, though the feelings generated by an attraction to riding waves do get entangled with those of lust, love, passion. There’s some indisputable overlap. Not to be purposefully redundant, but with Trish and me, surfing has always been the other woman.
IF WE”RE past this, then, the story: I was surfing a break that required going across a river that I hadn’t surfed before. It was low tide, early spring, sunny, maybe fifty degrees, and I swore I saw a surfer walking back across the river mouth. I caught quite a few waves and was ready to go back across. The guy riding with me hadn’t caught as many and wanted to stay longer. Fine. I pulled down the top of the wetsuit and enjoyed the heat trapped in the berm. Then I tried to walk across the river.
YOU’RE RIGHT, rivers being rivers, there’s always a deep spot. Fifteen feet from the bank, my wetsuit starting to take in water. I thought about how my keys and cell phone were on the safe side of the river, how stupid I was, and, looking up into the sky, I saw a Coast Guard helicopter passing.
NO, I DIDN”T PANIC. It wouldn’t have helped.
THIS IS NOT MEANT to in any way overlap with my electrical adventure. I did a lot of research and I am actually being pretty cautious. Power off, move a bunch of wires, and… more caution. Then, power on.
I’ll let you know how it works out. WHOA! Yeah, I did just knock on wood. OH, I should add; we don’t know what stressors others have, so, while trying to control our stress levels, we might consider not being a stressor ourselves. Okay, considering.
UPDATE: More serious than I had hoped. It has to be something upstream, flow wise. The PUD will have to get involved. Not fully on panicked. Working on the ending to “Swamis.” If I could sell it… Considering. Check on Wednesday.
“Mistaken for Angels” is copyrighted material, all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
It’s our cat, ANGELINA, quite disappointed if not super pissed-off, resting on MY pillow (darker blue in real life), in the living room, because it’s the room with (some) heat, that provided by space heaters powered by a very noisy generator.
Not to argue whether or not there is a surf season on the Strait, but… Oh, first, I’m posting this a day later than the days I am trying to get folks used to, Sundays and Wednesdays, due to the power panel in my, hm, hmm, cottage, pieced together and added onto since the 1930s, kind of, um, having an issue.
AN ISSUE is my explanation for reduced power and… I AM working on it.
Not this skinny, of course, but rideable waves and no surfboard… frustrating.
Again, not discussing (potential, possible, hypothetical, possibly imagined) waves I can’t get to for a reason other than the usual, ‘got to work,’ thing. A few years ago it was the water leak between the pump house and the, you know, house I couldn’t find, even cutting holes in the floor to track it down, not finding it leading to the pump fifty feet down going out. Yes, I missed some waves I would have, according to reports that included, “You would have loved it, Dude,” and “Where were you?”
The thing is, these kind of issues, quite a ways outside of my knowledge zone, my limited areas of expertise; OR the use of professionals to solve the issue being way outside of my budget; just make me so… tired. Disappointed, pissed-off, frozen in body and mind. Rather like Angelina.
BUT, I am making some moves. It’s only been about thirty hours with no coffee and inadequate heat. I felt pretty good that I replaced the burnt-out main shutoff switch (not fun). I’ve done testing, possibly closing in on the areas of extended damage. Always tough. Electrical logic is way more involved than painting logic (paint is a liquid, gravity is involved). I have some ideas. YES, I am aware almost any problem is solvable if one throws enough money at it.
YES. This drama, something short of a tragedy, will be a story. Eventually. Not yet.
MEANWHILE, I did discover I can’t run a space heater AND a coffee maker at the same time.
NOW, I DO have some new artwork, several possible t-shirt designs, more from “Swamis” I wanted to post, AND I WILL, once I’m back to full power. So, soon. I’ve got to work.
If you do happen to get a few waves; it’s fine; I’m sure they’re the kind (rideable, possibly makable) I would love, Dude; it’s fine if you let me know. Good luck. May all your breakdowns, breakups, accidents, tragedies, meltdowns, panic attacks, mind freezes, etc., happen when the waves aren’t going off
A few years ago I wrote a series of stories and, yes, poems that I put together in a collection I titled, “Mistaken for Angels.” Yes, I got a copyright. Vanity. Ego. Just in case. As with everything I have written, my plan for a novel or interconnected stories lost some of the connective-ness, random ideas popping in to complicate matters.
The underlying premise was that the story is more important than the telling, the style and the proper adjectives and structure less memorable than the absolute desire each of us has to tell our story.
It’s not my story; it’s fiction; and my remembering this story caused me to search through multiple thumb drives. The current portion of ancient struggles caused me to remember that I had written it; not about a particular place or time, but of many places and many times.
Tragedy begets tragedy.
I was raised to be a pacifist; yet, turning the channel, turning away, I do nothing. Nothing except, perhaps, to try to calm if not control my own confusion, my own outrage, my own anger.
OH, since the location could be anywhere, on this (new) illustration (sketch if you must), I put in some waves in the background, making, possibly, A GOOD HOUSE that much better.
A Good House
We had a good house. This, you see, was the problem. It was, also, too close to the border. Some, those who think themselves brave, who think others will follow them, they call the disputed land on which the good house sits the ‘frontier.’ I call it ‘bloodlands.’ There has always been trouble. Wars go this way, then back; like waves on a lake.
My Father, he went to war- one of the wars- he pushed forward very bravely (so we were told), but came back very broken. The next wave took him for good.
Wave. Yes. Like a wave. We all knew he was already drowned. He was waiting for the next wave to wash his body away from… This is difficult to explain. “No faith left” he would say, staring toward the horizon.
My Mother, she had faith, and, with it, that certainty… I have heard it called fatalism. Ah, fancy term, that. It’s that knowledge that the darkness comes to each of us, to all of us. Fate and faith, they are, I think, related. “To have faith,” my Mother told us, my Sister and me, after our Brothers went, or were taken, made to fight, “you must have faith.”
This means, I think, that you must believe that having the faith sometimes works. Sometimes what we have the faith in, that things will be all right, can happen. I don’t know if I do believe this. My Mother did. Truly.
The snipers had done damage to the troops from our country. That is why they, our Soldiers, took to the houses. “Like a jar of water,” one of them told my Grandfather, who was weak and old, and had survived, he said, by never flying anyone’s flag, never taking a side. The Soldier held my Grandfather’s head against the rocks of the fireplace. He tapped it with a branch meant for the fire. He, the Soldier, explained this thing to my Mother, who, because she refused to cower as her Mother was, obviously was in charge.
He threw his hands apart to describe how a sniper’s bullet reacted with a soldier’s skull. “pheuuuuuuuh!” Then he laughed and let my Grandfather go.
“Okay,” he said, “your land; you don’t care what country it’s in. Fine.”
There was blood on this Soldier’s uniform. It (blood) dries almost black on the green. He smelled of gunpowder and body odor and death. They all carried sometimes multiple guns, and each had what you might call a machete. They called them something that would be more like ‘sword,’ and attributed a certain righteousness to its use. The Soldiers burned the blood from the blades in our fire, ate our food, complained about my Sister’s crying, and waited.
Soldiers, I now know, spend much time waiting. This is where their brains tell them many stories of why they should be afraid. They tell each other that they are not afraid, should not be afraid, they are and must be men. Yet, I could see these Soldiers had fear. Fear, someone else’s, looks like anger. I could feel my own fear. Like the Soldiers, I would hide it. I made my fear look like calmness. I could see everyone’s fear. Except my mother’s. She had the faith. I wanted to have the faith. I was ashamed to have, instead, the fear.
Fear is like a prayer, I think; or, maybe like a heavy, dark blanket, wrapped like a cloak, ready to be cast off, cast off quickly, when it is bravery that is needed.
Bravery, I’m afraid, is the ability to disregard what is known to be right. Bravery is a vicious thing. I no longer wish to be brave.
For some, it is better to be dead than brave.
Sorry. I must laugh a bit. The brave and cowardly are often thrown into the same grave.
“This is a very nice house,” another of the Soldiers said. He stood close to the window, lit a cigarette. “I think,” he said, “after the war, when we are free, I will take this house.” It was then the sniper’s bullet hit his neck. Both sides at once, it seemed. He was still smiling his dirty smile when his head snapped back. He rocked only a bit, and fell, crumpled, beside me where I sat. The cigarette was still in his mouth.
The first Soldier, and the others, ran outside, then away, leaving the dead one, blood splattered on our walls, making pools on our floor. We could hear guns going off, closer, then farther away. We thought, we hoped we were safe.
Briefly, we were.
These were the, it gets confusing; you might call them counter-insurgents. At dawn the insurgents came closer. Same smell, same uniforms (I thought at the time), different caps. They laughed when they saw how poor we were at trying to drag the body out. They kicked at it, shot it several more times, took things from it, threw it onto a truck with other bodies, some not in uniforms.
You can tell when the soul is gone, when a person becomes a body. Less. Almost nothing.
I don’t know where a soul goes. Somewhere better. I have seen those whose souls are gone, their bodies still…walking, eyes too wide open, too squinted down.
We would have been all right if the war had not slowed, the fighting ‘bogged-down’ in the hills; if the troops of our country had not fought so fiercely; if we had not had such a good house.
We had new guests not of our country. They thought themselves of a better country; bigger, older. This was not actually true, the bigger part, except for this short while. How small and pitiful our country must be, they said, to be so easily conquered.
I have no patience to explain why things went wrong. My Sister cried too much. It became night. Perhaps it was the darkness, the length of the nights. One of the soldiers said his grandfather might have worked on the masonry on our house, back when our country was still grand.
“If so,” my Grandfather said, “I would have paid him well. I always paid the workers well. They ate at our table.”
The mason’s Grandson looked at our table, smiled, but not nicely. Another Soldier, suddenly angry, perhaps because of how his Grandfather was treated, because of where his Grandfather took his meals, grabbed my Grandfather and pulled him outside. My Mother knew what this meant, and begged for her Father’s life. The Soldier slapped her for begging. Because she stood at the door and screamed “Butchers, murderers,” my grandmother was also pulled into the darkness. My Sister, holding onto our mother, kept crying. My Mother did not.
This is the fatalism of which I spoke, the belief that all will be tested.
And most fail.
I also did not cry. This is the faith, faith I had because my Mother had faith. The mason’s Grandson pulled my Sister away, shoved her toward me, told me, in my own language (they are really only slightly different) to keep her quiet. He moved his face close to my Mother’s, touched her breast. He said, Whores beg. Are you, then, a whore?” This was to humiliate her further.
I have learned this from war: To kill is not enough for some. To only, to merely kill is not enough to make the anger and the fear and the hatred cease.
“If I must be,” she said.
At this he laughed. “I am also the whore,” he said.
“My Children,” my Mother said to him. It was like a question. He, and the other Soldiers, now back from outside and leaning against our walls, shrugged and laughed together. The mason’s Grandson took his pistol belt off, holding the pistol in his left hand, moving it close to my Mother’s cheek.
“God will send a miracle,” she said to me. “Turn away,” she said.
I almost cried out at this moment. My Sister did. I put my hand over her mouth and prayed that I could have a man’s strength.
Prayers. Excuse me for laughing; just a little. Prayers are not answered as we expect.
It’s rare, I have learned, that a first mortar round can hit precisely. This one did, precisely where it was intended to land, and when I asked for it. The Soldier’s Grandfather had not been a roofer. No, not at all. Ha!
Like a jar of water, burst.
I kicked at his body when it was over, when the others ran, when more mortars rained down on the houses on the frontier.
Of prayer, I should add, speaking of the partial nature of the realization of prayer; my Mother did not survive this…this…I don’t know what they call this. It’s a tide, a tide, and we are the shore. I carved our Family’s name onto the mantel, underneath, to mark a claim when I return. I took the Soldier’s machete. After I’d chopped him with it; splattered his blood with it, I burned his blood from the blade in the fire.
By the time the Peacekeepers came, the roof was already patched, by my Grandfather and me. We also buried my Mother, dragged the soldiers’ bodies away from the house. My Grandparents would not leave. This was their home. That they were not soldiers was honored. That time. My Sister became one of the many refugees. Refuge means safety, of course. I prayed she would be safe. Yes. I told myself she was safe and fed and happy. That was my hope. Perhaps it is partially true. I became, as you know, a Soldier, a brave one, they say. I am still a Soldier; I wait, but I do not fear. I no longer even hate. I know what bravery is.
Oh, I see you don’t believe there could have been two miracles, two dead Soldiers in one house. Well, perhaps I lie. The results would be the same; the dried blood as black. Prayers answered.
When I was captured that first time, taken like a fool during one of the many truces, they called me John Doe number four hundred and thirty-four. I was, I now guess, eleven years old.
CHIMACUM TIM (or CHIMACUM TIMACUM), the ferry worker and surfer who seems to believe this site is somehow important, or viral… oh, yeah, Tim is, or has been, viral himself (get well, Tim, and don’t give whatever it is to me- strict orders from TRISH not to get too close- “Oh, no; I don’t, it’s mostly text harassment.” “Good.”), has been telling me for a while that it is difficult-if-not-impossible to read my manuscript broken up into still-oversized chunks. “Why don’t you just print it up?” “Because it’s still not done.” “Why don’t you finish it, man?” “Been trying, man.”
It just might be close enough on the many-ist edit, to stop posting. NO, but this week, different thing.
BUT FIRST, Nickname of the week: “Bubble B” for guy who shows up with a blowup SUP. Credit, until proven otherwise, goes to KEITH DARROCK. “Why not Bubble Boy, Keith?” “Bubble B is better.” “You know, if he keeps showing up, it’ll go to Kevin.”
HIPSTER/KOOK of the week: RALPH, according to some, more gregarious than the ultra-gregarious ADAM WIPEOUT JAMES (which, no offense meant, I dispute), took this photo somewhere northwest of Sequim. Yes, Ralph is, inarguably, cool in his own right; not trying to start an argument in the shellfish/surf subset, just… I’ve been saying Adam is the most outgoing dude I’ve come across for a long time, and Ralph, who everyone seems to know, has enough supporters. Again, not purposefully stirring any pot here.
COOL RIG, has a few dents.
HERE’S a piece I wrote recently: But first… I hit the wrong key and got this (below). I can’t seem to delete it or do anything else with it. Keyboard errors. Shit!
The hand-drawn sign, white chalk on light gray cardboard, taped to the inside of the driver’s side back window of the gray compact SUV read, “Milk for Sale- LOCAL.” The sign on the passenger side mentioned goat milk. A decal on the back window called for supporting local milk producers; and there was, of course, a “Got Milk” sticker and the locally ubiquitous Chicken logo from the Chimacum Farm Stand.
I had not allowed myself enough time to casually finish painting the trim and fascia on three sides of the Laundromat before I would have to quit because of rain or darkness, or both; both so common, yet surprising, in the early days of November.
So, I was hustling, painting, moving the ladder, jumping up to get another six feet coated, drop down. I wasn’t taking time to really observe the vehicles parked just out of splatter range, or the people in them.
Not true. I did give several sideways glances to the guy in the passenger side of a pickup, window rolled down to allow his cigarette smoke to roll out. He was clutching an uncovered beer can. I may have looked too long when he yelled something to a woman, pulled forward by an oversized dog, as she passed between me and the truck.
He might have been saying something to me. No, he was saying something that had to have been rude; quick, guttural, two syllables smashed into one bitter contraction, to the woman. I’m a working man, working; no way another blue-collar dude would say something demeaning to me, unless we know each other. We don’t.
To drop such a phrase to the woman walking the dog, doing the laundry… maybe she forgives him.
I had to go inside the laundromat to retrieve something to prop the side door open, hopefully preventing customers from brushing against the wet paint on the frame. A ‘Wet Floor’ tripod sign worked perfectly. That is when I saw the amazingly large stacks of clothing off to one side. Obviously, the dirty clothes; there was plenty of counter space for clean clothes. Four loads would be my guess, and a young man with a reddish beard and a greenish hat squatting among them. Goat farmer was my guess; young, hip farmer, sorting whites and colored, a pile for work clothes, hopefully pre-hosed.
Among the piles was an overly padded combo baby carrier/car seat, with a baby inside; awake, looking up into the lights. A young woman, black hair and top and pants and shoes, came over and picked up the baby. Both hands. She tweaked her wrist to give some change to her man, then pushed her hand out a bit farther to point to a particular pile. “Too many,” she may have said; “Two loads.”
Outside again, the oversized dog was in the front seat of the pickup. In the middle. Watching me. The man was smoking, again, beer in the hand around the dog’s neck, also, I believed, looking at me. The woman had used the front door. I moved the ladder and allowed her room to place her two large trash bags of laundry in the bed of the truck.
She said, “Looks nice… The paint.” I would have said something if the man hadn’t grunted, smoke forcibly blown out his window. I shouldn’t have looked, even for the half second it took to move past the hood of the truck, past him and the dog. I smiled at the dog, still staring at me, and gave the woman the same smile, probably, and a ‘thank you’ nod when I looked back at her.
It was truly dark when I went back inside to thank the woman who seemed to run the place, to give her the key to the doors to the room with the water heaters. Painted, gaskets reinstalled, touch up paint put inside, locked.
Five wash machines in a row of six were running. The young man in the green hat was leaning against the ‘out of order’ one, the empty baby carrier on top of it. His woman was carrying their baby, close, both hands, looping around the wash machines and the dryers, past the people folding and sorting, past the people waiting, looking at their phones. She was singing something soft and low, something, a lullaby only her baby could hear over the spinning, whirring machine noise.
All good mothers sing to their children.
All children should sing.
AS ALWAYS, please respect copyrights for all original material on realsurfers.net. AND, AS ALWAYS, GOOD LUCK in finding the waves of your dreams. OH, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Tomorrow is the fifty-second anniversary of Trish and I getting married with, really, no idea how it would all go. She was nineteen years and ten days old. I was twenty years and two-and-a-half weeks old. Yeah, long time. Not looking for Kudos on my part in this. No one has ever asked me how I could stay so long with Trish; she’s been asked, well, a lot of times.
SO, a week or so ago, nine days, probably, marked the fifty-fifth anniversary of Trisha’s sixteenth birthday. There was a party. I was there. It didn’t go well, for me; another suitor was way slicker than I was, but I did, somewhere in the confusion of being barely seventeen, I did ask her if she wanted to go surfing with me the next morning. And she agreed.
Image borrowed from teeuni. Pretty much covers it.
AND, as part of my celebration, I went surfing on the day after Trisha’s most recent birthday, and, lucky me, again the next day. NO, Trish wasn’t on the beach watching her man, getting hit on by other dudes; I mean, really, what kind of woman is willing to do that… over time.
WE have THANKSGIVING coming up, a world in chaos, and I’m trying to decide what to do on a first day without work that HAS to be done, trying to decide where there might be waves, whether to stay home and deal with maintenance too-long deferred. Tomorrow, I’ve cleared the schedule and promised Trish she and I would be hanging out. Let me check the forecast. Oh.
SINCE it kind of relates, here’s a portion of an original poem…. or song, depending…
I’d like to have a day where I can simply vegetate, find my thoughts and store a few away; Nowhere I must go to, so there’s no way to be late, Wish I had a day where I could hide, but I don’t have that day, so let it slide.
I wish I had an ego not as fragile as a glass, shatters when somebody looks askance, I could strut and swagger, I’d exude self-confidence, On my lips, I’d still seem dignified, My ego’s not that strong, so let it slide.
I’l like to have one night that I could spend alone with you, maybe underneath a naked moon; I’d whisper “I love you” probably half a million times, hoping that our wishes coincide; And when we get that night, we’ll let it slide.
Let it slide, slide, slide, there’s no way that I can linger, work to do that must be done today; Let it slide, slide, slide, please unwrap me from your finger, you say you’ll be happy if I just stay, Perhaps for just a while, then… satisfied? Maybe, just this once we’ll let it slide, slide, slide, maybe just this once we’ll let it slide.
THANKS, AS ALWAYS, for checking our realsurfers.net BEST OF LUCK for all your sliding wishes.
“Let it Slide” is from a copyrighted collection of poems/songs, “Love Songs for Cynics,” all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
AND, and, and, please, in counting our blessings, may we not ignore the truly epic tragedies throughout the world.
SO, JACOB WHYTE is the son of a cousin of JIM HAMILTON, a very interesting individual (timber-frame house builder/ski patrol/world traveler/more) who lives off Center (Road) and close to SURF ROUTE 101 in Quilcene. Jacob also has an interesting story. He has returned to Forks, Washington after an extended stay in California, Ventura area, during which he worked doing ding repair, most notably (to name droppers) for Channel Islands Surfboards, living frugally (growing his own food, that kind of thing), always, he says, planning to move back home to Washington State’s WEST END.
Now, the PEASANT thing: Jim, in asking (more like hiring/bribing) me to do some artsy stuff for Jacob, pondered the name. “Oh,” I must have said, “Maybe it’s like, you know, peasants, serfs, vassals, that kind of thing; I mean, like an allusion to… that.” “That would be… yeah, maybe that’s it.”
“It isn’t,” Jacob said when I actually got in phone contact, he at a far northwest secret surf location, me in the depths of a housing tract in East Bremerton. Didn’t matter, so much, I’d already done a drawing, black and white, printed a copy and colored it, either suitable as a flyer, or, reduced in size, a too-busy business card. “Yeah, Erwin, maybe the ‘serfboard’ thing is expecting too much of… surfers.” “Okay, how about the ‘serving the West End and the Olympic Peninsula’ part?” “Yeah. Sure.”
I ran a couple of other ideas past Jacob. Mostly about t-shirts; what would be appropriate, assuming surfers on the West End are not necessarily trying to invite more surfers over. I have ideas. LATER. It’s not like I can’t keep a secret.
IN MY CONTINUED attempts to produce a decent drawing of the fictional JULIA COLE, or, actually, a portrait of any woman, I came up with this. Attempts and failures. I should throw away the versions that got me to this one, possibly more useful to depict Julia’s mother, and stick this in some file with the other failed illustrations. BUT, wait, maybe if I just… Yeah, I have some ideas. ALWAYS. And I always want to get… better.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN- MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1969- PART FOUR
The two carpenters were carefully walking between the Karmann Ghia and the edge of the bank. Lee Anne turned toward them. “Joey, this is Monty, lead carpenter on the project.” Monty was sunburned, with a receding hairline and an almost orange Fu Manchu mustache. Early thirties.
Monty stepped in front of Lee Anne’s car, put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. Black, muscular, no older than eighteen or nineteen. “And this is…”
“Not a carpenter. Yet. Helper. Nickname… Digger.” Monty had only left room for his helper to stand on the very edge of the bank.
Lee Anne looked at Digger, shook her head, looked at Monty, and back at Digger. “No. Unacceptable. You have to… insist… on a different nickname.”
“Temporary,” Digger said. “Thought I’d be something like ‘Hammer.’ Nope. Got to earn your nickname ‘round here.” Digger slapped at a pair of gloves folded over his belt. He held out his hands, palms toward me, rubbed two fingers of his left hand across the palm of his right. He slapped his hands together. “Could’a been callin’ me ‘Blisters.’”
Lee Anne extended her right hand but didn’t accept Digger’s. “Blisters,” she said. “Not good, but… better.”
Monty gave Lee Anne a sideways nod and said, “Blisters, then.”
The younger carpenter had been rather boldly checking Lee Anne Ransom out. She looked him off with a quick widening of her eyes and a very stern expression. “Real name, please, for the record.”
Blisters backed up, put his hands out and up, his arms closer to his body. If he was impressed with Lee Anne’s response, he wasn’t apologizing. “Greg,” he said. “Or Gregory.”
“Gregory, then.” She turned back to Monty. “Or Greg?”
“Greg, then,” Monty said. He pointed to the parking lot. “We heard the cop car, didn’t see it ‘til it tried to turn in. It wasn’t the brakes. It was… the gravel. New, like b-bs; no way he wasn’t gonna slide.” He turned toward me before he added, “No way.”
…
The San Luis Rey Riverbed was probably half a mile wide. I had never seen the water more than a stream, a creek, even. The ground Monty and Gregory and Lee Anne and I were standing on was gravel and round river rock, with the usual scrub, some still green but rapidly fading grasses and weeds, and a few stunted trees. Taller trees in the center of the valley were mostly dead. Ghosts. Killed in the cycles of flood and drought. More likely flood. Drowned.
Monty pointed to the stump in the river bottom, probably fifty feet from the base of the fill. “The concrete had been poured. The leftover rebar should’ve been fuckin’ gone.” Though no one asked, he added. “Contractors. Separate. Not our job.”
Lee Anne said, “Separate. Not your job.” She attached a telephoto lens to her camera, aimed it at the road on the east side of the valley, focused it, snapped a photo, and handed the camera to me. “So, after your dad’s accident; the traffic was rerouted… over there. Correct?”
The lens was out of focus for my eyes. I twisted the ring at the base of the lens as Lee Anne had. “Correct.” I turned the camera past the carpenters and toward the journalist. Distorted. Out of focus. I snapped a photo. “Accident.”
Lee Anne took the camera and advanced the film.
…
Gregory and Monty and Lee Anne and I were standing next to the concrete box. There was a galvanized pipe in, another, perpendicular, out. Gregory, now gloved, had a shovel, upright, in his left hand. “You see, all the rebar got pushed out the way by the car… except for one piece. Jammed against the… stump.” He looked at me. “You get me?” I nodded. “They cut it. The… stump. Little later. Fire department.” I nodded. “Like a bullet, it was. Through the door and right through the guy. I seen him, right after. He was alive and all, like he was trying to pull the rebar out. No fuckin’ way.”
“My father… the guy.”
“Yeah.” The shovel handle fell against Gregory as he moved his hands into a prayer position and raised them to his eyes. “Sorry, man. No disrespect.”
Monty stepped between his helper and the stump. “We were trying to get it loose. No way. I’m smacking the stump with a framing hammer, trying to get the rebar loose. Or, even, pull it through the stump. Something.”
“Then this other cop; tall guy, he showed up, slides down the bank, lights up a cigarette. He was laughing, says, ‘Shit, Gunny, your car’s still on its wheels.’”
Monty turned to me. “Wendall. He stops laughing when he comes around, sees the rebar and the… blood. Not that much. Me and… Wendall, second later; we’re at the door. Your dad says, ‘Larry; could you tell Ruth…’ That’s all I got, ‘cause just then this Japanese lady, your mom, she shows up in…” Monty pointed to the Falcon before moving his finger toward the incline from the parking lot. “She slips as she comes off of the grade.”
“I ran over, helped her up.”
“You did, Digger; yes. Greg. Me and Wendall, Greg, too; we tried to keep her back, but she pushes between us, gets in the car on the passenger side. She seemed pretty… calm. Wendall wasn’t. Your dad says, ‘it’s fine, Larry.’ Wendall grabs the shovel.” Monty grabbed the shovel from Greg, thrusting it downward, hard, several times, into the stump until it stuck.
Monty was gasping for breath. “By this time, there’s so many cars, people, up, up on the highway. More sirens. I look in the car. The siren was off, but the light… it had popped off the roof, wire and all. It was still spinning; the engine was still… running. The, uh, your dad, he looks over at me, like maybe he knows me. He don’t.” Monty was breathing in gulps. “He looks at your mom. He says, ‘I always believed I rescued you.’ She reaches over, turns off the, the key, twists around, puts her arm, the same arm… around… him. And your mom kisses him, and she’s got blood… on her.”
Monty caught his breath. Most of it. “Then he, Wendall; he pulls me away from the window, pushes me back. He has this look in his eyes; it’s like he’s shaking his head, but he’s not. It’s just his eyes saying, you know, that it was over.”
The stump, somewhere around fourteen inches in diameter, had been cleanly cut with a chain saw. The part that had been removed was only a few feet away, visible in the heavy-bladed grass in a patch of green that surrounded the concrete box.
I looked at the slide marks and the crushed plants, the track we had come down. I imagined my mother coming down the bank, slipping, having to be helped back up. I imagined her in my father’s patrol car, reaching over, turning the key. I extended my right arm, moved it up until my hand was pointing up and at the highway. I moved my arm to the left, to where my father’s car slipped, sideways, on the new gravel. My flat hand represented the car as it slid, still sideways, to the bottom of the grade, plowing into the ancient river bottom, hitting the pile of rebar, one piece jammed into the stump, penetrating the door and my father like a bullet. I looked into the sun hanging just above the parking lot. I cupped my right hand, moved it, and then the left, above my eyes.
The shadow, the darkness, lasted but a moment. Another blinding light, and the spinning red light, and a vision of my father’s face as I passed him took over. Everything else was gone.
…
I was in shadow when the vision faded. I was on my knees. Gregory was directly in front of me. Monty was gone. I looked up toward the highway. Lee Anne Ransom, still in the light, had her camera aimed at Gregory and me. She waved. Gregory waved back as the reporter got into the Karmann Ghia and pulled away.
Gregory offered his ungloved right hand. I took it with both of mine. “Blisters,” I said as I stood up. “They turn into… callouses.”
“Not soon enough.”
“Gregory. How long?”
“How long you out for? Hmmm. ‘Bout a minute, I’d guess.”
I tried to remember what I had seen, or what I had imagined. Nothing. I remembered nothing. Not at that time. “Was I… shaking. I mean…”
“No, man; it was… weird; you were… it was like you was really… still. Like… church.”
“Did I… say anything?”
Gregory shook his head. I looked at him long enough that the motion turned into a nod. “You said ‘sorry’ a couple a times. Pretty much it. Hey, you good to… drive? I live in Oceanside, but I could…”
I followed Gregory to the corner between the parking lot’s fill and the established fill along the highway. Half-way up, he asked, “Who is… is there a… Julie?” My left foot slipped on the gravel. I caught my balance and continued up to the highway.
THANKS FOR READING. “Swamis” is copyrighted material, All changes are also protected. All rights are reserved for the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. THANKS for respecting that.
GOOD LUCK in finding the spot, the time, the right wave. More non-Swamis stuff on Sunday.
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