The Nod-Back and the Hey, Man

Posted on August 14, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under old surfers, real surfers

“Hey, Man…”

As I was completing my day, loading up my work rig, I did some chatting with the owner of the house across the street, a guy whose house I painted a couple of years ago. I can’t remember his first name, but his last name is White. Somewhere in the usual tangle of conversational starts and non-finishes and peripheral stories, electric bikes and Teslas and Sprinter vans, the general theme being coolness and those of us who seek it, Mr. White said, “Well, you always have the ‘hey, man’ thing going for you.”

Yeah, I was a bit confused by the statement as well.

What Mr. White and I decided, jointly, is that even pissed-off people can only go so far in calling out those who they (the possibly rightly pissed-off person) consider, rightly or wrongly, somewhat cool.

It isn’t that I am or have ever been that… cool. Trish told me, years ago, when we were first dating (specifically, we were in my thrashed Morris Minor and approaching a guy from my high school class who was hanging out downtown with some other guys and leaning on the really cool car he had actually done some work on, and I gave him the nod), that I’m always trying to be that. Cool. “Give it up. You might never be cool.”

Whether he or any of the other guys returned the nod should be irrelevant. It isn’t. It’s totally relevant. It is relevant because I have not given up trying. If he (just remembered his name- Gary Press) did do the nod-back, great; if not; well, I probably had some excuse.

I have, in my own mind, pulled myself up a few notches on the coolness scale. I’m still surfing, getting out there, a little over a week away from my seventy-first birthday. It’s more like coolness by attrition.

I am taking the information from this googled image at face value. It’s on the internet, must be true.

A couple of things about the nod, the nod-back, and the ‘hey, man:’

ONE- When our older son, James, was in high school, a classmate, Troy, would come over to our house. This wasn’t all that easy. We live out of town. Troy would show up by looking through a window or just plain walking in. Troy had some situational, some physical, and some mental… disadvantages. Troy would explain his surprise visit with, “Hey, mon, got the game?” James probably did. He and Dru and Sean were, it seemed to me, pretty nice to Troy. Several times his stepfather would bring him over. If I was around, I got to hang out with that guy. Once the stepfather spent most of our conversation time staring at the profile of the hill across the way, talking about aliens and big foot.

“Uh huh.”

TWO- Surfers are, and have always been, reluctant to embrace new surfers on their (not arguing this part) territory. “Who’s that?” This may be particularly true with spots as fickle as those on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I only recently, when a dude paddled out at a spot I claim as a ‘regular’ if not, strictly speaking, a ‘local’ (not that there are many true locals that far out), and said he’d never been to that spot before. “Well,” I said, “You don’t have to come back.” Even though the waves had dropped off to the usual none-to-one foot, he probably will. Persistence. Make a note of it.

So, a friend of mine was walking back from checking a spot and ran into two or three other seekers, seeking. “They gave me the nod,” my friend told me. “What did you do?” “I refused to give them the nod.” Add your own level of irony to another story from the same friend, different spot, more difficult access. “There was only one guy out. He wasn’t friendly. I said (paraphrasing here), like, ‘hey, man…’”

Persistence. Next time, I would guess, full nod exchange.

THREE- “You ever go to Doc’s restaurant,” I asked the guy whose house I had painted. “Not often,” he said, “But I was there when Richard Sherman did the tip… in the endzone.” Okay. “So, a couple of years ago, I was painting the place. Remodel. Reggie got the gig. So, this electrician starts talking. Mentions Hawaii. So, naturally, I ask him if he is a surfer. ‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘It’s Hawaii.’ So, according to Reggie, I stew about this for a while, then I go up to the guy and say, ‘Hey, man; just because you lived in Hawaii, that doesn’t automatically make you a surfer.’”

“How did he react?”

“He was kind of all right with it. So, what do you say when someone does get… angry?

“I don’t know. What?”

“You do know.”

“Yeah. Hey, man…”

Temporarily Forgetting Taxes

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under Melissa Lynch illustrations

I am indecisive on whether or not to take a chance and go surfing today. I have responsibilities, obligations and commitments, deadlines. Then again, whatever swell there might be drops off to nothing after today. It is already doing so.

Four years ago, on the first anniversary of my sister Melissa’s death, metastatic breast cancer, I was surfing. Some chop had developed on the water and the swell was, it appeared, dropping. I may have been the last one to get out. I was hanging on the beach with Mikel, nicknamed Squintz, and Bruce, the unofficial mayor of Hobuck. I had missed my sister’s funeral as I had missed our father’s eight months earlier. I hate funerals. I have been to as few as I could get away with not attending since the first one I attended, my mother’s, fifty-two years ago.

I did write about my paddling back out in a sort of memorial to Melissa. Writing may be shouting into the void, or not; it is how I process, possibly how I cope; even if it is difficult to partially process or cope with even the lesser mysteries of life, and knowing it is impossible begin to fathom that which no one has yet fully explained.

Death is the one guarantee in life. Death. We ignore death, we postpone thinking about death. It seems almost sinful to dwell on death. It is, certainly, counterproductive.

But people die. Some we know, some we’ve heard of. We cannot help but compare where that person was in life compared to where we are. But we don’t… dwell. We move on.

I didn’t remember that it was an anniversary. Trish reminded me. That it was five years surprised me. Thirteen years since Trisha’s father died, fifteen since her mother’s passing. She put the deaths of my parents in the timeline. Six, in December, for my father. Fifty-two, as I said, for my mother.

Surprising. Not shocking; yet I remember, easily, and vividly, the circumstances of each event.

The memories get blended into the mix, the redundancy and rhythm of the daily traumas and dramas, the routine of waking, and being awake, and trying to accomplish… something; oh, and dreaming.

Waves, I believed, during that mid-day, mid-summer, solitary session, came to me; I got into the rhythm of the sets; I believed that honored my sister. Though all this could be easily explained away, I still believe this. My sister was an artist. I have called on Melissa’s spirit to assist me, at times, when I am attempting to transform something in my mind to paper. No, I never produce anything as moving as the work she fretted and worried over and kept at until everyone but her believed the work to be perfect. No, I don’t blame her spirit.

Of course not. That would be ridiculous.

“Are you looking at me? Don’t look at me?”

If I do think about death, there is a story I go back to:

Trish and I, twenty-six and twenty-seven, had lived in among farmland in Quilcene for a cold winter, during which the bridge connecting where we lived and where I worked sank. Workdays were thirteen and a half hours long for eight hours pay. It was spring. It was a Saturday. The sound of gunshots woke us up. We looked out the window. There were several trucks in the field at Irving Johnson’s farm across the road. I went outside, walked down the road, watched from behind the barbed wire fence.

The victim of the gunshots was being hoisted up on a chain, one of the crewmembers slicing into the carcass. The rest of Mr. Johnson’s herd, seven or eight head, was a ways off, chomping on the spring-wet grass. Each of the steers would look up, toward the truck, then at other members of the herd, then, perhaps hoping the killing/butchering crew wouldn’t notice him, resume the chomping. The butchering of the first steer well in hand, two of the crew members headed toward the herd. One had a rifle. The herd moved. Slowly, not a stampede. Jockeying for position. That wouldn’t help. The farmer and the lead butcher had already selected which steers would die.

Mr. Johnson, supervising from the butcher’s truck, saw me. He waved. I waved. He put his hands out to his sides, slightly cocked up at the elbows. It wasn’t a celebratory gesture. It meant, “This is what we do.” I turned and walked toward our gate before the next shot was fired.

I hope this doesn’t make me sound… I don’t really know- Maudlin? Fatalistic? It is just a story, a memory, but it has already made me think of other memories.

No, really, I have other things to think about. There may be some waves. I’ll check.

I hadn’t really studied this work by my sister, Melissa Lynch. I cannot help but notice one of the figures is pulling the other one up, as in a rescue from drowning, OR one is trying to keep the other from ascending.

Ironically Flipping the Peace Sign

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under "Swamis" the novel, surf novels

It’s another outtake from my manuscript for “Swamis,” re-edited, because I just can’t help it, and posted here because I just can’t leave it in some bound-to-get-lost file. I like the story. It is based, mostly, on two incidents: My running into a classmate on the night of the homecoming game, five years or so out of high school, and my being declined for purchasing cigarettes when I was seventeen. Gordy was with another classmate, a girl who was my chemistry lab partner, and with whom I had gone on one date, just before I met Trish. Gordy had gone full-on hippie, did put the emphasis on the ‘ing’ part of the word ‘fuck-ing.’ All a bit anachronistic.

This was the first image in a search. I wasn’t lazy, it just works the best.

SO FUCK-ING COOL… MAN

Gordy claimed to be a surfer, though I never saw him actually in the water. On the beach a few times, talking surfing as if he had just been in, somewhere else, somewhere better, or just about to get in. Later, if it got better. He was two years ahead of me in high school and regaled the other non-surfing jocks at school. Gordy was not one of the older students Gary and I bugged and begged for rides to the beach. Once, maybe.

I was in a liquor store in Vista. Gordy was sporting a full-if-sparse beard and long hair (Fallbrook High had a dress code), parted in the middle (of course), and clothing, Hippie-garb I called it, that denied his quite-upper class upbringing.

“Still fuck-ing’ surfing, Jody?”

I took the usual few seconds to replay his sentence. He had separated the syllables, put the emphasis on the second one. “Ing!’”

“Of course.”

“So fuck-ing’ cool, man. We just don’t fuck-ing’ see each other, man; like, like we used to.”

Gordy was, obviously, stoned. He had his left arm over the shoulder of an even more-stoned girl, younger, possibly still in high school. She was wearing a headband, her boutique-chic top hanging precariously on her breasts. She was nodding, giggling, her eyes unable to focus or even adjust to the light from the coolers we were standing next to.

The girl looked at me, squinting, then nodding, a finger pointed way too close to my eyes. Big smile. “My brother Larry,” she said, “he says you’re a fuck-ing’ stuck-up asshole; oh and…” She lost her thought.

Emphasis on the ‘ing.’

“Larry?”

“Larry,” the girl said. “Larry Walker.”

“Oh. Larry Walker? Yeah.”

“Yeah. Larry. You did punch him out, Jordy.” Gordy didn’t wait for my response. “Freshman football. Practice. I was J.V., just before I went varsity.”

I replayed the incident in my mind. Larry was the ball carrier. I had tackled him. Open field. He and I were both on the ground. The play was over. He gave me an elbow shot to the groin. Someone pulled him up. He pulled his helmet up and back, smiling at me with his plastic mouth guard smile. “Gettin’ tackled by a beaner’s bad enough. Some fuckin’ half-Jap…”

Straight shot. No broken teeth. Mouth guard.

“Yeah.” Gordy and Larry’s little sister had walked away. I walked toward the counter. The guy behind it looked at me for a second, continued leering at the girl as she and Gordy came up behind me. “Larry’s little sister,” I said. The Counter Guy nodded. Appreciatively (by which I mean creepily).

“She’s probably going to be, like…” I turned, looked at her (questioningly, not, I hope, creepily). “…a Junior?”

Larry’s sister nodded, her nod a bit uncontrolled. “Uh huh.”

“Class of, uh, a second…”

“Seventy-one! Yea!” She made a bit of a cheerleader pompom gesture, one hand, a jump motion without actually getting off the ground. Junior Varsity.

I looked back at the Counter Guy. He looked at Gordy. A little judgey, not that Gordy noticed.

Gordy took his left hand off Larry’s sister’s shoulder and put it on mine. I looked at his hand. He took it away. I put two one-dollar bills, my package of Hostess donettes and a quart of chocolate milk on the counter, pointed to a pack of Marlboros (hard pack) on the back wall, turned back to Gordy and Larry’s sister. Gordy sort gave me a specific look. Disappointment.

“I know, man… Gordie; you probably don’t fuck-ing’ smoke… cigarettes.” He and the girl both giggled.

The Counter Guy set the cigarettes on the counter, rang up the carton of milk and the donettes.

“Pack of matches, too; please.”

Counter Guy put two packs of matches on top of the Marlboros. “You’re seventeen, huh?”

I didn’t think. “Yeah, I am.”

“Well,” he said, “You got to be eighteen.”

Gordy laughed. The girl laughed a moment later.

The Counter Guy slid the cigarettes away from me, slid a fifty-cent piece and two dimes and two pennies back to me.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m eighteen, too. I meant…”

Counter Guy looked past me, to Gordy. “And you, sir?”

“I left my license in my other pants,” I said. Counter Guy ignored me, smiled (still creepily) at Larry’s sister. I looked at her. She seemed to take the leering as flirting. Gordy handed his date a bag of potato chips and returned a six pack to the cooler.

Gordy returned, surprisingly quickly. He put one hand on the cigarettes, the other on my change. “I’m eighteen,” he said, “and I can fucking’ prove it.”

“Twenty-six cents more then, for the chips.”

“Didn’t mean to be so… fucking’ uncool, Gordy,” I said, as he and I stepped outside, Larry’s sister a few steps behind us.

“Nah; it’s cool,” Gordy said. He flipped me the cigarettes, one pack of matches, making sure I realized he was keeping the other one. He pulled Larry’s sister closer to him, slung his left hand over her shoulder and perilously close to her breasts, extended his right hand as two (obviously) off-duty Marines approached (obviously Marines, obviously off duty), both looking more at her than at him. “Either of you two gentlemen twenty-one?” he asked, pulling out several ten-dollar bills.

Neither of them was, but the next guy approaching, not a Marine, definitely was. The citizen looked at the two Marines, at Gordy, at Larry’s sister. He put his hand out, said, “it’ll cost you.”

“Peace, man,” I said, walking away, waving my free hand in a peace sign. Gordy, his hands off Larry’s sister, left hand holding his wallet, flipped me the peace sign with his right hand, but quickly, and not where the Marines could see the gesture. Not that they or the Citizen taking money from Gordy were looking past Larry’s sister. She gave each of them a very quick, weak smile, and, in a moment of self-awareness, pulled her top up a little higher on her breasts.

Flipping the peace sign was, for anyone under thirty or so, pretty much over by this time, the winter of 1969. On special occasions, perhaps; the act was shared with friends as a sort of code, an action we would only later” refer to or try to explain as having been done “ironically.”

IF YOU’RE STILL WITH ME, thanks. I should add that the football punch part is actually derived from an incident in which classmate Bill Birt, in practice, sophomore year, pulled off a teammate’s helmet and slugged him in the face. Kicked off the J.V. team, the coach, allegedly, said, “Now, Bill, if you only played that way in a game…” The result of blending in all the real stuff is fiction.

All original writing contained in realsurfers.net and anything taken from manuscripts for “Swamis” is protected under copywrite and is the property of Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

GOOD LUCK SURFING. And I don’t mean that sarcastically or ironically.

Payday, the Falcon, and Usury

Posted on August 2, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under "Swamis" the novel, Uncategorized

An early 60s Falcon, factory racks, custom tires (pretty sure)

This is another outtake from “Swamis.” If writing is trying to put the puzzle pieces together, this was written to support something later in the manuscript and taken out because I figured out another way to get the information on the page.

I will reveal where the idea that a small, independent grocery store would have tabs for customers. It is based on The Village Store in Quilcene, Washington, known at the time when Trish and I moved here, late fall, 1978, as “Mary’s” Village Store. Mary and her husband, nicknamed Pard, offered credit based on a quick conversation. “We’ll set you up with a tab.” Nearly everyone in town had a tab. Mary also offered a sort of ‘payday loan,’ with, like ten percent interest, as in, if you borrow a hundred bucks on Tuesday, you pay a hundred and ten on Friday. Good money.

Because you had a tab, you had some obligation to buy locally, as in not going to a supermarket in Port Townsend or elsewhere for groceries. And Mary kept tabs, so to speak, on those who had tabs. Her standard greeting was, “What do you know?” She was persistent and serious in this. She wanted to know.

We, of course, had a tab. Trish worked at the store for (I’d have to ask her) some amount of time. I painted the store to pay off the tab. I wasn’t happy with having one.

Still, it worked well for Mary and Pard. They had stacks of thin pieces of cardboard, tabs, in order, alphabetically. If Mary was at the counter, she would survey the card. Her expression would reveal whether or not you should put this purchase on the tab or give some explanation on when you might pay the amount owed down.

When Mary and Pard attempted to sell the Village Store, local gossip/legend has it, they had to eat a lot of the debt accumulated over the years. There have been several owners since. I have no idea whether the current owners take this kind of casual credit. My guess is… no. I haven’t asked.

Okay, here’s the outtake:

SIDESLIPPING- OUTTAKES FROM “SWAMIS”

I loved the Falcon. My first car.

No, it wasn’t a gift. I was making payments, money withheld from paychecks at the job my father set me up with. “Responsibility has to be learned,” my father said each time he picked up his half, straight from the middle register at the San Elijo Grocery. It was a sort of ritual, every other Saturday night, my father taking cash from the hands of his old Marine Corps buddy. “We all have to learn how to work hard. Huh, Tony?”

Tony, Mr. Tony to me, would look at the cash, look at me, and smile. “Right, Gunny.”

With my first payday, December 28, 1968, Tony gave me my half, which, at a dollar fifty an hour, for sixteen hours on weekends, plus a few more days during Christmas vacation, paid for the gas to get to Cardiff from Fallbrook, and not much more. He winked and said, “It’s Kind of like…” Mr. Tony nodded and smiled, the nod with a certain and meaningful rhythm, a bit of a jaw thrust included in the motion. There was a bit of a twist of the lips in Tony’s smile. Suggestive.

My father gave Tony a look I was very familiar with. Disapproving. Disappointed.

“Sorry, Gunny.”

“It’s all right.” Tony seemed relieved when my father laughed and pushed me away. “Real world, huh?” Tony nodded. “The boy keeping his tab clear?”

“Chocolate milk and those little donuts are all he’d put on a tab, Gunny.” My father looked at Tony with another expression I was familiar with, the just-try-lying-to-me look. “No tab for Jody, Gunner, no little loan ‘til payday with exorbitant interest.”

“Usury, it’s called, Tony.”

“Yeah. Jesus doesn’t like it.”

“But you do.”

“Brings in customers. Kind of makes up for the folks who skip out.”

“And you and Mrs. Tony love having people… owe you.”

“We do.”

…

I loved my job; bagging, stocking shelves, sweeping up; I described myself as a nub at a family grocery store with a view of Cardiff Reef.

I already said this, but I loved the Falcon. This was the family wagon in which my mother, and then I learned to drive. Three on the tree. Pop the clutch. Stall. Try again. My father, frustrated enough teaching my mother, gave her the task of teaching me when I was fifteen and a half. Exactly. She was so much calmer than he had been. I knew, even as my father turned the Falcon over to me, that I would be expected to teach my brother, Freddy. I didn’t plan on being calm. I didn’t plan on being around. I had other plans.

As always, thanks for reading. All “Swamis” outtakes are protected under copyright, as is all original writing and original illustrations contained in realsurfers. Almost all the photos are borrowed.

Good luck and good surfing.

Real Kooks and…

Posted on July 24, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under real surfers

…the rest of us. Franticly, desperately seeking surf. Franticly, seems like it should be spelled differently. Anyway, us, real surfers.

I must be a bit more surf deprived than I allowed myself to believe. Because it’s Sunday, I Youtubed the latest chapter, number 7, I think, in the eleven-episode series on Kelly Slater; like I even care about any mental anguish a guy who (apparently) can go wherever he wants in the world to get the best waves available. Maybe I do care. On Monday, a new clip might be available from Nathan or even JOB, at some point there may be a new cut from Mason Ho. If I get the chance, I will check them out.

Already off topic. I was just vulnerable enough to google “San Diego Surf Cams,” ended up with constantly stalling videos provided by Hansens Surf shop. Cardiff Reef. Sunny, choppy, crowded, a cop car cruising the parking lot. These are cameras that a person can wait for some period of time, then move the angle. No, I didn’t wait. I ended up at a cam at Tarramar Point. I did surf there quite a few times back when I lived in the North County. Oh, no one out. Camera move. Many people out, most on long boards. Many, many surfers, bobbing and floating and waiting. I did see a guy on a shortboard on an insider. Cool.

Not a kook. Some percentage of the bobbers and floaters and back-offers and folks who will just blindly paddle and/or block your ride are kooks.

Right-hander, left-hander, straight-hander (term borrowed from ‘shortboard’ Aaron.

It depends on how you define kook.

If a kook is someone who is just thrilled to be in the water and among waves, trying to improve, trying to… yeah, there’s that. I qualify. Hodad? No. Being a surfer is an important part of my self-image, but it is only one item in a list of self-descriptions, categories in which I constantly try to improve. Father, husband, painter, writer, artist- surfer slides back and forth in importance.

Home improvement guy, mechanic, gardener… secondary list. Still, I do try to do better. Example: Just bailing-wired what remains of the burned-out tailpipe on my surf rig after it hit the ground, just bought a small freezer after ours developed a problem I couldn’t fix by watching Youtube videos on “What to do when your freezer doesn’t cool properly.” It must need a part. I’ll get to it. Soon.

Later.

Meanwhile, I’m writing this outside in an attempt to allow the proper birds to eat some of the seed and peanuts we put out. If I leave, the pigeons (non-locals, incidentally) will attack. A horde of them. Some, no doubt, are kooks. Tough to tell.

Okay, I better check the forecast. Yeah, kind of bleak. Hopefully there are waves where you are or where you’re going.

WAIT. Perhaps I should mention that part of my description of a real surfer is someone who has a high level of respect for waves, a certain, and I can’t really verbalize this adequately, reverence toward the ocean. There is some difference in that than having respect for every individual sharing a lineup. Okay, shouldn’t have said that; makes me sound kind of dick-ish.

As I always say, I am trying to do better at sharing. Always say it, usually mean it.

Overdrawn, Over-colored

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under Uncategorized

As usual, I have limited time before I am supposed to be somewhere, checking out someone’s castle for potential painting opportunities. I did get up early, checked what limited info is available to make a guess on whether it is worth it to drive a distance, or a greater distance to possibly find surf. In the circumstance where there might be an opportunity for the closer trip, I would, of course, text the client and claim one or more of the various contractor excuses.

Didn’t happen, but I did do some coloring on a drawing I finished during a frantic, frustrating day… yesterday, and then had the original reduced so I could do the coloring and the scanning. Okay, so, as usual, the illustration, based on a photograph taken by Reggie Smart out on the actual northwest Pacific coast, is kind of over-drawn.

I scanned the colorized version a few minutes ago and… surprise, it is also over-colored. Some colors kick ass on other colors and take over. The most wrong of the colors. Wrongest? The ones I don’t want standing out. Luckily, I got five prints to color up.

Back to the lack of time. Gotta go. Next time, a hopefully, not overcolored version.

Thanks for the shot, Reggie.

Simple, simple, simple… damn, damn, damn

Competitive Burning for Fun and Profit

Posted on July 15, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under aggressive surfers, Competitive surfing,, Uncategorized

The World Surfing League has advanced the image and the business of competitive surfing.

It has. This is true. Most of the rest of this piece is opinion. Mine. There are other opinions.

A couch surfer in Vermont or Ohio can now go to YouTube or go online and see professionally managed contests featuring wave riders from about ten years old to somewhere around 50 (even older than Kelly in some specialty events) going for the win, entertaining the audience with a succession of score-enhancing cranks and punts and cutbacks and floaters, throwing a creative claim when appropriate, always looking for an advantage over the competition.

On a recent Saturday, between sort of doing chores, taking a too brief nap, and writing until I forgot the original plot, I switched the big screen from restful music with soothing images and optimistic aphorisms, to Roku, then to YouTube. Whoa, there was a contest going on at Lower Trestles. Trestles! I loved the spot. This scene was way different than the way it was set up when I worked across the tracks and the freeway, and up the hill, in 1975.

While I, not fully aware of how lucky I was, was able to drive out as far as Uppers, the scene on that Saturday was of hundreds of big-tired bikes, sani-cans, judging structures. This was some sort of contest for kids, ages 10 (guessing- really young) to 16. Some of the competitors were there with parents (some well- known former competitors), some with coaches. They were in heats, going wave for wave with other kids. They all seemed to rip.

Contest rip. It is different from free surf ripping. Show. It is for entertainment. Going down the line on a perfect wave will get one three points. Throw in a couple of cutbacks, five. Big air into the rocks, excellent.

And there are the priority rules. They are somewhat similar to the classic lineup etiquette. The biggest difference is the absolute right to ‘sit on’ your competitor and/or to burn him or her if you have priority.

Priority.

What made me think about this is this: Unable to stay up late enough to watch more of the contest from Jeffrey’s Bay (I gave up after Italo was injured and spectators wouldn’t get up from sitting on the stairs to let him get helped up them- but Kanoa did get a buzzer-beater to win their heat), I got up early to see which one of my surfing heroes won the event. Fast-forwarding the post show, I saw replays of the interference call against Carissa Moore that gave Tatiana Weston-Webb an almost free pass into the finals. It just didn’t look right. It didn’t look fair.

Wait a minute. I suddenly flashed back to my second favorite scene from the docu-series “Make or Break.” My favorite scene was when Stefanie Gilmore was (I thought), goaded into saying, about winning, “Fuck them, I want it more.” The second favorite scene involved Tatiana and Sage Erikson in a contest in Mexico. An interference call had cost Sage the heat. Sage seemed to believe Tatiana had tricked her into going on a wave by claiming not to know which of them had priority. Then Tati dropped in. Sage wasn’t happy, and in stark contrast to the way the WSL portrays competitor interaction, all mutual respect and love, Sage called Tatiana out for the cutthroat move.

Tatiana looked… if she looked sorry, I didn’t see it. It was more of a “Fuck you, I wanted it more!” look.

Now, I should add that I am a huge Stephanie fan. I also should add that Trish is a Courtney Conlogue fan. Stephanie won the Mexico contest by surfing harder, making aggressive and high risk maneuvers with her classic smoothness. Sportsmanship (or sportspersonship) wise, after Steph beat Court in a heat at Jeffrey’s Bay, it was reassuring to see both of them in a warm-back-up hot tub. I am hoping both of their smiles were real.

I googled “Did Tatiana burn Carissa,” and got a story, with video, on Tatiana burning Moana Jones-Wong at Pipeline. Yes. The surfer Jamie O’Brian calls the undisputed “Queen of Pipeline,” a surfer who legitimately outsurfed every other woman competitor and beat Carissa Moore in the finals of the Billabong Pipeline contest, was locked into a tube and Tatiana dropped in on her, then straightened out.

Moana called Tatiana out on the beach. And on social media. A couple of points: Tatiana claimed she didn’t see Moana but didn’t drop in on male surfers; Tatiana had a coach or someone blocking for her in the lineup. Now, Tatiana said she was trying to earn a spot in the lineup, but Moana countered that, rather than “buying her way in” she had taken years to work her way from the shoulder to the peak, without dropping in on others. It is a matter of respect.

All this in a case against Tatiana is circumstantial, of course. But here’s more: Carissa has been surfing competitively since she was, guessing, ten years old. She knows the rules. It is difficult to believe she didn’t know who had priority. Tatiana waited until Carissa was fully committed on a dangerous and well-overhead wave before she dropped in, not on an angle, but straight down. There was no way Carissa could have avoided the interference. Tati made no real effort to complete the ride but fell in an overly dramatic way more reminiscent of the WWE than the WSL.

Did Tatiana Weston-Webb win the final heat fairly? As nearly as I can tell, she did. Is there a little tarnish on her trophy? Up for debate.

A last point: It seemed to me the commentators were risking injury in trying as hard as they could to not say there just might have been tactics at least underhanded if not all out dirty. Legal tactics.

Yes, the stakes are high. There is one more contest and few spots left in the Final Five. So much drama, so much hype. The waiting period for the one-day contest to decide this year’s top male and female surfers is September 8 through the 16th. Trestles.

Pump up the tires on your e-bike, check your Wi-fi connection. It might just be EPIC! It would be great if the winners win with pure surfing rather than tactics.

Again, I love that contests are so easily accessed, so expertly analyzed and brilliantly filmed. Live action. Replays. Members of the audience can pick our heroes AND our villains. We know something about the competitors, but we don’t really know them. Such drama!

Meanwhile, in the real world, priority disputes continue.

Weaving a Story into “Swamis”

Posted on July 9, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under Uncategorized

I have written SO MANY versions of a story about a dickhead faking an epileptic seizure in the parking lot of Fallbrook high, 1969; and I have just worked on another, each one shorter and more concise (hopefully), each one changing the narrative of the manuscript that is getting (again, hopefully) more focused… better; each version split up and connected with other characters and other action; I figured I should reveal where the idea for the fictional encounter came from.

It was a story I only heard, didn’t witness. I didn’t go out on Friday nights. Seventh Day Adventist, one of very few in my school. More real or imagined surfers than Adventists. It was a tradition among my two closest surfing friends, Phillip and Ray, and some of their/our other friends, to avoid some away football games and go to a secluded hilltop among the avocado groves and scrub, one way in and out, and drink, smoke, hang out, and then go back to the high school to await the arrival of the rooter bus. More hanging out.

The drinking part of this involved getting some over-21-aged Marine to purchase beer in exchange for all or part of the Marine’s purchases paid for by kids hanging outside one of two liquor stores in town. Not at all suspicious. Cigarette purchases were easier. 18. Select the oldest looking juvenile. “Oh, I left my ID in my other pants.” Sure.

I did actually go on one of these adventures once; don’t remember how I got out of the house, but I do know it didn’t go well. Another guy and I got to sit in the back of Ray’s El Camino while Phillip and, probably, possibly, Bill Buel, got to ride ‘bitch’ (not my word) and Phillip got to ride shotgun. Like surfing, some priorities are set by status. So, fourth or fifth in this grouping, different in the water. The front seat guys were cracking open beers before we got to the secret spot. I was uncomfortable, particularly when some out-of-school folks, associates of my friends but not of mine, hard guys (at least harder than we were) showed up. Phillip, possibly because one should act differently if drinking, started dancing around me as if we were boxing; doing the “come on, man…” deal. I gave him a straight shot that bloodied his nose and lip. I had some amount of beer. Coors. Asked how it tasted by Ray, I said it tasted better after the first few sips. “Better and mo’ better,” he said.

We did go to the school, hang around in the sloped parking lot across from the gymnasium. Not all that exciting. Phillip did get an amount of sympathy from girls from the wounds, but they also looked at me with a certain, slightly more interested look. Or I imagined they did. “One punch, huh?” Yeah.

Bill Birt was another classmate of ours. Bill had the distinction of having hair on his chest that seemed to threaten his neck in the sixth grade. If I was uncool out of the water, and I was, Bill, with a seemingly permanent bit of spittle on one side or the other of his lip, was more so. He did get into surfing. Don’t get me wrong, I liked him. He is on permanent display in my house in the background of a photo of Trish and her father on our wedding day. Nice, since he died in a car accident only a few years later. Bill was allowed to participate in the Friday night adventures if he paid for the beer and if his parent’s huge car was used for transportation.

One Bill Birt rooter bus story involved Bill taking a massive piss on the uphill side of his mom’s car, the urine river flowing under it and down the asphalt. Uncool enough to tell at school, another addition to tales of Bill always getting it a little bit wrong.

The other relative-to-“Swamis” story involved a couple of my other surf-adjacent friends, guys who always seemed to get the rest of us into more trouble than we would have otherwise. They pull into the parking lot along with my friends and parents and others waiting for the return of the possibly victorious football team. Mark (we’ll call him Mark, though I can’t guarantee that) screeches the car to a stop, falls out of the driver’s seat, starts flopping around. His crew bails out, runs over to him, don’t help him, but start calling on others to do so.

In my manuscript, I have placed Joey into that setting. I included another character, teacher Mr. Dewey (yeah, you get it). Mr. Dewey is making out with another player’s mom in a car while awaiting the return of his wife and daughter on the rooter bus. Joey, who never goes to school events, and who suffered seizure activity as a result of an accident when he was five, is not amused by the antics. Prone to violent outbursts, Joey walks over, puts a foot on the faker’s throat. Mr. Dewey runs over, grabs Joey. He tells Joey that his father’s position on the school board won’t save him this time. The prankster jumps up, semi-apologizes to Joey, then throws up on Mr. Dewey just as the rooter bus unloads. Joey, noticing the lipstick on the collar of Mr. Dewey’s shirt, says, “You got lucky, Mr. Dewey.”

“Gee, I wonder if anyone’s waiting for us back at the school?”

That’s kind of where it is now, but now, Mr. Dewey shows up at Joey’s father’s wake. It provides me with someone to comment on how a very conservative Sheriff’s detective and Marine veteran of World War II and Korea can marry a Japanese woman. Joey comments that “It’s traditional, isn’t it? Kill the men, take the women.”

Right now, where I am in the ever-more-time-condensed manuscript, Mr. Dewey purchases the mini-Ponderosa in Fallbrook. This allows Joey to move to Leucadia, advancing the story. Meanwhile, here’s an earlier version that mentions the incident:

CHAPTER 33- TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1969

Several Big Jackets and Julia Cole and I were in the classroom outside the photo lab. We were looking at two sheets of contact prints; three rows of 35-millimeter positive images cut from a roll and pressed and fit and exposed on eight and a half by eleven photo stock. Most of the photos were of Portia posing on the landing and stairs at Swamis.

“I wish I’d caught it,” Julie said, spreading the photos she’d chosen to enlarge around the table. “Portia had the most wicked kind of smile. And then, when you saw Portia… well… You looked at me first. Regular smile. Then you saw Portia.”

“And?”

“And I saw both of your faces.”

“And?”

“And you were both… I don’t know how to describe it. Intense. I feel like you were both so focused, so…”

“Julie; you don’t… I mean, my father would say you don’t feel; you believe, based on facts, evidence. Cops always talk about ‘gut feelings,’ but my dad…”

“Joey?”

Julie pinched my arm pretty much as hard as she could. “You feel that?” I pulled away. She got her face as close as she could to mine, looking into my eyes. “Or do you believe that?” I must have looked angry; I couldn’t have hidden that. She didn’t look frightened. A moment later she pursed her lips, twisted her head to allow me to kiss her.

I was moving closer but stopped when I looked at her hands. Fists. She was ready, in case. I looked at my own hands. I opened my fists, spread my fingers as far as possible. Julie did the same. We both smiled; we embraced; we kissed.

She whispered, “I believe you.”

In Julia Cole’s photos Portia was mostly backlit, her semi-transparent shawl held out like bird’s wings. I hadn’t seen Portia up close before that afternoon. Some people are like that; you just can’t, even if you’re close enough, get a good look at them, a real look. If I said Portia had a sort of protective aura; that would sound… off. But it was true. I had seen her moves, her gestures, always flowing, as if she was a dancer. Or had been. Or could have been.

In other photos Portia, so obviously pregnant, looked almost vulnerable. Almost.

“Grant told me you’re known to be kind of… violent.”

“Grant? Grant fucking Murdoch?”

“Yeah, him. He says you punched out Rusty McAndrews and stuck your foot on his, Grant’s, neck, both on the same night.” When I didn’t respond, she added, “And you slammed Rusty’s brother into a drinking fountain in the sixth grade, busted out his front teeth.” I nodded. “And you got kicked out of Little League and then off the football because…”

“There are…explanations.”

“I’m sure. Such as…?”

“Travis McAndrews shouldn’t have said the fountain was for white kids only, my dickhead friends shouldn’t have talked me into going drinking with them and their dickhead doper friends; Rusty fucking McAndrews shouldn’t have called Mohammad Ali by his slave name, Cassius Clay; Grant shouldn’t have acted like he was having an epileptic seizure in the parking lot at Fallbrook High while we were all waiting for the return of the rooter bus; and, and Rusty McAndrews… you know the fucker?”

Julie smiled, her teeth gritted, was about to say or ask something, possibly a question on why I took such offense at Grant Murdoch’s fake seizure, when Broderick appeared inside the lightlock door and said, “If you two could join us; we have a lesson; how to get that perfect sepia tone.”

“Oh, sepia,” Julie said as the door spun around and back again, empty. I jumped in. She pushed in beside me. “Yeah, Joey, I know the fucker,” she said as we spun into the brief blackness.

SOOO, Grant takes the place of Mark (or whoever). Broderick, the (fictional) photography teacher, is probably out, Julia (Julie to her friends and eventually Joey/Jody) Cole and Joey might not actually make out, AND the ever-shrinking timeline for “Swamis,” my novel, might not even reach to the summer of 1969. I will definitely make it to where it begins, the return of Jumper Hayes.

OHHH, and Rusty McAndrews, based on one or more of the characters I have been adjacent to, will be a critical, if diminished character. Yes, Julie knows him.

Waves, summer, good luck.

And a reminder: Everything from Swamis (and writings in realsurfers) is covered by copyright protection.

Some Spells, Once Cast

Posted on July 3, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under Uncategorized

Whoa, I didn’t realize the credit for the photo is embedded in the image. I just like having palm trees and fireworks. Wait, the fireworks might be digitally produced. Wow, is nothing real? Yes, of course. The Fourth of July celebration is, of course, real; what each of us celebrates, as with all holidays, varies. And yes, every person who considers him or her (or whatever pronoun they choose to define person-ness) a surfer, is… real. We can discuss realness another time, like, is a perfect wave real or a matter of interpretation? And humor… is a line, written or spoken, funny on its face, or is it the reaction that determines the relative funniness of said line? How would I know? Okay, I don’t. I do know truth is out there in the wind and calm, bobbing and bouncing and drifting, still there between the crests and the troughs, the love and the hate and the outright lies. It is probably all right to love America and realize that there was some treachery involved with us becoming US. It may be possible to be a real American without having to have a big ass flag flying over the bed of your big ass rig. Be real.

Soft Persuasion

She offered him such soft persuasion, on the night before the fourth of July,

Began as such a festive occasion, she held him close, he never asked her why.

He went off like a roman candle, so sure the light lit up half of the night,

But love was something they could never handle, no, love’s one thing they couldn’t get quite right.

Misunderstanding, misunderstood, he thought that they could make it happen,

Now he sees it ain’t no good.

Misunderstanding, he got it wrong,

She took the words that he had written, wrote herself another song.

She said it’s just a misunderstanding, said she’d never meant to lead him along,

She hoped he’d have a really soft landing, she wrote down all the words to his last song.

All in all she treated him quite kindly, she said there are some things she should explain,

He had gone off way way way too blindly, and love that’s blind can only bring one pain.

Some things, she said, are best left unspoken, some things he said he never should have said,

Some spells, once cast, should never be broken, some love’s not in your heart, it’s in your head.

But she’d already heard his confession, she is the only woman he thinks of,

Some times, love is really obsession, well, sometimes what we think is love is love.

He walked into the teeth of the morning, where firecrackers popped and fuses burned,

He had been knocked down without a warning, he couldn’t put in words what he had learned.

All he knew is he had never known her, and everything he thought he knew was wrong,

Didn’t know from there where he could go to, Couldn’t find the words for his new song.

Misunderstanding, misunderstood, he thought that they could make it happen,

Now he sees it ain’t no good.

Misunderstanding, she got it wrong,

She took the words that he had written,

But now he has another song.

“Soft Persuasion” is from the collection, “Love Songs for Cynics,” copywrite Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

Happy Independence Day to one and all and all the individuals, all the ones and twos, families biological and otherwise. Note: my favorite line from this song, not just because I wrote it, is “Some spells, once cast, should never be broken.”

Groovin’

Posted on July 1, 2022 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under Uncategorized, writings of Erwin Dence

Two things:

I do live on Surf Route 101. Vehicles do pass, north and south, depending on the swell direction. If my work takes me east, across the Hood Canal Bridge, I have frequently passed hopeful surfers headed for some dream of waves out on the Peninsula in the morning, then passed the same rigs in the evening or night. Did they score? Did I make enough money to not be jealous? Probably not. How do I feel when I’m headed home from surfing, knowing wind is on a dropping swell and I see other hopefuls headed out? Answer- Not as pleased as you might think. Maybe the waves got… better.
It is not a secret that I will occasionally break into song while painting. My friend Stephen R. Davis just sent me a link to “Groovin'” by the Young Rascals, originally released in 1967. “Groovin’, on a Sunday afternoon, wheelin’, couldn’t get away too soon…” Perhaps Steve just wanted to refresh my memory on the actual lyrics… for next time. I was 16 when the song came out, and I started to tell a story about how, because whatever car my dad had supplied me with, some beater he got on a mechanic’s lien, was broken, and because my mom, for some reason, couldn’t or wouldn’t take her seven kids to the beach, I walked and/or rode my skateboard, four or five miles, in the inland mid-summer heat, teenage angst fully in control, to Fallbrook Union High School. Kids played on the fields, typically, and skateboarding hadn’t yet been banned on the perfectly groomed sidewalks. Still, it was too hot to play baseball, there were no cute girls hanging out, and… This is probably the point the story got interrupted by some work-related problem, but, the conclusion is, some of the cooler kids in my class pulled up and, there I was, shortly thereafter, sitting in the back seat, all the windows down, cruising the well-cruised route, A&W, Foster’s Freeze, loop around down by the Little League field, all the while nodding along to the music. “This was,” I tried to tell Steve, a time in my life when, for an hour or so, I actually felt… somewhat… cool. Somewhere in there, the radio playlist got to “Groovin’.”

Real Surfers

Shoulder-hoppers and name-droppers

Author Archives: Erwin A. Dence Jr.