I will attempt to focus. Attempt. Trying again. Okay: Seasonal Affected Disorder. Warranted. It’s the (real astronomic science) Winter Solstice. Is it dark yet? Then, soon. Oddly, I get more depressed when the Summer Solstice hits, knowing it’s downhill to… to now. Winter. Still, with the first real, deep frost hitting my neighborhood (ancient fjord- real geographic science) yesterday (and thank you real or fictitious climate change), I realize, crappy, damp, dank, dark, dismal, cloudy, rainy, possibly snowy, or worse, icy weather ahead of us, there might be… waves. Yes, winter waves. Cold(er) water, and the possibility (based on my non-scientific remembrances of… counting… forty-four winter solstices in the Pacific Northwest) of a (limited) number of sneaky swells ripe for stealth surf swoops.
Swoop it up if you get a chance. Watch out for me. Surf Abstinence Disorder (a different SAD), whether from bad luck (skunkings, broken vehicles or other broken shit), lack of opportunity (working, mostly), lack of swell (or missing actual swell through lack of belief or lack of checking for tight window), real world time requirements (work, mostly, again), is different than not wanting to surf (for a variety of reasons including a fear of or knowledge that you are not able to pop up like you swear you once could), for which a beautiful wave stretched out in front of you might be a cure, a bigger board and/or a paddle might be another). This Performance Anxiety, pretty natural and common (Okay, you once ripped. I’ll believe you if you believe me), is still better than Surf Celibacy. I looked it up; abstinence is attempting to give something up. Celibacy is, face it, quitting; consciously committing to never surfing again.
Forgive me, please, but I can’t help but wonder what the celibate surfer dreams of. Last night (or tonight, not totally sure) is the longest of the year. I will, undoubtedly, have a dream, or multiple dreams involving surfing. Bypassing the dreams in which the ocean gets farther and farther away as I try to get there, and the ones where waves come over mountains like avalanches, I have no way or will to stop any dreams in which I am ripping, gliding, moving down the line, and… Yeah, those dreams.
HAPPY SOLSTICE!
Sorry, got carried away for a moment, ignoring all the bad political news out there, seeking some relief from a persistent case of TDS. I do attempt to repress anger and frustration, so I guess I am repressed. Good. Perhaps it’s that, reviewing my options, merely redact those that are any more extreme than whining a bit.
Still, I’m always thinking, and, out in the world, I do talk to strangers. Yes, I chatted it up with two women cashiers at a hardware store the day after the Seahawks clutched victory out of the hoofs of the LA Rams (talons/hoofs, obvious); yes, I do go off on political rants on occasion. This does not always go well. But it does give me some talking points, it does edit banter into more lucid, focused… banter.
I’ve decided that my discussions are the first drafts of what I write.
As I continue working on my novel, “SWAMIS,” I find myself dreaming, or just imagining, changes on the particular chapter (I do think of chapters as scenes; dialogue, setting, movements) I’m… refining, putting some emphasis on adding more drama, front-loading clues, all while eliminating stuff that doesn’t move the plot along. Some of the ideas I use.
Here’s one alternative for the most recently posted chapter (3… scroll down): Yes, I am making the attraction/romance between the narrator, Joey, and Julia more… mainstream (not quite Hallmark-y). I imagined having Julie and Joey, together in the street, laughing about something. Later, the plan was, to have one of the North County locals ask her about the conversation. She says, “I asked him what color our babies’s eyes will be.” After suitable shock, she continues, “He said, ‘brown,’ most likely, but our grandkids… more options.'”
Something else: I’ve spent some energy/time presenting Joey as a damaged person (as all fictional detectives seem to be, Sherlock), with a history of striking out physically. I, perhaps accidentally, also established that he is capable of wicked sarcasm, the outsider’s method of bullying. IF a writer’s characters are based on real people, as I insist mine are, I do know someone who may or may not use sarcasm as a weapon, or a defense mechanism/way to keep people at a distance.
TALKING is helpful. Usually. Thanks for checking out my site. Write me with comments/criticism erwin@realsurfers.net
POSTSCRIPT- The next occasional surf culture event will be happening in late January or early February. The emphasis will be on SURF MUSIC. Here’s the first verse of the UKULELE SONG:
I see she has an ukulele, ukelele, ukulele, I betcha that she plays it daily, ukulele, ukulele, I’d love to play the ukulele, she could teach me how to play.
Other first lines: I’m headed down to San Onofre… You know I came from California… I do not smoke the marijuana… I ride a Donald Takayama… In progress. Catchy tune. I can play it on my Hohner Blues Harp, Hohner Blues Harp…
SIX MONTHS until the SUMMER SOLSTICE! COW-A-FUCKIN’-BUNGA!
ORIGINAL WORK by Erwin A. Dence, Jr. protected by copyright. Thanks
We’ve almost made it to the WINTER SOLSTICE. Almost. The atmospheric rivers continue to hit, SO, if you want snow, there may be some, good luck getting there. If you want waves… take a chance. The windows are as small as the days are short. BUUTTT, the celebration is justified; the days are getting longer and… YEA! And good luck.
Photo from the FULTON LIBRARY. Shadows. GINGERBREAD FRED, one of my characters in my when-the-hell-is-is-going-to-be-done novel, “Swamis,” goes to the parking lot every evening to watch the sun set. A burned-out veteran (helicopter pilot- medivac) of Korea, wounded and pushed farther into craziness in Vietnam (gunship), who “Crashed twice, shot down once,” and who is also a legendary surfer from the fifties, having pioneered waves at the Tijuana Sloughs and outside La Jolla reefs, says, about night; “It’s not dark, really. It’s shadow. The curtain drops and it’s a different show. An encore.”
Gingerbread Fred is, I hope, as I hope of all the players, someone a reader can visualize. Not a stereotype but a mix of real people I have come across. And he is critical to the plot. If we are all Alice in Wonderland, Candide, any narrator in a Franz Kafka story, and I believe we are, those characters, those people. we remember we remember because they are part of our story.
Anyway, not sure if this is bragging or apologizing, but here’s more from “Swamis.”
CHAPTER THREE- SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1968
My nine-six Surfboards Hawaii pintail was on the 1994 Falcon station wagon’s factory racks, as much rust as chrome. The seven-eight Sunset board I’d bought off the used rack was inside, the back seat lowered to accommodate it. It’s not like I ever had riders other than my brother. I was headed from Grandview to Moonlight Beach on Neptune. The bluff side was either garage and fence or hedge, tight to the road. There were few views of the water. I was, no doubt, smiling, remembering something from that morning’s session.
There had been six surfers, including me, at the preferred takeoff spot. Some of them recognized me, and I them, but they all knew each other. There was no way the local crew and acceptable friends would allow me to catch a set wave. No; maybe a wave all of them missed or none of them wanted. If I paddled for a wave, one of the crew would act as if he was going to take off, even if he didn’t, just to keep me off it. And then turn toward his friends to receive credit for the act.
The first one in the water, before dawn, I had surfed the peak, selecting the wave I thought might be the best of a set. Two other surfers came out. Okay. Three more surfers came out. One of them, Sid, paddled up and sat next to me without looking at me. I was the farthest one out in a triangular cluster that matched the peak of most of the approaching waves. I knew who Sid was. Older. Out of school. A set wave came in. It was my wave. I paddled for it and took off. Sid dropped in on me. I said something like, “Hey!”
Rather than speed down the line or pull out, Sid said, “Hey,” louder, and stalled. He cranked a turn. It was either hit him or bail. I fell onto my board, wrapped my arms around it. My board and I went over the falls, pushed sideways until I rolled with it and got out of the soup.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, paddling, following Sid back toward the lineup.
The four other surfers held their laughter until Sid paddled past them, maneuvered his board around, laughed, and said, “Wrong? Junior broke the locals rule.” Sid pointed to the lefts, the waves perceived as not being as good, on the other side of a real or imagined channel. “Local’s rule. Get it?” Sid turned to the other surfers. “Watch this guy, guys. Daddy’s a cop. You know him; DeFreines. Married a Jap-a-nese… woman. Junior’s probably a fucking narc. Hide your stash!”
Trying to ignore the taunts of the others, I caught an insider and moved over.
After three lefts, surfed, I believed, with a certain urgency and a definite aggression, I prone-paddled back to the rights, tacking back and forth. A decently sized set wave was approaching. I wanted it.
“Outside!” I yelled, loud enough that the pack, including Sid, started paddling for the horizon. I paddled at an angle, lined up the wave at the peak. Though the takeoff was late, I made the drop, rode the wave into the closeout section, pulling off the highest roller coaster I had ever even attempted. I dropped to my board and proned in. I kept my back to the water as I exited, not daring to look back at the surfers in the water or to look up at the witnesses on the bluff. I did hear them hooting.
I grabbed my towel from where it was stashed, visible from the water, on the low part of the bluff, my keys and wallet and cigarettes rolled up in it. Tromping up the washout to Neptune, I tried not to look at the surfers, tried not to smile as I leaned my board on the Falcon and unlocked the front door.
…
Almost to Moonlight Beach, there was a late fifties model Volkswagen camper van, two-tone, white over gray, blocking the southbound lane. Black smoke was coming out of the open engine compartment. Three teenagers, my age, were standing behind the bus: Duncan Burgess and Rincon Ronny on the right side, Monica, on the left. Locals. Names divulged by second tier gremmies. Or from observing them on the beach or in the water.
I pulled over on the northbound lane side, squeezed out between the door and someone’s bougainvillea hedge, and walked into the middle of the street, fifteen feet behind the van. “Can I help?”
Duncan, Ronny, and Monica were dressed as if they had surfed but were going to check somewhere else: Nylon windbreakers, towels around their waists. Duncan’s and Monica’s jackets were red with white, horizontal stripes that differed in number and thickness. Ronny was wearing a dark blue windbreaker with a white, vertical strip, a “Yater” patch sewn on. Each of the three looked at me, and looked back at each other, then at the smoking engine. The movement of their heads said, “No.”
Someone stepped out of an opening in the hedge on the bluff side of the road, pretty much even with me. I was startled. I took three sideways steps before I regained my balance.
Julia Cole. Perfectly balanced. She was wearing an oversized V-neck sweater that almost covered boys’ nylon trunks. Her legs were bare, tan, her feet undersized for the huarache sandals she was pushing across the asphalt. She looked upset, but more angry than sad. Or even worried. But then… she almost laughed. I managed a smile.
“It’s you,” she said, almost laughing. I smiled. “Are you a mechanic?” I shook my head, took another step toward the middle of the road, away from her. “An Angel?” Another head shake, another step. She took two more shuffling steps toward me. We were close. She seemed to be studying me, moving her head and eyes as if she might learn more from an only slightly different angle. “You’ve gotten… better.”
“Better? Yes, that’s what I tell people. Better.”
Julia Cole shook her head. She was still smiling. I was studying her. Staring. I looked past her. Her friends looked at her, then looked at each other, then looked, again, at the subsiding smoke and the growing pool of oil on the pavement.
“We saw what you did,” she whispered. I turned toward her. “From the bluff.” She raised both arms, the left arm higher, pointing with her right hand, and yelled, “Outside!” She and I looked at her friends, then back at each other. She said, “Outside,” again, softer.
“It… worked.”
“Once. Maybe you believe Sid appreciated it.” She shook her head.
I shook my head, still focusing on Julia Cole’s eyes. “I had to do it.”
“Of course.” By the time I shifted my focus from Julia Cole’s face to her right hand, it had become a fist, soft rather than tight. “Challenge the… hierarchy.”
I had no response. Julia Cole moved her arm slowly across her body, stopping for a moment just under the parts of her sweater dampened by her bathing suit top. Breasts. I looked back into her eyes for the next moment. Green. Translucent. She moved her right hand, just away from her body and up. She cupped her chin, thumb on one cheek, fingers drumming, pinkie finger first, on her lips. “You. I could use you, Junior, if you…” She pulled her hand away from her face, moving it toward mine.
“Julie!” It was Duncan. Julie, Julia Cole didn’t look around. She lowered her hand and took another step closer to me. In a ridiculous overreaction, I jerked away from her.
“I was going to say, Junior…” Julia looked, if anything, irritated. Stupid me. “If you were an attorney… then…”
“I’m not… Not… yet.”
Julia Cole loosened the tie holding her hair in a ponytail. Sun-bleached at the ends, dirty blonde at the roots. She used the fingers of both hands to move her hair to both sides of her face.
“I can… give you a ride… Julie, I mean… Julia… Cole.”
“Look, Fallbrook…” It was Duncan. Again. He walked toward Julia Cole and me. “We’re fine.” He extended a hand toward Julia. She did a half-turn, sidestep. Fluid. Duncan kept looking at me. Not in a friendly way. He put his right hand on Julia Cole’s left shoulder.
Julia Cole allowed it. Her expression suggested I was confused.
“Phone booth? If you need one. There’s one at… I’m heading for Swamis.”
Julia Cole shook her head, smiled, did a sort of almost blink, then looked, briefly, toward the house closest to the bus. I twisted my mouth and nodded. “Oh. Okay.”
A car come up behind me. I wasn’t aware. Rincon Ronny and Monica watched it. Duncan backed toward the shoulder. Julia and I looked at each other for another moment. “You really should get out of the street, Junior.”
“Joey,” I said. “Joey.”
She could have said, “Julie.” Or “Julia.” She said neither. She could have said, “Joey.” I checked out Beacons and Stone Steps and Swamis. The VW bus was gone when I drove back by. Dirt from under someone’s hedge was scattered over the oil, some of it seeping throughCHAPTER THREE- SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1968
My nine-six Surfboards Hawaii pintail was on the 1994 Falcon station wagon’s factory racks, as much rust as chrome. The seven-eight Sunset board I’d bought off the used rack was inside, the back seat lowered to accommodate it. It’s not like I ever had riders other than my brother. I was headed from Grandview to Moonlight Beach on Neptune. The bluff side was either garage and fence or hedge, tight to the road. There were few views of the water. I was, no doubt, smiling, remembering something from that morning’s session.
There had been six surfers, including me, at the preferred takeoff spot. Some of them recognized me, and I them, but they all knew each other. There was no way the local crew and acceptable friends would allow me to catch a set wave. No; maybe a wave all of them missed or none of them wanted. If I paddled for a wave, one of the crew would act as if he was going to take off, even if he didn’t, just to keep me off it. And then turn toward his friends to receive credit for the act.
The first one in the water, before dawn, I had surfed the peak, selecting the wave I thought might be the best of a set. Two other surfers came out. Okay. Three more surfers came out. One of them, Sid, paddled up and sat next to me without looking at me. I was the farthest one out in a triangular cluster that matched the peak of most of the approaching waves. I knew who Sid was. Older. Out of school. A set wave came in. It was my wave. I paddled for it and took off. Sid dropped in on me. I said something like, “Hey!”
Rather than speed down the line or pull out, Sid said, “Hey,” louder, and stalled. He cranked a turn. It was either hit him or bail. I fell onto my board, wrapped my arms around it. My board and I went over the falls, pushed sideways until I rolled with it and got out of the soup.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, paddling, following Sid back toward the lineup.
The four other surfers held their laughter until Sid paddled past them, maneuvered his board around, laughed, and said, “Wrong? Junior broke the locals rule.” Sid pointed to the lefts, the waves perceived as not being as good, on the other side of a real or imagined channel. “Local’s rule. Get it?” Sid turned to the other surfers. “Watch this guy, guys. Daddy’s a cop. You know him; DeFreines. Married a Jap-a-nese… woman. Junior’s probably a fucking narc. Hide your stash!”
Trying to ignore the taunts of the others, I caught an insider and moved over.
After three lefts, surfed, I believed, with a certain urgency and a definite aggression, I prone-paddled back to the rights, tacking back and forth. A decently sized set wave was approaching. I wanted it.
“Outside!” I yelled, loud enough that the pack, including Sid, started paddling for the horizon. I paddled at an angle, lined up the wave at the peak. Though the takeoff was late, I made the drop, rode the wave into the closeout section, pulling off the highest roller coaster I had ever even attempted. I dropped to my board and proned in. I kept my back to the water as I exited, not daring to look back at the surfers in the water or to look up at the witnesses on the bluff. I did hear them hooting.
I grabbed my towel from where it was stashed, visible from the water, on the low part of the bluff, my keys and wallet and cigarettes rolled up in it. Tromping up the washout to Neptune, I tried not to look at the surfers, tried not to smile as I leaned my board on the Falcon and unlocked the front door.
…
Almost to Moonlight Beach, there was a late fifties model Volkswagen camper van, two-tone, white over gray, blocking the southbound lane. Black smoke was coming out of the open engine compartment. Three teenagers, my age, were standing behind the bus: Duncan Burgess and Rincon Ronny on the right side, Monica, on the left. Locals. Names divulged by second tier gremmies. Or from observing them on the beach or in the water.
I pulled over on the northbound lane side, squeezed out between the door and someone’s bougainvillea hedge, and walked into the middle of the street, fifteen feet behind the van. “Can I help?”
Duncan, Ronny, and Monica were dressed as if they had surfed but were going to check somewhere else: Nylon windbreakers, towels around their waists. Duncan’s and Monica’s jackets were red with white, horizontal stripes that differed in number and thickness. Ronny was wearing a dark blue windbreaker with a white, vertical strip, a “Yater” patch sewn on. Each of the three looked at me, and looked back at each other, then at the smoking engine. The movement of their heads said, “No.”
Someone stepped out of an opening in the hedge on the bluff side of the road, pretty much even with me. I was startled. I took three sideways steps before I regained my balance.
Julia Cole. Perfectly balanced. She was wearing an oversized V-neck sweater that almost covered boys’ nylon trunks. Her legs were bare, tan, her feet undersized for the huarache sandals she was pushing across the asphalt. She looked upset, but more angry than sad. Or even worried. But then… she almost laughed. I managed a smile.
“It’s you,” she said, almost laughing. I smiled. “Are you a mechanic?” I shook my head, took another step toward the middle of the road, away from her. “An Angel?” Another head shake, another step. She took two more shuffling steps toward me. We were close. She seemed to be studying me, moving her head and eyes as if she might learn more from an only slightly different angle. “You’ve gotten… better.”
“Better? Yes, that’s what I tell people. Better.”
Julia Cole shook her head. She was still smiling. I was studying her. Staring. I looked past her. Her friends looked at her, then looked at each other, then looked, again, at the subsiding smoke and the growing pool of oil on the pavement.
“We saw what you did,” she whispered. I turned toward her. “From the bluff.” She raised both arms, the left arm higher, pointing with her right hand, and yelled, “Outside!” She and I looked at her friends, then back at each other. She said, “Outside,” again, softer.
“It… worked.”
“Once. Maybe you believe Sid appreciated it.” She shook her head.
I shook my head, still focusing on Julia Cole’s eyes. “I had to do it.”
“Of course.” By the time I shifted my focus from Julia Cole’s face to her right hand, it had become a fist, soft rather than tight. “Challenge the… hierarchy.”
I had no response. Julia Cole moved her arm slowly across her body, stopping for a moment just under the parts of her sweater dampened by her bathing suit top. Breasts. I looked back into her eyes for the next moment. Green. Translucent. She moved her right hand, just away from her body and up. She cupped her chin, thumb on one cheek, fingers drumming, pinkie finger first, on her lips. “You. I could use you, Junior, if you…” She pulled her hand away from her face, moving it toward mine.
“Julie!” It was Duncan. Julie, Julia Cole didn’t look around. She lowered her hand and took another step closer to me. In a ridiculous overreaction, I jerked away from her.
“I was going to say, Junior…” Julia looked, if anything, irritated. Stupid me. “If you were an attorney… then…”
“I’m not… Not… yet.”
Julia Cole loosened the tie holding her hair in a ponytail. Sun-bleached at the ends, dirty blonde at the roots. She used the fingers of both hands to move her hair to both sides of her face.
“I can… give you a ride… Julie, I mean… Julia… Cole.”
“Look, Fallbrook…” It was Duncan. Again. He walked toward Julia Cole and me. “We’re fine.” He extended a hand toward Julia. She did a half-turn, sidestep. Fluid. Duncan kept looking at me. Not in a friendly way. He put his right hand on Julia Cole’s left shoulder.
Julia Cole allowed it. Her expression suggested I was confused.
“Phone booth? If you need one. There’s one at… I’m heading for Swamis.”
Julia Cole shook her head, smiled, did a sort of almost blink, then looked, briefly, toward the house closest to the bus. I twisted my mouth and nodded. “Oh. Okay.”
A car come up behind me. I wasn’t aware. Rincon Ronny and Monica watched it. Duncan backed toward the shoulder. Julia and I looked at each other for another moment. “You really should get out of the street, Junior.”
“Joey,” I said. “Joey.”
She could have said, “Julie.” Or “Julia.” She said neither. She could have said, “Joey.” I checked out Beacons and Stone Steps and Swamis. The VW bus was gone when I drove back by. Dirt from under someone’s hedge was scattered over the oil, some of it seeping through
CONTACT erwin@realsurfers.net
COPYRIGHT protected material. All rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
I haven’t worked on my novel, “Swamis,” in a while. Long enough to run changes through my mind, the main one being that I need to stop over explaining stuff. I went through an outtake that would be part of a much longer version. And it’s a bit long itself. These scenes take place just after Joey and Julie have a bit of a romantic moment in the otherwise empty dark room at Palomar Junior College. Reminder, this is 1969, Joseph DeFreines’ father, a detective, had recently died in a car accident; Chulo, a surfer/drug dealer/evangelist, had been murdered at Swamis, and Joey is obsessed with solving the case, and has long been obsessed with surfer Julia Cole. Julie’s family is connected to the burgeoning marijuana trade. The connections in the North County were, obviously, closer then than at any time since.
What got me interested enough to do some more editing and posting this excerpt/outtake is the relevance it may or may not have with events we are still dealing with today. No more explanation.
But first:
Owen Wright at Cloudbreak, Fiji, from a few years back. EPIC. This year’s final five event. I believe the WSL may have cut off commentary. I got home in time to miss the first women’s heat. Caroline won, low scoring, against Molly (Pickles to some). Okay. I did watch Griff losing to Yago (is Yag the hipster version?). After, evidently, beating the other down-raters, it was one and done, Format wise, if Griff had won the first heat, two more heats were necessary to win the crown. Steph did it a few years ago; if the San Clemente surf-trained/programmed surfer had made the barrel at the last moment… Maybe. So, pretty exciting. Not to take anything away from Yags (Aussie version, perhaps, though Yago kind of fits), but Griffo was showing fatigue. And, not to take anything away from Picks, clearly in the Zone and ripping, but Caro seemed to not care enough. Or something.
The thrill of watching any sporting activity live, even golf, even Canadian Ice Bowling, comes down to the intensity of competitors, the make-or-break moments. I checked the results for the earlier heats, haven’t watched any of them, yet. And I gave up watching the post event awards stuff years ago. Not taking anything away from Joey and the crew thanking their sponsors and such. STILL, if I can stream a close heat live, like Kelly and John-John, or whichever of them went on to go against Gabriel… Yes; and I’ll be so happy I did.
Scam, Scheme, Schema, Schemata, Schematic, and the Crowded Lineup
You can learn a lot on PBS. Too much information, evidently, for the current administration. Not that I’m political, but truth seems very liberal to idiots and bigots and, basically, all the ‘ists. This isn’t me, devout hypocrite, saying some folks are idiots; that wouldn’t be kind. And it might be dangerous. However, if you have a chance to know the truth, to gain real knowledge, but you refuse the opportunity and try to block the opportunity for others, you are, by definition, ignorant. Being ignorant might, arguably, be more common among those who, through no fault of their own (not involving myself in the ‘nature or nurture’ discussion/controversy), be pretty fucking stupid. No offense meant.
Here’s the hypocritical part: What I learned by watching “Professor T” on PBS, is the word ‘SCHEMATA,’ in that instance applied to psychology. That I also watched the series in the original German is more because my hearing is so bad I read subtitles; the language less important; and this practice (also love “Astrid” in the original French) doesn’t necessarily make me that much cooler. Don’t fuckin’ call me an ‘elitist.’ Thanks.
Okay, so Professor Tempest, brilliant and quirky/damaged (obligatory for all detectives and such folks) criminologist, uses the word (singular form is ‘SCHEMA’) to describe how we, humans, from birth, learn, over time, patterns of behavior in others. This knowledge allows us to instantly discern whether someone is being honest, hostile, even dangerous. Further, we (as humans) can instantly know something about crowd behavior.
Okay, so here’s the actual hypocritical part: Want more waves in a crowded lineup? Yes. I’m guessing. Do you check out the surfers (competition) on the beach, guessing (with some clues) who is going to be a challenge in the water? Do you scan the lineup, checking out who is catching the most waves or the best waves? Do you use the information to your advantage once you’re in the lineup?
Also, it is important to evaluate yourself, your skill level in the conditions available, as honestly as possible, bearing in mind that very few surfers are as awesome as we like to think we are. Yeah, being able to get out at a spot doesn’t mean you’ll rip. There are the waves and there is the pecking order in the lineup. Not being the pecker doesn’t mean you have to be the peck-ie. VERY IMPORTANT- When you get your chance, don’t fuck up. No pressure.
Bear in mind, it’s okay to deny that you have some self-centered motives. You have a SCHEME, a plan; once you use tactics to take other surfer’s waves; yeah, then you’re SCAMMING. Some tactics are tolerated; blatant burning is, however, not generally a crowd-pleasing activity.
While I was thinking about what to write on this subject, not planning to write anything negative about any political regime, it suddenly occurred to me that a SCHEMATIC is what a wiring diagram is called. Wow! Knowledge. But, whoa! Project 2025, a plan, a scheme, drawn out in great detail, denied, denied, and denied, then… implemented.
I am not claiming ignorance of etiquette or innocence. With my motto (still) being “I’m here to surf,” I will take advantage of some advantages (wave knowledge, lineup management, bigger board) gathered over many years. AND, here’s where old school rules come into play: If a surfer blows a couple of takeoffs, doesn’t catch waves he or she paddles for, doesn’t make makeable sections due to lack of skill, I have been known to venture into the territory some might call SCAMMING.
More often I will use the time-honored traditions of SHARKING THE LINEUP and SNAGGING a wave someone else didn’t make the section on or fell on. This, in case you don’t know, might also be referred to as ‘SCRAPPING.’ I’m totally not immune to using the technique. I am here to surf.
Julie Cole reached to the right of the lightlock door and hit the light switch. The light over the door went out. She set the stack of contact prints just under the blow up from Beacons, dropped her bag just under the table. In the light of overhead fluorescent tubes and indirect sunlight, Julie did seem self-conscious. She set her glasses on top of my two PeeChee folders, put her left arm across her chest, set the sunglasses next to the prescription pair, pulled her sweater from the back of the chair, held it in front of her with both hands.
“Oh. Yeah. Admissions forms. Draft. It’s school or Vietnam. So, temporarily…”
Julie pulled the sweater over her head, watched my eyes as she pulled It down. I looked toward the table. “I noticed you… have….” I laughed. “More. Prints. Contact prints.”
“Thanks for noticing. But Joey…” She put a finger on the folders. “One’s thicker.” She looked in my eyes for an answer. I pulled the thicker folder out from under the glasses as Julie reached her hand toward it. “Julia Cole” was written, in ink, on the thinner folder.
“Not a… explanation. Apology.”
“You were going to… leave it?” I didn’t have to answer. “Can I read it?”
I picked it up. “Not now. No!”
Julie pulled her hair out of the sweater and pushed it back, put on her glasses, and walked to the table. She started spreading out the sheets, thirty-five-millimeter contact prints, several misaligned segments of film on each page.
“Mrs. Tony has… bosoms. I have… yeah, contact prints.”
I leaned over the table. “They look… nice. Prints.”
“Joey. Stop it! I am not trying to… just… Please… Your imagination.”
“Then quit… pleasing… my… imagination.”
“Please.”
“Okay. Sorry. Word play. So, uh, Julie; I believe… I don’t so much… imagine as remember. You… you’re the… imaginer.”
Julie took another step toward me. She squinted, half-smiled. “Just… I don’t want you to think I’m coming on you.”
“No; couldn’t even imagine it.” I tapped my head with three fingers of my right hand and showed Julie my blankest expression. “I do have to ask, though; where is Allen Broderick?”
“He insists on being called… Broderick. He’s… he has a class at ten; he’s probably…”
“Chasing another student, hoping his former student, current wife doesn’t… find out.”
“Possible.” Julie set the stack on the table, started pushing them off, spreading them to our right. I set the stack of seven notepads just past the contact prints. “Luckily,” Julie said, “I’m not his type.” She stopped the shuffling, looked down at her outfit. Loose sweater, gray cords, chukka boots. “I mean, in case you might have thought that we, we being he and I…” She was looking at me as she slid several more contact prints off the pile.
“Wait!” I put my hand down, hard, on the fourth sheet of photo paper. I leaned in.
“What?”
“Black car.” I grabbed the sheet. “Do you remember it? Do you have more? The guys. Do you have any… When, exactly, was this taken?”
Julie pointed to the lightlock door. “I have dates… on the cans. The film canisters. And I have, on the camera… dates.” Both of us were leaning over the sheet of tiny photographs.
“We should… Was this before or after Chulo’s…?”
“Julie.” A different voice. I turned. It was Allen Broderick, standing behind me and to my right. To his left was a young woman, giggling. I looked just long enough to get the impression she was an American Indian. Or she wanted to look like she was. Her right arm was under Broderick’s left. Her straight black hair was held in place with a headband of braided ribbons of different colors. She was wearing some sort of post Hippie garb, almost a dress, quite colorful, low cut. Braless. I did notice that. She was barefoot.
Broderick almost pushed off the woman to get next to the counter. He stood next to me. “You found something?”
Julie and I looked at each other. “No,” we said, simultaneously.
“Not really,” Julie said, looking around me and at the photography instructor.
The young woman had moved up next to Broderick and was leaning across him, looking at me. I glanced, smiled, politely, and turned back toward Julie.
Julie restacked the contract print sheets. I slipped in the one from my hand and shuffled in three from the bottom of the pile. “No, Broderick,” Julie said, “Joey. You know Joey. You spied on him.” Both Broderick and I nodded. “Joey just got a little… excited when he saw the sheet… incident at Beacons.” Swinging her left arm toward the enlargement by the light lock door, Julie turned toward the woman. Both of them smiled as if someone should introduce them.
The woman was still staring at me. Broderick broke away when he saw the edges of the two notepads hanging out of my pocket. He pointed with both hands. “Are those… those your father’s?”
“Do you remember me, Jody?” I turned my head toward the young woman. “Cynthia. Seventh grade. We were in the same home room.” I turned toward her. Allen Broderick stepped back. Cynthia stepped closer. I put my left hand on the table. Cynthia put her right hand to her nose and pushed it downward. “Cynthia.”
Dropping my left hand to the table and putting weight on it, I said, “Cynthia,” and froze.
…
Cynthia was in front of me, talking. I could see her, and the seventh grade Cynthia, at the desk next to mine, crying. There was laughter in the background. “The way the other kids treated you, I did. I… understood.”
In my memory version, the homeroom teacher, Mrs. Macintyre, in her last year of teaching, went behind seventh grade Cynthia’s chair, put her arms around Cynthia, and glared at me. She stepped to one side, half-lifted Cynthia from the chair, and walked her through a hushed classroom. Cynthia and Mrs. Macintyre looked back at me from the door. Mrs. Macintyre began to cry. Cynthia no longer was. I scanned the classroom, quickly passing over the faces of my classmates. All of them were looking at me. A boy one row of desks behind me said, “Way to go, Jap!”
The images faded. Both of Julie’s hands were over her face, middle fingers touching the inside corner of her eyes. She pulled at what might have been tears, slid her hands down and apart, and turned her eyes toward Cynthia.
I looked from Julie and Cynthia. Unaware that I had been, I continued crying. Cynthia’s expression was somewhere between curious and confused, possibly even concerned. “Cyn-thi-a, I… I am… so… so… ashamed.”
Cynthia placed her right hand on my left shoulder. “You are aware that, Jody, that your nose is… running?”
I wiped at my nose with the thumb side of my right hand. “You transferred… out. I’ve hoped… ever since… Did things get… better?”
Julie came up next to Cynthia. Shoulder to shoulder. “What did you do, Joey?”
“Navajo,” Cynthia said. “Jody wasn’t the first person to do… this.” Cynthia pulled down on her nose with her right hand. She turned toward me. “It was just… I didn’t expect it from… you.”
I had no response.
“I knew how badly you wanted to be… cool, Jody; to be… in… with the cool crowd.”
“That… never happened, Cynthia.” She gave me a half smile. “I am so, so… ashamed.”
“Good. Then, you should do the honorable… Japanese-ey thing.” Cynthia took a step back, pantomimed sticking a knife into her abdomen.
Julie said, “Hari-kari,” almost as a question.
Broderick laughed. Then Cynthia. Then Julie. Then me.
“Cynthia and I,” Broderick said, “We’re doing some…”
“Publicity shots.” Cynthia said, stepping away from Julie and me and putting her hands up to frame her face. “For my…” She threw her hands out. “…Professional… Agent!”
“So… fucking… groovy!” Julie froze. “Sorry. I never say… that, but…” Both of Julie’s hands were shaking as she reached out, not quite touching Cynthia. “I saw you, heard you. The VFW Hall. Vista. Teen dance. Last year. You were…”
Cynthia stepped forward into a hug. It took a moment before Julie allowed her hands to wrap around Cynthia. When she did, she looked at me.
Broderick put his right arm around Cynthia’s shoulder. His left hand was on Julie’s. “Cynthia’s fucking fantastic, Jody!”
The hug over, Cynthia turned toward me. “Funny thing, Jody; suddenly the cool people think I’m… I don’t know. Pretty. Different kind of pretty.” Cynthia gave Julie a sideways but intense look. “Teen dance? I would have noticed… you.”
“Probably not. Not really a… dancer.” Julie turned toward me. “Duncan.” She turned back toward Cynthia. “Big fan. He was… dancing.”
Cynthia looked from Julie to me. “Duncan?”
“Duncan,” I said, “Boyfriend.”
“Not… like that. Duncan…” Julie stopped but continued to blush. “Different.”
“You’re… her.” Cynthia pointed at Julie and turned toward me with a huge smile. “Is she her? She’s her, isn’t she?” I wiped my nose and eyes with the sleeve of my t shirt and shook my head. “The surfer girl. You drew her!” Cynthia was looking between Julie and me. I couldn’t see Julie’s face. “Crappy drawings. Grant; he started drawing because you… drew.”
“Grant. Still drawing.”
“But… now, here you both are; surfer girl and… you. Whoa!”
Whatever expression I gave Cynthia was taken as affirmation.
“Well,” Broderick said, “This is all kinds of fun.” I turned around. He was holding the contact prints up, close to his face, with both hands, raising and lowering them in a sort of peekaboo way. I grabbed the stack in the middle. I pulled them away quickly enough that I half spun toward Cynthia and Julie. They were looking toward the front of the classroom. I followed their eyes.
“Allen?” It was the woman I had seen at the San Elijo Grocery store. Allen Broderick’s picnic date. Or, possibly, Mrs. Broderick. High school class of ’67 was my guess. Dark hair. Pixie cut. Knee length skirt, matching top. Obviously pregnant. She raised a camera with both hands, and, without looking though the viewfinder, snapped several photos. “And this girl? Student or… another… client?”
Broderick said, “Andrea. No.” Andrea kept taking photos.
Cynthia posed rather provocatively. “Client. But I am… I’m flattered, Mrs. Broderick.”
“Not quite Mrs. Broderick… yet.” Andrea moved closer, aimed the camera at me. “You,” she said. “The detective’s son. Allen made me go with him… to see you.”
“At Mrs. Tony’s. Sure. Picnic.”
Allen Broderick moved closer to Andrea. He placed his hand on her left shoulder. She lowered the camera and pulled his hand off. “Picnic. Yes.”
“I am here with… Julia Cole. Julie. She is… taking… I would say, she’s taking advantage of the… college.” Keeping the contact prints against my chest, I swung my left arm around in the direction of the light lock door. “Julie and I are going to find out who killed Chulo Lopez. But, like you, Andrea, I don’t totally trust your husband to… We have to keep this all… secret.”
“All what?” Allen Broderick asked, extending both hands toward me.
Cynthia found another chair with an attached desktop area, sat down, put both elbows on the flat surface, both hands to her face, looked at me and said, “I can keep a secret.” She laughed. “Allen is… consumed with… this case,” Andrea said. “His life is so boring without the war and the killing. But he is pretty good at keeping secrets. A little too good, maybe.”
Allen stepped closer to Andrea. He put one hand on her shoulder, the other on her camera. She lowered it. “What would you rather have me consumed with, Andrea?”
“Me, Allen.”
Cynthia clapped her hands, very quietly. She pointed at Julie with her left hand, and me with her right. She crossed each finger over the other several times, then put the right finger under her nose, pushed it up, laughed, and said, as she stood up, “This is all kinds of fun, but… You guys look over my… head shots. I’ll trust you… Andrea. Whichever one you think is best. Broderick can call my… hooray for me… my agent.”
Andrea stood up, walked to the lightlock door, turned, took three quick photos of Broderick, Cynthia, Julie and me.
Cynthia said, “Sorry about your father, Jody.” She ran three fingers down Julie’s left arm, mouthed, “Surfer girl.” She half-sang, “Consumed,” as she walked into the brightness, in an exaggerated walk, her left hand moving in a beauty queen’s wave. “Oh, and Jody; a million ‘fuck you’s’ for being a. bullying fuck, and one ‘good luck’ for being ashamed.”
Broderick, next to the lightlock door, next to Andrea, looked at his watch. “I have a class. You can come back at noon. Or, if you trust me, I can do the contacts. Up to you.”
Julie nodded. I shrugged. Allen hit the switch for the red light and squeezed into the lightlock door, pushing his belly against Andrea’s.
…
Julie was sitting to my right at a large table in the history section of the Palomar Library. Admission application forms, partially filled out, were sitting on a PeeChee folder with. “For Julie” written on it. There were two sheets of contact prints in front of us. My stack, her stack. A large magnifying glass was in front of me, something that looked like an upside-down shot glass was in front of Julie.
“You comfortable now, Joey?”
I looked around. “Libraries. The wisdom of the world; categorized, filed, accessible. The Student Union. Noise. People. Disjointed conversations with a lack of… context.”
“Disjointed? Yeah, and you might run into someone else you… know.”
“You mean… offended. Or beat up. Never run into those folks in a library.”
“Palomar. They take… anyone. It is like failure to you. It’s not… Stanford?” Julie didn’t wait. “Yeah. I know shit. Stanford; got that from Judith, she from Portia, she from… your mom. Third hand. But… true or not true, Atsushi?”
“True… heart.” I slid the top sheet from my pile. “Going would have been a bigger failure.” Julie shook her head. “Irregardless, we’re looking for the black car, one of those muscle cars, and/or the two guys…”
Julie laughed, too loud, pulled it back, and said, “Irregardless.” I couldn’t help laughing. Julie leaned against me as if she couldn’t help herself.
Silence. Julie moved away, slowly, her left arm on my right. She picked up several photos from my stack. “These are from the Saturday. After. Early. If you notice, I wrote the dates on the photo paper before I exposed them.” She looked at me. “Didn’t notice? Okay.” Julie slid her right pointer finger down a row of prints. “You talking to that East Indian guy, the gardener; you getting your tape deck smashed; you getting hit by Dickson; him flipping us off before they let us go.”
“Dickson. You, um, made a… gesture, with your camera.”
“I did. Wish I had a longer lens. Prick like him…” Julie looked up. I looked up. “What was Detective… Dickson, Dick the Dick; what was he trying to… prove?”
“Dicky Bird, my dad called him.” I looked around the library, then back at Julie. My reflection was bouncing in the lenses of her glasses. “I think Dickson was trying to keep me… away. Maybe he thought he was doing a favor. For Wendall. He… I’m trying to be brief; he’s had… romantic notions about my mother… for a while.”
“Romantic notions? How…?”
“Quaint? Old fashioned? Un… um, hip? Wrong? Sorry.”
“No. Proof that you’re a… romantic.”
Silence. “Regardless, Julie; what about photos from… Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?”
“Sure.” Julie put her first two fingers up to her lips, kissed them, turned her hand around and moved it toward me. “Over… here.” Julie pulled up the top right-hand corner on five sheets, set them to one side. “So, Broderick. You didn’t trust him, and now…”
“Broderick’s knowing that I don’t trust him is good. For us. My mother… the photographers she works with… she says war’s ruined them for everything else except… more war. The game. And… he’s on our side.”
Julie looked into my eyes for a moment, then slid her chair to her right, noisily. “Our side?” She pulled the left sleeve of her sweater up with her right hand and checked her watch. “I didn’t ask to be in this game.” She let her tortoise-framed, oval glasses fall from her face.
I caught Julie’s glasses and put them on. “Whoa!” I handed them to Julie. “You. You’re as frightened, and confused, and… excited as I am; and you are… in the game.”
Julie chair scraped across the floor when she stood up. “I am… in it, Joey.” She kept her eyes on me as she crab-walked to the far side of the table. “You don’t have to be. You have to get that.”
“I… do get that. Or that you believe that. We’re not…” I wanted to say ‘friends.’ I wanted to say, ‘I love you.’ I said neither.
“This isn’t hypothetical or theoretical, Joey; you shouldn’t have any…. romantic notions about my life, who I am.”
“No.” I stood up, picked up the magnifying glass, and looked at the sheet on top of my stack, “Either should you. About me.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Your mother knows… I was driving my mother’s car… when my father pulled off the road…”
Julie’s expression said she didn’t know. She mouthed, “Sorry. So sorry,” leaned onto the table, and slid both forearms toward me.
I dropped the magnifying glass and took the ends of her fingers in mine. “I was… responsible.” I let her fingers go. ”And because of the accident, Langdon…” I sat back down.
…
If I was somewhere else, I don’t know where or for how long. Julie was, suddenly, it seemed, back in the chair to my right, leaning toward me. She took in a deep breath. “The guy… at Beacons, is Jonathan Barnhouse. It’s his brother in your dad’s notes. Sabastian Barnhouse, Junior. Dad’s a banker. North County Savings and Loan.” I forced my chair to pivot to get a closer view. “Went by Seb, or… Barney. He told me how lucky it was that a Jew like my dad could get accepted into…”
“The… country club?”
“Yeah. And he told me how beautiful I looked in a dress. Don’t… help me here. I have to… He said, no doubt, he was going to be rich; said he’d had a lot of success with girls. High school, and even more at San Diego State. Said he’d popped a lot of cherries. Yeah. And he told me I should feel honored that he was paying attention to a tomboy surfer chick like me.”
Julie was studying my reactions as she spoke.
“Women’s bathroom. There weren’t women around on a Wednesday. Golfers. I didn’t… lure… him in. I told him I was, I was fifteen. When I… turned him down, he…” Julie’s face was flushed. Her breathing quick and shallow. She was tapping on the table with the fingers of both hands. Little finger to index finger. “He said Cristine wouldn’t have.”
I let out more air than I thought I had in my lungs. I put my hands over Julie’s. “It’s… terrible. I… What happened? I mean…”
Julie pulled her left hand out and put it on top of my hands. “It’s… anti-climactic.” She pulled her head back, slightly, smiled, slightly. She looked around the library. I did the same. Our faces were close again. “So, Barney, Junior. He…” Julie’s smile was real. It was bigger, almost frightening. “At least, metaphorically, he got his cherry…”
At the very moment Julie scattered both piles of photos into each other, she sucked in her bottom lip, popped it out loudly enough that we both had to straighten up and look around.
“Popped!” I wanted to reach out to Julie, grab both sides of her face, kiss her. I didn’t. I did imagine it. I did, instantly imagine five different ways she could have done in real life what she did metaphorically. “My girl,” I said, way too loudly.
“Woman,” Julie said. “There were… repercussions, Joey. Both directions.”
“May I… guess?” Julie nodded. Her normal color was returning to her cheeks. Not instantly. “I know that… I have to whisper…” Julie and I moved toward each other. She pulled her hair back from her left ear. “Your father… maybe you thought the Twins… Swamis… were federal. I know… believe you looked.” She shrugged. “Orange County. You told me he said Certified Public Accountants don’t handle… money. Cash. Bankers do. Grocery stores… do. My guess is, molest the daughter of a CPA at your risk. I’m… shit, I don’t know.”
Julie turned her head toward me and came closer. She made a slight popping sound before our lips met. I made a similar sound, louder, after we had kissed.
…
Julie Cole and I were sitting together, scanning our separate stacks of contact print sheets. “Reverse shot-glass and full-on Sherlock,” I said, turning my traditional magnifying glass toward her.
“It was just a kiss, Joey.”
No, it was the kiss I have, since compared every kiss to. “What about… Duncan?”
“Duncan?” Julie’s head did a kind of sideways bobble. “Duncan needs me… more than…” She gave me a ‘you don’t get it’ expression. “Friend. Forever.”
“But he… loves… you.”
“He does.” Julie set the shot-glass down, put her left hand close to her mouth, and let out a breath. “I’m right about you.” She picked up the magnifier, held it against the right eye’s lens of her glasses, looked at me through it. “Besides being a genuine romantic, you believe you’re… funny.”
“To be more precise… precise-er…” I put the Sherlock up against the Shot-glass. “I’d rather be clever than… funny.”
“Keep trying, then.”
Julie checked my reaction. “Did I hurt your feelings?” She put a finger close to my lips.
I kissed her finger. “You did something to them, Trueheart.”
“Quit it.” She put her finger to her lips. “Later. Maybe…”
“Maybe?”
Julie blindly reached for her stack of contact prints, pulled one off the top, moved it in front of her, and set the shot-glass back on top of it. “Black car, Joey; remember?”
“Oh. Yeah.” I pulled a sheet from my pile, ran the Sherlock up and down the three strips. “Crowd. Wednesday morning. Lee Anne Ransom.”
“It was light by the time she got there.”
There’s… Do you recognize any of these people, Julie?”
Julie leaned toward me. She shook her head and pulled the sheet closer to her. “Okay, there’s… Jumper and… Sid. Must have walked past the… Petey Blodgett told me they wouldn’t let anyone into the lot.” She slid the shot-glass away and pulled the Sherlock out of my hand, fingers of her right hand on the frame. She grabbed the handle with her right hand, floated it over the images.
“We’re looking for two guys; one’s Mexican, the other white. From the loud black car. So, big… tailpipe… or pipes. And the other guys; also a Mexican and… critical, probably; the guys who brought Chulo to Swamis in a white pickup with duel back wheels. The white guy, he’s…”
Julie said, “Dulies” as she dropped the magnifying glasses. She took off her glasses as she stood up. She put the sheets we had looked at on top of my stack, that stack on hers. She grabbed the PeeChee folder with ‘For Julie’ on it, stuffed the photo sheets into the folder, that into her big gray bag. “These are mine, Joey. I have to go.”
“What did I do?”
Julie shook her head. She threw the reverse shot-glass and the magnifying glass into her bag, picking it up with her left hand, and spun away from me. “You should have listened to everyone, Joey.” She took two steps and stopped. “You should have stayed out of this.”
I leapt up, took the two steps, put my left hand on her shoulder. She stiffened. I circled around and in front of her. She pulled the hair from the right side of her head over her face.
“I don’t… understand.”
“No,” she said. “Not yet.” She looked at me for just a moment. There were tears. “Please, Joey; let me go.”
Julie did look at me outside the library’s main entrance. It was late afternoon. The sun’s rays, oranged-out like an old photograph by the northwest wind driven smog, was hitting her at a severe angle. “Atsushi.” She kissed me. “We were never…” With an expression somewhere beyond Julia Cold, Julie, pushing off me, was somewhere between panic and resolve.
Everything had changed. Again.
LATEST ATTEMPT AT SERIOUS POETRY-
An Accidental Smile
It was an accidental smile from a random, chance encounter, A passing glance at a passing stranger, Not inexplicable, just unexplained, It wouldn’t have been right to look back.
Of course I did.
It wasn’t you, It was someone too like you, Not you.
I thought that I forgot, I have not, Not yet, Not with the lightning quickness of synapses, firing, Triggered by unexplained chance, A random passing, An accidental smile.
What could I know from a moment, a first glance? Perhaps nothing, But, perhaps I’d passed someone I thought I forgot, Or, perhaps, I looked too like someone she once knew And believed she had forgotten.
Memories, then, images jumping around the neural passages, Lightning quick, faster than a heart beating, Too many, too fast, colliding.
I looked back, The woman who wasn’t you had stopped, Both of us smiled, shook our heads, and turned away.
I thought I couldn’t cry, I knew I wouldn’t try.
Why try?
Yet, safely away from the street, Most of those in the crowd dancing To too many rhythms, Their focus elsewhere, I had to lower my head, Knowing no one would notice.
Not on purpose.
Accidentally, maybe.
ALTERNATE ERWIN-
The photos of Owen Wright and the crowd in, I believe, France, are ‘borrowed.’ “Swamis,” the original pieces, the illustrations are copyrighted material, all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
Ready to welcome Autumn. Hoping for some swell. See you out there.
Faith, Hope, Confidence, Broken Window, Sally and Courtney, and Somewhere on the Coast, Somewhere on the Net… and on Being Hard to Follow
IT’S SUMMER. The odds of having waves on the Strait of Juan de Fuca is slim-to-flat. Several of my surf friends are currently out on the West End on a hike/camp/surf adventure, but, even though it’s the actual Pacific Ocean, the swell forecast isn’t stellar. Knowing the players, they’ll find waves AND there will be stories.
One of those players, in a recent cellular conversation (yeah, could have said ‘convo’), when I brought up something I had told him before, said, “Sometimes you’re kind of hard to follow.” Today’s posting will prove his point.
I have been watching the WSL contest from Huntington Beach a bit, catching up when I get home. In fact, it’s finals day and I just turned off the tablet… too distracting. I’m not sure what the WSL online complainants have to say about, say, scoring or that some glory-hogging CT surfers are involving themselves, but… highlights: Kind of rooted for nepo surfer Kalohe “Get it right” Andino; he’s out. Always root for Sally Fitzgibbons. She was number two in the Challenger Series ranking going into the event, and the number one was eliminated early. Earlier. Sally’s out. I did find out that the surfer Trish rooted for, Courtney Conlogue, is not in the contest but is working as a lifeguard in Huntington Beach and mentoring a surfer in the event (eliminated). “Good for her,” Trish said.
I did notice that a lot of the surfers, male and female, are on the Simone Biles side of Jordy Smith. Gymnast-sized hydrobats. Just an observation; no judgment.
I’VE BEEN surfing long enough that SURFER’S JOURNAL’s section that focuses on old timey surf stories is pretty much up to the era when I switched from surf mats to surfboards. SO, okay, like it’s 1969, I’m working at Buddy’s Sign Service, 1st and Tremont; close to the Oceanside Pier, one block off this stop-lighted section of Surf Route 101. The shop, in the gutted former newspaper building, a glorious place to work for a recent Fallbrook High School graduate, was also one block south and west of the then notorious Tenderloin downtown section. With the Vietnam War in full escalation mode, Commanders of Camp Pendleton were constantly threatening to not allow Marines to go to Oceanside, with the hawkers and prostitutes. Most of the Marines my age, many from small towns, they were enroute to war, yes, but Oceanside… maybe too dangerous, too scary.
Again, for me… glorious. Still, scary.
There were reasons Oceanside and Imperial Beach offered the cheapest oceanfront and ocean adjacent properties south of Orange County.
But, in the summer I had to sign up for the draft, and for classes at Palomar Junior college, with my surf friends scattering; I had a job (apprentice/nub), I had a girlfriend (Trish, same girl fifty-six years later), I had a semi-reliable car (Morris minor), and I was figuring out how to manage the fickle, sometimes frightening waves at the pier and the various other spots. I would surf before or after work, or head to Swamis or Grandview or Pipes.
Sorry. Exposition, scene setting. The freedom I felt is the very basis for my never-quite-done novel, “Swamis,” the magic I felt is the magic I want to convey. Working on it.
I convinced myself I was getting better known in the North County surf scene beyond Tamarack and Oceanside. I was becoming a regular. What I noticed, and this was discussed when I actually spoke to other surfers, that there was an influx of surfers from Texas. Texas? Yeah. According to actual locals, these dudes seemed to have money. They would stay at the motels in the Leucadia area, chase the local girls. More irritating, they’d catch some. Or the locals imagined they had. And they’d add to the congestion in the lineup, more irritating than the kooks from West Covina, only slightly less irritating than seeing the pros and magazine stars coming down from the north. I mean, like, “Fuck, man, that’s Billy fuckin’ Hamilton.”
SO, one afternoon, I’m checking out the waves at Grandview from the bluff. Four to five, maybe, and glassing off. Two guys come up to me. I shouldn’t try to copy or mimic their accents, but the waves seemed big to them, and they questioned why I’d paddle out.
FAITH.
Faith, foremost, in my ability to challenge a situation out of my comfort zone. This is a faith learned through attempting and failing, retrying and almost succeeding.
FAITH ONLY WORKS IF WE BELIEVE HAVING FAITH WORKS.
Not to get religious-ey on this, but ‘blind faith?’ No. Jesus praised those who were not witness to his miracles and yet believed. Fine. But surfers don’t take other surfer’s word for things: “Do you have any photos? Witnesses?” “Yeah.” “Oh, and I’m supposed to believe that guy; dude who said it was eight feet when it was… I was out… more like six feet?”
There is a difference between having the confidence to believe you can paddle out and ride a few waves and the wisdom to decide you probably shouldn’t try. It’s learned, usually the hard way. A lot of experience may or may not give one a bit of knowledge.
EQUIPMENT- Almost immediately on starting work at Buddy’s I was sent out (alone) to repaint some metal structures that hold interior lit plexiglass signs. One of the first ones I attempted was on a severe slope. Daunting. Ladders require an even footing. I figured it out, got it painted despite being scared shitless, and got questioned (chewed out) on how long it took. “What?”
Next challenge- a forty-foot ladder. Like a kook paddling with too much nose in the air, a rookie ladder person will try to make the clime less steep. There I was on the main drag in Oceanside, the angle probably 45 degrees. Boing, boing. Next challenge- Manlift. The guy from Federal signs was operating the boom. I was painting the pole with aluminum paint, and the cross at the top with white. I worked my way up. Okay. Take it slow. Got to the cross. Switched paint. Started at the top. When I reached for the cross, it moved. A lot. Almost lost my balance, almost lost my breakfast. “You okay, kid?” “I don’t know.” The man was laughing. “Yeah, you’re fine.”
SLOW FORWARD to now; I’m working on a job (with Reggie Smart- he’s on social- look him up) I would have been happy not doing. A church steeple that requires the use of a manlift with a 65-70 foot boom. SCARY.
But I have faith in the equipment. So far, and I’m almost done, the faith is well founded. I only bumped into the building, softly, a couple of times… OH, but I did back the fun car into the turret. Shattered but intact. Fuck! The white trash, duct tape fix didn’t make it from Port Townsend to Quilcene. I’m getting it replaced on Wednesday, hopefully just in time for the next pulse of waves. I’ll let you know. I mean, after the fact.
It is summer, but… after faith comes HOPE.
Thanks, as always, for checking out realsurfers.net AND, with your praise and your own stories, please (if you’re not a site-builder or content consultant) fly me a line at erwin@realsurfers.net
Let’s see- I borrowed the surfing photo. All others and the content is original, so, protected by copyright UPDATE- I would have thought Kanoa would win. Despite my not rooting for him, he was just eliminated. On to Tahiti!
I got this text with the note, “Who’s burning whom?” Someone is definitely tucked into a small tube (a tuberoonie), and some, possibly entitled, dick is dropping in. This was kind of a ‘guess who’s on the wave’ and a ‘guess the spot’ thing. I immediately thought the surfer was Stephen R. Davis. I’ve seen him pig-dog barrels of any size many times. The kelp fooled me. “Oh? Really? Okay.” I certainly do not want to blow up the spot, which I am aware of, but, hearing it’s often crowded and because it would require a ferry ride, I haven’t attempted to surf there; so… Your turn; maybe you know the drop in dude. For the record, it wasn’t me.
FIRST- I am available at erwin@realsurfers.net
SECOND- You can ignore my previous post. It’s fine. I really don’t like to get political, but… ignoring reality doesn’t do anything to change it, or help us to be better prepared for whatever changes are coming. We all, eventually, must face hard truths that are true nonetheless. ANYWAY, just hyping myself up enough to write something someone might consider as opposing their position, thinking about what really angers/bothers/hurts me the most, I find it’s the level of hate that people who consider themselves good, Christian, American, patriotic (choose one or all- options include ‘white’ and ‘no way related to any immigrants,’ and ‘fuck you.’) are willing to spew, the lack of compassion, the apparently ease with which horrors inflicted on others somehow is some righteous vengeance for wrongs you believe were done to you. A HARD TRUTH I must accept is that I understand where some of this comes from, how easy it is to lose any sense of empathy or compassion, to put myself in another person’s shoes and then turn away when basic decency is ignored, or worse, if inhumane treatment of fellow humans is celebrated. It is, I would think, hard to be SAVED, redeemed, by the grace of GOD, AND to part of the hateful mob. I can’t help thinking about JESUS asking his, our, father to forgive the jeerers and the mob celebrants, “For they know not what they do.” YEAH, use the ‘I didn’t know; argument when you’re searching your soul.
Joel Carben (not carbon- “I’m not an essential element”) and his family are down at the San Elijo Campground. It seems like it’s an annual thing. He sent me this text with the line, “Name the spot.” Because my board surfing life started in North San Diego County, and because I’m just kind of a ‘know it all,’ I wrote back, “Cardiff Reef? It was once, yeats(sic) go, Cardiff Pier.” “Yes, Cardiff Reef, Swamis is peeling in the background.” I didn’t see anything peeling. “There is solid S swell forecasted for the weekend. What’s your call on S swell? It’s like 3 @202 degrees, peaking Saturday. I can surf anything from Cardiff to Swamis.” “I didn’t really study it when I lived down there. It was either waves, or no waves. I was never that fond of Cardiff because it’s always kind. of bbrokenbut you should probably try suicide reef, please. Form of a called seaside trailer. Park formerly called.”
On July fourth, Joel, who started his surf career on Long Island, New York, was a commuter/surfer living in Seattle before moving to the Olympic Peninsula, sent these: “My guess: somewhere between Cardiff and Pipes.” “Yessirf! Cardiff Reef left (not in the photo) Surfed it this AM, nicce S swell hitting.” “Nice. Innsider information. AThe beach, just south of Cardiff ws ccalled stretch mark beach because women who had babies would go there go there.” “LOL” “Also, since I’m sharing all this ancient historical stuff. There was no spot called brown house. A result (should have been ‘it was all called’) Swamis beachbreak. There was a pull out on 101 where the house or houses are now. Good place to check out the surf. Phil harper and I got Busted for sleeping in the back of his Truck. No, we told the cops we had our parents permissiannd they said we did not have their permission. And being 117, we drove away. And when we got back swamis’s was crowded. Of course.”
“Is all this going to be in the movie?” “Maybe” “Can I be Keith’s stunt double please (prayer imoge)” “There are no surfers your age h in the novel. Sorry Keith is not ibn iit either” “But he will be crushed Keith has to have a cameo or I’m boycotting it (Included is a photo of Keith Darrock doing a ‘dab’ cutback on a very small wave close to very big rocks) Or maybe that’s the follow up to your multi million dollar book and movie empire. Keith and his bannd of Strait chasers.” “Sounds good to me. I promised Stephen (R. Davis) he could play Gingerbread Fred. When he and I were speaking.”
“There’s the cover photo.” “Okay, Joel, there might be a tale or two.”
“First session ever at Seaside Reef (coral and wave emojis)” “I think I only served there one time and it was a Sunday and the only other surfer in the water was Donald Takiyama. I did not speak to him. But we did trade-off waves. And there might have beenn a couple of nods.” “Takayama is a legend.” “Takayama.”
Photo of Joel on a trip back to the alternate coast, representing. Most recent text: “I do enjoy surfing here but…”
Yes, there is more to every story. For example, that one time at Seaside Trailer Park… My not-yet brother-in-law and his first wife lived in Solana Beach. My vehicle must have been broken at the time. I got dropped off by Trisha’s mother. Trish was supposed to go but wasn’t up to it. Awkward ride there and back as my future mother-in-law wasn’t a big Erwin fan. Yet, and possibly, ever. Anyway… blah, blah, Takayama.
LASTLY, since I’ve kind of gotten into this Sally Fitzgibbons vortex; I stayed up the other night to watch some Challenger Series surfing from South Africa. Sally won her heat in the round of sixteen with some solid surfing and competitive skills, but some falls and some drama. The winners at the Ballito Pro become wildcards at the upcoming CT contest at Jeffrey’s Bay, so… not really stoked on the Challenger Series level of surfing, and because watching any sporting event live is better than a rehash (usually), I was rooting for Sally. I went to bed, but, luckily, woke up just in time for the quarterfinal heat. Again, some drama. Sally won.
Last night, semi-finals. I stayed up late enough to watch it. Sally was, in, leading with great wave selection, but the eventual winner of that heat, and of the contest, Nadia Erostarbe, got some really big scores on one-move re-entries. Not to be a sideline whiner, but there are quite a few surfers, particularly on the women’s side, who count on the bottom turn to re-entry move for seven or eight point rides, rather than the down-the-line rail-to-rail, with slashing, and freefalls, and stylish cutbacks surfing that garners six point rides, maybe. Anyway, I thought it would be a cool story for Sally… It takes the complete package to win at J-Bay. I will be checking it out, live or otherwise, but probably not until the elimination rounds. Stories. There are always stories.
I AM STILL working on the novel, “Swamis.” Not, like, full time. THANKS again for checking out realsurfers.net OH, and a south swell? Might not work for the Strait.
“This calls for an investigation;” a man claiming to be from Lindell TV told her viewers; “People are posting scurrilous images of our Vice President, Jon Doe Vance, son, we now believe, and contrary to his own biography, Paddy ‘Loan’ Vance; and this cannot be tolerated in this here United States. If you cannot respect the man, respect the office; at least as much as our much maligned president, a true leader truly beloved by all the rightest, brightest, shiniest people, does.”
Now, it’s not like I even know how to watch the channel put out by My Pillow guy, loser in a multitude of defamation lawsuits. I was hepped to this by someone… Can’t reveal source. Seems like fun to me; the pillow guy, alternating between hugging and crying into his pillows made (using the Colonel Sanders playbook) by poor and desperate American widows. Maga Mike and the guy with some alleged ties to advanced couch… surfing (?) Alleged. But, NO, this might even be a conspiracy designed by secret cat lovers, unwed and otherwise. You know the type. I mean, yes, there are at least two illustrations of cats in the background. AND a wolf. Wolf? Russia? Yeah. Maybe it’s a coyote. Mexico?
After careful analysis, it seems like my nose is larger. And redder. If it’s Hegseth Red, it’s coincidental. Sunburn in my case. BUT, maybe with a little Maybelline, some botox, a bit of the Kristi Noem line of Revlon lip gloss, and… As our leader would say, backed up by the man most responsible for his very presence everywhere we look (make you own list: Include McConnell), I should just fucking get over it.
OKAY. Over it.
I saw a thing on YouTube about JOE ROPER celebrating fifty years as the preeminent ding repair guru in the San Diego area. Because I can’t help myself, while waiting for the ads that precede most videos to end, I check out the comments. The second one from about a guy who was mercilessly and purposefully slammed by Joe’s board and told to go back to Clairemont (maybe Joe called it ‘kookmont’ or ‘Shitmont’). The purpose was to dissuade non-locals, and the victim seemed to kind. of understand that, despite Clairemont Mesa being just over I-5 and way less than five miles from Pacific Beach.
I have a few connections to Joe Roper. I lived in Pacific Beach, very very close to Tourmaline Canyon Surf Park, from November, 1971, until the spring of 1973. I was twenty, Joe was probably 15, and he was one of the only surfers, back in my city surfing days, during which I developed my ‘ghetto mentality,’ whose name I knew; mostly because he was a standout surfer, and partially because I witnessed several incidents very similar to the one described in the comments. I did ask him why he full-board-to-the-full-body slammed the surfer in the shorebreak. You know the answer.
In a case of poor editing, let me now jump to the possibly ironic fact that the ding repair business that is celebrating fifty years in business is located beyond Clairemont Mesa. Next mesa over, Kearney Mesa, east of I-5 and ‘the’ 805. Not that I care.
I wrote several pieces for realsurfers on Mr. Roper. One was that he surfed Crystal Pier like it was Pipeline. Totally true. That he became a known name at Pipeline was not a fluke, though I was surprised, after a few years of living up the way, University City (slightly inland) and Encinitas (both east of I-5), when I saw Joe, in a Gordon and Smith ad, at Pipeline.
Another, even more tenuous connection, is that I have run into two other surfers who knew Joe. BIG DAVE RING was part of the ‘pier rats’ group Joe was a part of, if not the leader of. CHRIS BAUER, now building quality surfboards on the North Olympic Peninsula, got his start working for Mr. Roper. “All he let me do when I started was sand,” Chris told me. When I started telling my stories, Chris had to remind me that he and I are of different generations. “Yeah. I get it.”
This is kind of a quickie posting. I’m working on several other pieces for the bigger deal on Sunday. Topic: Casual Surfing; Myth or Fantasy?
I hope you’re doing some surfing, casual or intense. Thanks for checking out realsurfers.
photo from Facebook after Sally’s second place finish at the Burton Automotive Newcastle Surffest.
I’ve written a bit on how I’ve been rooting for Sally Fitzgibbons lately. It’s not all that important to me; and it isn’t like I should feel too bad about one of the most successful female surfers ever falling off the big tour, again, and having to fight her way back again. But, it’s a story. “I didn’t know I had that many tears to cry” is a quote I heard repeated in the broadcast. Is Sally a nice person? Supposedly. Is JOB as nice as he presents himself? I’ve heard otherwise. Is JJF on tour, or Steph? Or Gabriel? Have I rooted for Kelly while realizing he might be the ultimate sellout? Okay; no, I take that back. Did I root for nepo-surfer Kalohe? Or Cola bros study-to-the-test surf robots? How about gymnast-surfers?
Yes, no, sort of; hey, I’m just being realistic. Still, I was on a painting project yesterday for surfer/realtor Joel Carben, and I was aware I was missing finals day on the YouTube on the big screen at my house. “Oh, so you’d skip making money to watch a Challenger Series contest in Australia?” “We’re not talking that much money, Joel, and anyway, how many times have you skipped out on surf you know is happening to make money?” Joel was satisfied with the answer. I checked on my phone. Sally had won the quarter final heat. “Okay, another hour.”
The Big Show contest at Trestles starts tomorrow. Will I be rooting for Gaby? Probably not. Caty or that girl who claims she’s from Canada. Both have Oceanside connections. Jordy? Yes. Or… we’ll see how it plays out. I don’t have to watch it live. Work. Or, maybe, surf.
NOTE: Today (or so) marks my having survived 56 years as a painter. Trish doesn’t count my time as a sign painter’s apprentice, but I do. As I was telling Joel, if you can think of something I haven’t painted, let me know.
I have written several things lately. I might have to post them separately. BUT, here’s something I wrote because of my conversations while working with Joel, who, incidentally, is very proud to have participated in an invitational pro/am contest at Huntington Pier in the nineties. He is perfectly willing to list all the famous surfers and musicians he was among, and stoked to retell every detail of a ride that got him I (if I remember correctly) a 7.5.
Joel Carben (not Carbon- “I’m not an element.” “Oh, but… aren’t you?) representing the Northwest back on the East Coast
Competitive? Mindset or Personality Disorder? Like, How Would I Know?
My friend and my first surf co-conspirator not a member of my family, Phillip C. Harper, alerted me to the opportunity to participate in a high school contest sponsored by KGB (radio station) and the Windansea Surf Club, I instantly agreed. It was 1968, I was a junior at Fallbrook (20 miles inland, as the road winds), and had been riding actual surfboards for almost three years. So, sure, why not?
None of my contemporaries who had started surfing in the meantime joined in. Or even thought it was a good idea. Or even wanted to go to San Diego to watch. I ended up talking Donn Fransith(sp?) into driving me the first day, two girls going along (Bill Buel’s cousin and a girl whose name I’ve forgotten), neither because I was so cool. This is a hint: I drove myself the second day.
So, obviously I was masochistic and/or delusional, setting myself up for humiliation, defeat, and, by extension, not doing any other surfers from Fallbrook High any favors.
It isn’t as if I was overly or crazily competitive at any other sports. I didn’t have a shot for basketball, was afraid of the ball in football (freshman, fourth string replacement), wasn’t fast enough for track and field, didn’t want to wear bunhugger trunks or do the breaststroke the way the coach insisted it was to be done (and he was right). I did go out for wrestling. I had the moves, didn’t execute them on the mat with enough aggression.
Oh. Aggression.
I was, by the time I was a senior, aggressive enough at sports to hit or hip-check an opponent. Still not a great wrestler, I did earn a JV letter as a senior. Never collected it, never wore a lettermen’s jacket. Didn’t deserve to.
But surfing; that was different. It so quickly became a crucial part of my self-image. Not cool enough, being one of the few (most in my family) Seventh Day Adventists in my school had long set my position as (there’s a scale, and a variety of other categories) an outsider.
I was, mostly, accustomed to this position. No, I hadn’t been invited to Susie’s birthday party in the fourth grade, and that hurt… but being an outsider (and yes, everyone’s an outsider somewhere) offers some amount of freedom, socially, and may (may) have contributed to my overall sarcastic nature.
Different subject, perhaps; but it is worth mentioning that once I was in with other surfer wannabes, I felt the need to dress the part. “No, Mom, I need Levis and a nylon windbreaker; my friends say you dress me like a golfer.” “And if your friends think you should jump off a cliff?” “Thinking.”
What was important to me was that I surfed better than the guys who started after I did. In fact, from my earliest sessions, kooking it up at Tamarack, I would run fake heats; fifteen minutes, three to five waves. I would ask my sister, Suellen, where I ranked in the lineup: Third best out of five? I did the same thing with my Fallbrook surf friends. Wherever I was ranked, I wanted to do better.
Better?
It doesn’t take long for anyone taking up surfing to realize it isn’t always easy, that even pretty good rides are hard to come by, that there’s always someone who surfs better than you do, and that the ocean wins. Already feeling apologetic for this level of introspection, I have to say that my desire to be better was not (just and/or only) to be better than other surfers, but to improve. Trial and error, wave knowledge, wave count, experience.
Still, some of my least satisfying surf sessions involved my being angry with myself, or the conditions, or the crowd, but mostly with my not living up to my own expectations.
Ridiculous.
My most satisfying sessions come down, frequently, to one ride in which I unexpectedly blast through a section or hang on the very top of a wall a split second longer, or sideslip down a wave face, or, even over the falls, hanging on in the surge.
Still, if I even attempt to present myself as strictly a soul surfer, the lie is obvious. Alone in the water, cruising, I will definitely push harder when someone else shows up. Two of the turns I made that I most remember were, one, when Dana Adler walked out on the south jetty at Oceanside and I cranked a full-ass roundhouse cutback, and, two, when three dudes showed up as a peak Tommy Robinson and I were sharing on the north side of the pier and I went into a rage-driven cutback, drop to straight up move, all in about six feet, left to right. Okay, I wasn’t enraged, more like irritated, but I was stoked that I pulled it off.
Competition.
A heat compresses the surf experience. Whatever the number of minutes, the stress to choose the right wave, to perform on that wave is as exhausting as a much longer free surf session. While we can watch a contest live or on a computer, being in one is… different.
Judging disagreements aside, the best surfer in a heat usually wins.
I didn’t win my first KGB/Windansea contest. I didn’t win the second on I was in, 1969, with three other surfers on the team. I did well enough to advance out of my first heat. Both times.
I washed out of my first heat at a smaller, North County contest at Moonlight Beach, 1969. I blamed Cheer Critchlow and local bias. I surfed in the Western Surfing Association after I moved to Pacific Beach in 1971, advanced to 2A, with enough points to go into the 3A level before giving it up, mostly due to the time spent competing versus my growing painting commitments, and because, like everything in surfing, it is kind of self-serving. Not arguing this right now, but, though I never won a contest, I made the finals every time but one, and I came in 7th in that one.
When fellow Bremerton shipyard worker Raphael Reda presented with the opportunity to surf in a Ricky Young sponsored longboard contest at Westport in the late 1980s, despite not owning a longboard, I agreed. I participated four times, never won a heat. The best I did was third or fourth in a division requiring twenty-year-old or older boards, no leash. I rode a Duke Kahanamoku popout I’d traded some work for. I have the trophy. Somewhere.
So, without arguing about how pure my love for surfing is, and being as old as shit, do I still feel competitive? Add up the asterisks, the answer is… let’s see.
Poem. Fear of Crying- “It takes a lot to make me cry, so please don’t try; and if you do, I promise you, I’ll try to make you smile.”
My finger, someone else’s wave.
What We Deserve- We all deserve better; or we believe we do; better or more; less stress, more success; less pain, more gain. Yeah, slogans; the salesperson’s pitch, the trap of new age clap trap; me-ism, we-ism, jingoism. And it’s not that I don’t buy into it. If I put off the work I should be doing, get up early, load up, and drive out for a minimum of half an hour, full of anticipation; by golly, I sort of believe I deserve waves; good waves, uncrowded waves, and lots of them. And I sort of know that belief has no basis… except I want my reward to be as great as my desire, as true as what I imagine it could be.
The Truth is- Sometimes we get skunked. Sometimes someone else gets the wave of the day; someone newer to the game, someone to whom a lucky make on a wave on which the surfer displayed no style, no sign of years of accumulated wave knowledge; and yet, that surfer’s dreams were surpassed. Blissfully so, because a ride like that deserves to be properly appreciated.
Humbled, Not Humble- My most recent surf expedition left me searching for excuses for why I performed so badly; and I hate excuses. Still, I have some: Pressed for time, mind set more on real life than surfing, chose the wrong place to paddle out, relentless set waves. Those are the easy ones. The more fear inducing mind fucks: It just might be true that waves I would have once relished seem daunting, dangerous even. Perhaps my age is catching up with my self-image as someone who tries, as hard as possible, to defy if not deny it.
Still, a Great Session, Other than the Surfing – I got to use my wheelie to pack my board down and back, I met an old friend, TYLER MEEKS, chatted with CHIMACUM TIM, and a couple of other surfers. In processing my latest embarrassment, not that it was witnessed, more that I haven’t been able to not talk about it, I have to go back and take a mental count on other times I’ve been treated unfairly by the ocean (not that, again the ocean plays favorites or that any surfer deserves favor), and there aren’t that many. Did I learn something from my failures? Yes. Do I count the times where I left the water because I lost a fin or was injured or caught three waves in an hour because of the crowd? No. But I can easily recall the sessions in which I was humbled, in which I didn’t live up to whatever standards I believed I had set for myself. Again, belief versus reality.
The John-John Effect- Perhaps you remember a World Surf League contest in France a few years ago: Roll-throughs, brutal death pit shore break; every reason to be intimidated if not scared shitless; and everyone is getting slaughtered… except John Florence. He was ripping the place like it was his back yard. I don’t need to add to that, do I? One surfer’s nightmare is another surfer’s dream.
Cold Comfort- Though I refuse to admit that there is any real value in talking about what I or you or anyone “Used to” do, I do, while wishing I could still ride a six foot board in six foot beachbreak, still wish I could spin and one-stroke into a late drop, crank a vicious hit on an oncoming section, or do a reverse flyaway kickout, and with full awareness that bragging about what I once did only shows what I can no longer do, I do take some solace in my own history; successes and failures.
What Failure Guarantees- A better next time.
Next Time, Man…
ACTUALLY, I wanted to write something about friends, surf friends, close friends, not that kind of friends. The idea is that we have surf acquaintances, and often, our only thing we have in common is that we are surfers. Some, but not all, of my best friends are surfers. Yes, I have so many writing projects in the process of becoming something worthy of sharing. What I’ve been thinking about has some connection to my last humbling. The gist of the story is that I sort of stole PHILLIP HARPER’S car and drove it to a surf spot I was sure I was going to do well at. I didn’t. I lost my 9’9” Surfboards Hawaii noserider paddling out. Lesson- Hands tight on the rails when turning turtle, arms loose to make it through the turbulence. Other lesson, learned when Phillip, who gave me permission through his mother while he was ill and in bed at the motel adjacent to the Cantamar trailer park, Baja California, Easter Vacation, 1968, had a miraculous recovery when he realized that I was driving his Chevy Corvair with a desperate oil leak to K-38, a place where, on the way down, we saw multiple boards destroyed on the rocks. When I got out and up the cliff, all the other dudes, invited and self-invited, and a very angry Phillip, showed up. I don’t remember anyone asking how I did. Later in the week, an offshore wind made Cantamar, which I had tried to surf because I didn’t have a car and everyone else slept in, became rideable for a while; we surfed some blown out shit waves south of Ensenada, paddled out at a spot that was more crowded than it probably was in North San Diego County, and had some other, non-surfing adventures; fireworks, lack a proper bathroom/shower facilities, a lot of hanging out, and a bit of what folks would refer to as partying. Memorable trip for a sixteen-year-old.
What is interesting to me is that I forgot that I had stolen (borrowed) Phillip’s car until I was writing about this trip, fictionalized, as “Inside Break,” the alternate (in a way) coming of age novel that has been (is still being) transformed into “Swamis.” Because I was thinking about this, I accumulated a list of the cast of the actual incident. I’m listing them here because I will forget the names again. The trip was organized by Phillip’s stepfather, Vince Ross. Vince was borrowing a trailer. He and Phillip’s mother, Joy, and Phillip’s sister, Trish (not my Trish) were to stay at the adjacent motel. INVITEES: Phillip Harper, Ray Hicks, Erwin Dence, Melvin Glouser, Clint/Max Harper, Mark Ross. We were supposed to stay at the borrowed trailer, which did not, and this became an issue have a sewer hookup. But, because of the UNINVITED surfers, Dana Adler, Mark Metzger, and Billy McLean; Mel and Ray and Phil and I got to stay in tents outside the boundary, adjacent to a field of, I’m guessing, sugar cane. There were other American surfers also camped there; way cooler than we were.
If this is in some way connected to friends, Phillip was my first surf friend, Ray was a friend before he started surfing (classmate, Boy Scouts). I am still in occasional contact with Ray, and credit him with inspiring me to get back into surfing at fifty, after an eight or ten year near drought. I haven’t been in contact with Phillip for years. While I’m fine with knowing something about what has happened with Mark and Billy and Dana, and others, I do feel bad that I might not have been a good enough friend to Phillip.
Tyler Meeks when he had the sorely missed DISCO BAY Equipment Exchange. His hair is longer now. I didn’t recognize him immediately when I last saw him. He is supposed to call me about t shirt opportunities. Call me, Tyler.
What We Don’t Know- DELANA is a DJ on the local Port Townsend public radio station, KPTZ. The program is ‘Music to my Ears,’ 4 to 5 pm on Wednesdays, repeated on Saturdays at 1pm. I’ve caught her show quite a few times when driving. Old tunes, little stories about the artists involved. What gets me is that at the end, and I’m paraphrasing, she says, “Remember to be kind to those we meet. Each of us carries a burden that others do not see.” What we know about our surf friends is what we have in common; and sometimes surfing is pretty much it. And… that’s fine. In fact, it’s great.
The step parent of “Swamis,” different take on the same era. Thanks for checking out realsurfers.net. Oh, and Happy Memorial Day, and, oh, good luck, Sally Fitz. They may or may not hold the next round tonight. As with everything, we will see.
‘YOU’LL DO ANYTHING FOR ATTENTION’- This is what Trish, who refuses to look at the cut (and only a cut) on my head says. “I hope it was worth it” is what she texted when she figured out, through spyware on my phone, that, three days after smacking against something (we’ve determined it was a 2 by 2 on a lattice, forensics based on blood splatter) hard enough to provide (?) me with a cut requiring 20 stitches.
The surfing: I did try to keep my head above water, pulling out of sections I would ordinarily plow through or, perhaps, drop under (barrel dodging, not immune); but, sometimes, yes, a real surfer has to tuck in (not bragging, I insist for myself and others, that being ‘in position’ is not the same as being in the barrel). And once I was wet… well… AND I did wash the wound and sanitize it and cover it and… Yeah, worth it.
OTHER PEOPLE’S STITCHES STORIES- Word got around. Partially because I posted a (rare, on purpose) selfie of me with a dressing; partially because I know other surfers AND, allegedly, I love to gossip. Not on a high school and above level, more like junior high. When I, post-cut, post-stitches, talked to ADAM WIPEOUT, he had a WAY BETTER head injury/stitches story from when he, down Surf Route 101 in the wilds of Lilliwaup, was about junior high age: His older brother at the wheel of some giant wreck of a car, two younger cousins between them, they were joy riding around the property. Something happened, like the car suddenly losing power, and power steering, and the car hit head on into an apple tree. Adam, attempting, bravely, to save his cousins from hitting the dashboard by the time honored if never successful method of putting an arm across them, was launched forward, cutting his head on the metal (of course) uncloseable door to the glove compartment. Blood. While his brother hid in a creekbed, Adam ran to his grandmother’s house where, evidently, multiple members of the extended HAMA HAMA families were gathered.
So… blood, stitches and a great story.
Every real participant in surfing and any other gliding/riding sport has to have some stories of stitches or sprains or broken bones. Hopefully your injuries weren’t life threatening. There are truly tragic stories out there.
TIME AND TIME AGAIN- When I was contemplating what to put on my next (like the one I didn’t write for Sunday) posting, one of the things I considered is that, on a recent trip/session, I happened to notice that SEAN GOMEZ, Olympic Peninsula ripper and teacher, has lost a significant amount of hair. Sorry, man; I understand. Others, including DARREN, also have suffered this fate. The realization is that I have surfed around these folks long enough that I remember when they had full heads of hair. If I count my northwest surfing story as having begun when I was a mere 27, 1978, rather than the restart, now over twenty years ago, yeah, my hair was fabulous.
LUCKY OR LOCAL- Not to be bringing Adam into, like, everything, but in a recent cell phone conversation, he said that the session, that I totally missed, in which he surfed two spots many miles apart, on one day, was this time of year, in 2013. “What? That’s like twelve years ago.” “I know.”
Incidentally, Adam, when we spoke, was trying to do a different kind of double; snowboarding and surfing on the same day. There was some late season snow in the Olympics, and Adam, and many others, including those who include surfing and snow-sliding in their lists of sports, took advantage of conditions on, like, Saturday, just before a different wind/storm pattern came in and turned snow reported as powder into something else, not powder, on the way to, I guess, mud.
It seems like a theme around here; conditions are fickle in the mou tains and on the water; get it when you can.
LUCKY OR LOCAL OR LOSER- All the surfers I run into on a regular basis pride themselves on keeping track of tides and winds and buoy readings, As do I. But, now perhaps it was the day off to recover from my injury, but I got word that some lucky souls got some decent surf. “What?” “Lucky or local.” Now, I did text back to complain about using the phrase, that I take credit for, if the session isn’t all time great. It wasn’t. Or maybe it was. It’s not FOMO if you know you missed out. It’s just MO, loser. “Next time,” we say, over and over again. “Next time, man…”
FRAME OF REFERENCE- I was hanging out with AARON and KEITH, two rippers, looking over the high bluff at some waves dumping on the beach. Aaron said it’d be great for skimboarding. I mentioned how I’d seen amazing stuff on YouTube, but it all requires getting thrashed in the shorebreak. SO, we agreed, not for me and my ancient and non-nimble knees-to-ankles-to-feet, me with a known history of getting worked trying to get out of the water and up the beach. Fine.
There was talk of snowboarding and skateboarding, both of which my fellow water-watchers had participated in. I did skateboard, back in ‘the day,’ as in, not lately (see above). I asked Aaron, “So, did you, like, read ‘Thrasher’ magazine and… stuff?” “I was in ‘Thrasher’ magazine.” “Oh, then… Warren Bolster; he was a big time surf photographer who was everywhere on skateboarding magazines? He once blatantly burned me at Swamis; 1970… or ’71. Maybe he was pissed because he’d been filming rather than…” Lost my audience. Aaron had no clue. “You know, guys, I saw a movie about some guys… I think it was Mike Doyle and Joey Cabell, riding early snowboards… in 1968. They were flying off cornices and everything, and…”
Blank looks. I know Keith was born in 1977, a year after my older son, James. “When were you born, Aaron? “1971.” “Oh; so you have no idea.” “No. Never heard of Joey Cabell.” Aaron did a sort of Italian/mobster type accent, with, “Hey-a, you don’t a mess with a Joey a Cabell.”
Of course; my talking about the sixties, or even the seventies is similar to my father talking, or not talking, about World War II, or the Depression. His day. History. Other people’s stories.
Joey Cabell. Historical photos.
ANOTHER SELECTION FROM ‘LOVE SONGS FOR CYNICS’-
I have a whole lotta work, so I’ve just got a little time; I’ve got a whole lot of work, so I just have a little time; now they say everybody chooses their own mountain to climb.
I’m gonna climb that mountain, gonna start about four AM, gonna climb that mountain, gonna start about four AM; gonna stop about noon at a lake that I know for a swim.
When I get to the top, I’m gonna check out the other side; when I get to the top, I’m gonna check out the other side; and if I see the ocean, you know that I’ll be satisfied.
I JUST WANNA GO SURFIN’, now tell me, is that such a sin; I just wanna go surfin’, now tell me, is that such a sin? when you know darn well it’s been a mighty long time since I’ve been.
I’m gonna take off late, free fall drop, carve off the bottom and fly off the top; Locked in so tight the wave spits me out, hit the shoulder and turn one-eighty about; Movin’ down the line like a water snake, saving my best moves for the inside break; Hit the inside section, arching, hanging five; that’s when I’ll know that I’m still alive…
I just wanna go surfin,’ but I just don’t have any time; I wanna go surfin,’ and I’m gonna find me some time; NOW… if you get to go surfing, but you need a good board… borrow mine!
Not that, given the thrashed nature of my HOBIE, anyone would. Thanks for reading, thanks for respecting my rights to my original, copyrighted work. GOOD LUCK on finding some waves worth remembering. When I say, “That wave is gone” it means, partially, it’s history.
That may be a bit cynical. I have been surfing a bit (never enough) lately, trying my darndest to make up for a 2024’s bad session/wave count. I’m back to trusting my reborn VOLVO to make it up SURF ROUTE 101 far enough to find some rumored waves. MEANWHILE, rumor-wise, there have been times when surfers just had to check out the Strait. Whether or not it was working, surfers did show up and I did not. The sentiment among those lucky or stubbornly willful enough to live on the Olympic Peninsula is to try to avoid the forecasted days, particularly on the weekends (Friday through Monday, sometimes Thursday -Tuesday) to avoid any crowds.
CROWDS- Here is my wish/prayer list- 1. Waves. 2. Good tides. 3. Favorable winds. 4. Good parking spot. 5. Uncrowded lineup.
OBVIOUSLY there is a correlation between the parking and the number of surfers in the lineup. I have seen days where all semi-convenient parking spots were taken, some with occupants sleeping or making brunch, and the crowd is mostly surfers on the beach watching and waiting. And I have seen days with no crowds and rideable waves.
Here’s what happens: You surf. It’s, you know, decent. You tell one or two of your closest surf friends. They don’t believe you. That’s fair; you don’t believe them when they talk about barrel fests and such.
This lack of belief shouldn’t be a problem. REAL SURFERS do it for the soul enriching wonderfulness of the experience of climbing into a cold, damp wetsuit, booties and gloves and hood, and venturing into cold ass water to surf waves, their wonderfulness in the eye and mind of the venturer. BUT, NO, a little acknowledgement is, at the very least, appreciated. I’ve seen the most soulful of soul surfers surf just a bit better when someone else shows up. It’s the nature of the beasts we are.
BECAUSE I’M candid by nature as well as competitive, I admit, now, in writing, that I kind of enjoy having some sort of reputation for showing up when waves are rideable. I enjoy seeing surfers I know, or recognize; and I collect little stories from many of them. AND, since I’ve shown up less frequently, I… neurotically, self-centered-ly, worry, just a bit, or, more accurately, have considered that I am in the process of being forgotten.
It happens. Years ago, now, I read a piece on some older surfer who quit surfing urging other older practitioners of the sport/art/lifestyle to just fucking quit and become a legend. Sure, but legends only last as long as people remember. Do you remember ARCHIE or BIG DAVE or a growing number of surfers who made the same searches you are making, suffered the same skunkings, found the same rare gems, felt the same chill and the same magic?
MAYBE you do. Or you have your own list. This all leads me to surfing in crowded conditions. Is it worth it? I’ve seen so many times when people piled out of rigs and raced into the water without even checking the conditions, all based on ‘the rule of the parking lot;’ if surfers are out, it must be worth joining them.
AGAIN, crowds are number five on my list. I might just snag a few. As much as I appreciate the atmosphere of even, let’s say, the whole circus-like scene at Westport, my motto continues to be: I’m here to surf.
International Women SURFERS’ DAY- I do not have a problem with women surfers. At all. Some have had issues with me. Understandable. There were fewer, percentage-wise, girls and women surfing when I started. AND, I know I’ve said this before, but my sister Suellen got me into board surfing, our mother drove us and our siblings to the beach because she loved it, and went to better surfing beaches because we surfed.
It isn’t an accident that one of the two main characters in my novel, “SWAMIS,” Julia ‘Cold’ Cole, is a surfer AND a strong and intelligent woman. Persistence is absolutely required for anyone to attain any level above mere competence in surfing, the sport, and is also necessary to fit in as an equal in the art/lifestyle part of trying to ride waves, an objectively ridiculous and so-often frustrating activity/obsession/addiction.
I am pushing my daughter, DRU, to format and, maybe, do a little editing, if necessary, on my manuscript. MEANWHILE, though my painting life has suddenly gotten way busier, I am working on getting pieces together for my poetry/song (mostly song, some essays, some illustrations) book, “Love Songs for Cynics,” together.
Thanks, as always, for checking out realsurfers.net. Get some waves!
Real Surfers 