Email To Ray Hicks, 1,100 miles down Surf Route 101

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under northwest surfing, real surfers, secret surf spots on the Straits of Juan de Fuca, surf adventures, surfing in Washington State, surfing Southern California in the 60s, writings of Erwin Dence

Hi Erwin,

Thanks for writing, I’ve been dragging my feet with no news. I’ve been ready for several weeks to get back in the water but when there was surf it was way bigger that I wanted to get into out of shape. Then there was none but I’m ready when there is some. So you should be getting a surf story soon.

Hey, Ray,
I know you’re all busy with your new house and all, but, man, you must have done some kind of surf activity by now. It’s been a pretty bad winter, supposedly the season, for surf on the Straits. The coast has been, overall, the place to go, but it’s farther away. I took off at 6:25 am on Saturday, with the buoy readings having just gone from iffy to a pretty good signal there might be waves. There weren’t. I hung at T— R—– a while, did some sewing and gluing on my gloves and wetsuit, took a nap, loaded up some rocks, chatted with a couple of other searchers, and with a father/son team checking crabpots, the father on shore and the son out in a dinghy. Mark, the dad, invited me to surf at the spot near his house some time. I know the spot, D— C—-, have checked it, but it’s farther out and is usually smaller than T— R—–. I was offered some fresh, live, Dungeness crab, but declined. Though we both love crab, it’s the live part that might freak Trish out, and keeping them alive would be a chore for me.
After two and a half hours, I left, drove back towards home and checked out C——-. Also flat, but, en route, I had passed Big Dave, once of PB, on his way out. Having talked on the cell phone to Keith, in PT, who was supposed to go with me, and hearing the buoy readings were even better and the tide was coming in, and thinking maybe Big Dave knew something I didn’t, would hit it big, and I wouldn’t hear about it until the next time I ran into him; I did something I rarely do; I headed back to T—-. Up the hill from the spot, I spotted Dave’s truck. Having already decided T—- wasn’t working, Dave, recently laid off from the mill in PA, was picking up cans on the side of the road (not so much because he was desperate- a little extra money when the surf might happen). He was planning on hitting C——- on the high tide, still hours away. While chatting with Dave, a three vehicle caravan with surfboards headed down the hill.
“Maybe it’s turning on.” “Doubt it.” “I’m going.” “See you.”
It was the cool hip Seattle crowd, “Oh, and we also surf;” checking out the scene, preparing a seaside brunch, letting their dogs go leashless. “What’s your name again,” Brad asked. “We’ve spoken before.” “Uh huh.”
There were a few waves catchable with the SUP, sort of protected from the rising west (sideshore) wind. I thought I’d go out. Then Dave showed up. “Pretty sad,” he said. Dave left, I went out, caught a few waves that required paddling to stay in them. I may have been the only one to go out on the Straits, mostly because I was desperate.

sorry to interrupt my own story, but in this version I added color to the original larger drawing.

Archie, back temporarily from Thailand and a business trip to Boston, and his friend Sandro had been planning on hitting C——- on the high tide. I called Archie and found they were at the state park having a sandwich. I was hungry; met up with them at a picnic table that overlooked the break. Not breaking. At least we couldn’t see waves from there.
Then I went to Costco, Petco… so much fun, then stopped at Archie’s house. Then I got a call from Keith saying N—- B—- was breaking and he was going home to get his stuff. I called Trish, she said, “Have fun, lock the car; and, by the way, I’m not making dinner.” Good enough. I hauled ass.
About five minutes away, Keith called back. “Oh, it’s gone?” “No, it’s better.”
Three waves in I forgot about the rest of the day. Great fun, with just Keith and Brett (who showed up already suited-up while I was suiting-up) and I trading waves. Brett had a girlfriend or wife on the beach, and got out before Keith and I did. We got out sometime after sundown, the waves having peaked, the window having closed.
My next posting will include my new motto: “You can’t get skunked if you don’t go.” Everyone I’ve tried it on goes, “ew.” And then there’s the glass half full version, “You can’t score if you don’t go.”
So, I got back in my driveway at 8:25. Fourteen hours, dark to dark. I drove about 180 miles, round trip. Keith did about 18 blocks.

Anyway, get some surfing in. And let me know.
See you, Erwin

Two title illustrations for “Inside Break,” the Novelization

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under Erwin Dence illustrations, real surfers, surf adventures, surf illustrations, surf photos, surf sessions, surf stories, surfing art, surfing drawings, surfing illustrations, surfing novels, surfing San Onofre, surfing Southern California in the 60s, surfing tales, writings of Erwin Dence

Using the photograph used as an illustration in Chapter 3 of “Inside Break,” the novelization, I did a larger drawing, had it reduced and several copies made at the local (Port Townsend Printery) print shop. I then added color to two of the drawings. The top one is the one Trish preferred. I’d like to say I preferred the lower one, but, never totally satisfied, I went back to the original and colored it in. Now I have to wait until I can get back to PT to get it reduced to a size I can use. You have to know I’d love to add some color to the graphics.

I would really appreciate it if you could read some or all of the novel. I’m really trying (honest) to keep the writing tight and on point, but, there are just so many angles, so many other surf stories. Oh, yeah; that’s why I started this site; because real surfers have real stories in common, and each of us has a few that are just ours.

INSIDE BREAK- Loves and Wars and Surf and Magic- Chapter Three

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under real surfers, surf adventures, surf stories, surfing San Onofre, surfing Southern California in the 60s, surfing tales, writings of Erwin Dence

INSIDE BREAK- The Novelization- CHAPTER THREE-

So far: In 2004, Alvin Hubbard and his twenty-three year old daughter Elizabeth are in San Diego, taking off at dawn to check a few surf spots, part of a very busy agenda.

In Fallbrook, California, 1967, sixteen year old Alvin and friends, Sam and Ben, take off at dawn, riding with (and this is unusual) older surfer Riley Cooper, boyfriend of Ben’s sister, Catherine. They are planning to surf at San Onofre. Barely under way, Riley’s VW bus gets pulled over.

Pretty exciting, huh?

Remember, [ brackets ] mean optional reading, [[ doubles ]] mean extra credit.

PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY, NORTH COUNTY

“Surf Route 101,” Elizabeth said, repeating what I’d just said, lowering her window to take in some of the sea air. “Magic-al.” She looked over at me until I looked around. “So, when you were a kid you thought these beach towns were magic…al.”

“Still do. Thanks for the correction. Fancy Jesuit education. No, it’s fine. And every time my family’d go through Del Mar, my Dad would say, ‘Del Mar by sea.’ And I’d never correct him because…”

“Respect? Fear?”

“We’ll say respect.” I gave my daughter a look to tell her I wasn’t really serious. She gave me a look that said she knows that actually, I kind of meant it. “And he’d always say ‘You know, Desi Arnaz lives here,’ and we’d look around.” Elizabeth and I looked around, maybe out of respect.

I pulled off 101, long called, ‘the 101.’ The 101. I wanted to show my daughter a house on the bluff her uncle once owned. Couldn’t fine it. “A lot more eucalyptus then,” I said. “Less…” I looked at the seemingly unending line of condos.

The surf was small, maybe smaller, but the clouds were beginning to thin as we dropped out of Solana Beach. On the 101, bluffs, the tail ends of the coastal hills, the populated areas, are split by low sections, remnants of wetter times.

[I wanted to, but didn’t mention how there were once trailer parks on each of these places, hugging the north ends of bluff sections, protected from the south winds; closer to sea level. [[ This is probably where the First People would have lived, closer to migrating fish and birds and abundant supplies of abalone and lobster, close to fresh water. ]] I thought there was one trailer park left, Seaside Reef. I surfed there. Once. I didn’t notice it in passing.]

We moved, a few miles under the speed limit, along these flats, toward Cardiff. There were cars in the parking lot, surfers out, spread along the multiple sections created by the in and outflow of the slough.

“No stories?”

“No new ones. Last time I surfed here, your mother didn’t want to fight the crowds. She may have been pregnant.”

“May have been?”

“Yeah. She was. It was big and… on the news… ‘Big Swell!’ Everywhere else was closed out. Not Swami’s; crowded, couldn’t get close. But your… pregnant… mother didn’t want to do the stairs anyway; so, we went here, but north of the real break.”

We were past it, the real Cardiff Reef, now, waiting at the light. “I think I did make it out, caught one wave, then, trying to get out again, I saw…”

I waited for my daughter to finish the story.

“Two surfers on one wave, one on top of the other. Double overhead! Cowabunga!” Cowabunga. She said it to herself. Slower. “What does cowabunga actually mean, Daddy?”

“Oh. Um. As nearly as I can, um, translate… Yippee!”

“Yippee!” she said as I gunned it at the green light.

“Yippee!”

In the time it took to drive the distance of the state park and the couple of hundred yards between Pipes and the Hansen shop, make a left turn/uuey, then circle the Swamis parking lot, unexpectedly full, and drive the same distance back, now closer to the bluff and the view, I had pointed out that, at one time, back around 1970, surfers had to sort of shimmy around the northern-most post on a chain-link fence to access the spot.

[I didn’t have time to get into my whole history there before we found a convenient parking spot. Indeed, it was the first one in the line of spots, mere feet outside the very fence post I’d spoken of. If my daughter hadn’t jumped out of the wagon so quickly I could have told her, again, how we started surfing here before it was officially opened as a State Park; how the waves seemed transparent, the water clear, the… and there was the time her grandmother, as always, had built a fire on the beach, and along came this Park Ranger, and… moments later, he was kicking sand toward the fire, and my mother, probably holding one of my younger siblings, was kicking back; and Ben and I were in the water, afraid to come back in, and…]

I paused my mental Pipes mixed tape, got out of the car, looked for Sam.

The access was now, and had been for years, open, allowing those with California State Park passes to park inside, close to the bluff, north of the campsites. These were mostly families, I’d guess, on weekends. On this day it seemed like it was mostly guys a few years older than me, possibly retired (assholes). They could lean on the hoods or sit in the open backs of their surf rigs, or hang on the bluffside fence, talk story with their buddies, look down at the surf, each peak now named or, at least, recognized. North Stairs, Traditional (real) Pipes, Access Peak, Swamis Shorebreak.

I recognized Sam right away; an older version with the same stance, to the left, against the mesh of the fence. He had said he might be surfing, but there he was, reddish blonde hair now mostly gray, a little… let’s say, thin spot in the back (he had said, on the phone, that he wasn’t bald). Balding; maybe.

Sam seemed to be watching Elizabeth as she ran to the cinderblock bathrooms. Yeah, that was Sam.

[Sam was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, kind of the street uniform of surfers over fifty. Sam’s was tucked in; mine, untucked, unbuttoned, worn, northwest-style, over a longer, and long-sleeved, Carhartt t shirt. My Hawaiian shirt was a gift from my older son, and nobody had to know it came from Walmart. Sam was wearing Levis, properly faded, and sandals, expensive versions of classic go-aheads. Without socks, of course. Tan feet. I was wearing Dockers; standard for non-surfers, men my, our age, professional men with multiple stops to make; less cool men. Me.

Yeah, but the slacks were teamed up with well- worn Birkenstocks, sandals that had been to Italy. Still, mine was an outfit that whispered, “I used to be cooler.” And, yeah, I was wearing socks, dark, to go with the Dockers. Again, a northwest thing.]

Sam wasn’t fat, wasn’t bald; didn’t seem five or six months older than me. There was no way I would have thought he would be fat; fat, not that muscle-recently-turned-south kind, the kind of fat that seems to grow on other fat, like whipped cream over cool whip.

That description; it’s… I did use it in a poem, but, really, it wasn’t quite me. Still, it had been too many years of sitting, of luncheons with clients, of conferences and conventions, not nearly enough surfing.

Below us and straight out, one of the longboarders, wearing a full wetsuit, booties, no gloves, and a boonie hat, took off from the point of the small pack at the peak (Traditional Pipes), dropped in fully, did a casual bottom turn, readjusted to trim at the top of the wave, cross-stepped to a close-footed five, slid his back foot back and dropped lower, his head dip maneuver not quite reaching the lip. When the shoulder went fat, he backpedaled, all in semi-slow motion, cutback. It wasn’t so much casual as slow. He tried to retrim, gather some speed as the wave reformed.

“I’d be going for the standing island,” I said.

“Doesn’t want to lose his hat,” Sam said as the surfer just sort of bogged to a stop, dropped perfectly to his knees, started paddling back to the lineup.

My old surfing buddy turned, extended a right hand. “Owl.” He looked at my glasses through his, properly darkened to the morning glare. “Prescription,” he said. “Built in bi-focals.” He lifted them for a moment to look at my eyes.

“Lasik,” I said, “still wear glasses for… close work.” I laughed. Not really nervously; self-deprecatingly. “Or far away stuff.” I squinted more than I had to.

“Yeah, well,” he said, a lot about time and age unsaid. Implied. Known.

“I think a hug would be… appropriate.” I hadn’t wanted it to sound like a question.

The hug, probably the only one we’d shared between sixth grade and then, was over as Elizabeth approached. She lowered her phone. I introduced her to Sam. “Morning,” she said, switching the phone to her left hand, taking Sam’s extended right hand. She whispered, “Call you back/love you,” into the phone, hit the red button. “Jakes,” she said.

Sam nodded, looked at me, whispered, “Jakes.” I nodded. Sam turned back to Elizabeth. “I saw your dad on TV.”

“Fucking Tony,” I said.

“Fucking Tony,” Elizabeth said.

“Fucking Tony?” Sam asked.

Elizabeth and I both just smiled and nodded.

NAVAL AMMUNITION DEPOT (NAD) GATE

Cooper was out of the bus, standing next to a Marine Guard who was bent at the waist, looking at the VW’s oversized back tires and the jagged cut in the side panels. Sam and Ben were looking out from between barely-pulled-back curtains, I was half out of the driver’s side window.

[Riley Cooper and some buddies had attempted this customizing. Begun with a hack saw, the job was finished by another guy, with a torch. I had already imagined these guys, Greasers (this still referred, as far as I knew, to those who worked on hot rods), probably an older Cooper brother in the group, all still holding onto flattops and ducksbacks and Brylcreem; gathered around the bus, cutting away on the krout-wagon, the thought being, if Riley was insisting on being a surfer, his vehicle should, at least, be a little more… American.]

The Marine guard was shaking his head. I’ll spare you the conversation inside the bus, Sam and Ben pulling out their dependent ID cards, their almost brand new Driver’s licenses. Sam said he could tell the guard that they could call his dad, Light Colonel (actually Lieutenant Colonel) Samuel Bostock II, over at ‘Mainside,’ even though we all knew he was in Vietnam.

“They won’t call,” Sam said, and got out through the side door. He looked at the Marine guard, not tall, but thin; and, because he was a Marine, and we all knew what it took to be a Marine, we knew he was tough. Toughened. And he was black.

[It was always more difficult to get through the NAD gate than Camp Pendleton’s other three access points. If we couldn’t do the twelve minute drive (or so, and there was a rumor that cars were often timed, and speeders ticketed, and, by God, don’t break down or try to turn off the road), the next choice was heading back, passing Ben’s house, to the ‘back gate’ east of Oceanside. If that was our option, we might as well go on to highway 101 and head up to the San Clemente gate.]

That a black Marine was controlling the most direct access to Camp Pendleton for four quite white surfers, and without going into how unusual this might have been in 1967, I should mention what we were wearing, variations on the surfer uniform of the time.

[Like the rules of surfing, the surfer uniform was established by peer pressure. Because I started before my peers, I had to go by what real surfers at the beach, mostly Tamarack, were wearing. Actually, being 13, with too many younger siblings, I had to point out to my mother that other surfers weren’t wearing less radical (I’d say ‘more modest’ if we were discussing the semi-opposing implications ‘modest-ness.’) versions of Australian bunhuggers, something like tight boxers rather than briefs, and that Sears, the catalog or the store in San Diego, might not carry the latest in surfing trunks.

My mom tried. When jams, double layered, with a flower print over white material, without the built in underwear (or with the built-ins ripped out), caught on the knees and ripped in the crotch… well, I had to use my own money, dearly earned, to buy my first pair of nylon Jantzens, as featured on the back cover of “Surfer,” the bi-monthly sometimes (but not always) found with the other magazines at the Fallbrook Buy and Save. I’m not sure if it was lying on my part or that Jantzen thought trunks should be worn tight, but the next brother down got those trunks. 32 waist, supposedly, in kind of a burgundy wine color. Only one color.

I probably had some Hang Ten knockoffs by this time (always wanted, never had Kanvas by Katin trunks), with a wax pocket, Velcro, laces, maybe three colors. It was Sam’s joke to say his trunks were ripped, then rip the Velcro. Maybe not just Sam’s.

When I started surfing with Ben, and he (because of his sister, Cathy, I mean Catherine) had access to older surfers, he told me I had to, had to switch to genuine Levis. Sam had started surfing with us before I could actually get some, and he told me to buy them two inches bigger in the length, one in the waist, beat them on the bed when first purchased. If it was hard to get them buttoned after the first wash, perfect. Levis were way cheaper at the PX, and, when I somehow got the $6.50 or so together, Sam got them. Three inches bigger.]

Still, there has to be some room for individuality in a sport that’s supposed to be for individuals, rebels. So, on this day, and now you can try to picture the four white teenagers outside the bus, it outside the gate, parked on the Fallbrook side of Ammunition Road as a steady stream of Civil Service workers and Marines who lived in Fallbrook were checked and waved through, some saluted through. We four surfers were in a sort of curved line, facing the black Marine, he guarding the Navy facility against invasion by communists and dangerous surfers in dangerously customized vehicles.

[Each of us was sporting beads. Cooper’s two strands were mixed with puka shells; the rest of us had some made by my sister from some sort of beans that the chemistry teacher later identified as a great laxative if properly taken (the biology teacher must have known, didn’t say). Cooper was wearing a longsleeve, with collar, blue workman’s shirt over his white Penny’s t shirt, Levis, red deck shoes, no socks.

Sam and Ben had non-matching, but both mostly-red windbreakers. Ben’s was lined with white fleece-like material. Penny’s t shirts, Levis. Sam was wearing his tennis shoes from PE. Ben was wearing hushpuppies. Always stylish, and thinner than Sam and Riley, who were thin, Ben could wear a t shirt, a regular shirt, a sweater, tucked-in, and a heavy Pendleton flannel, AND the windbreaker.

If I wore a sweater to school, it usually was removed by third period. Still, I did have on some hushpuppy knockoffs, the soles sort of worn down on the outside (I attributed this to a slight bowleggedness caused by straddling surfboards), and dark Church socks to go with the Levis- white is for tennis shoes.]

[[Since I spent this much time on dress, I should mention hair. The dress code at Fallbrook High did not allow hair to be over the ears. This changed a couple of years later after a kid in the Agriculture Program got sheared by other Ag students. Sam and I actually witnessed this while at PE, the kid running out of the oversized Quonset hut at the farthest reaches of the campus, some farm boys from Rainbow or Bonsall or Temecula tackling him, hacking away. So, lawsuit, no dress code. Girls could wear pants after the lawsuit. Not while I was at Fallbrook; dresses, and, if they seemed too short, the rebellious student might be required to drop to her knees, a measurement taken.]]

And here we were, a matter of inches the difference between a street-legal wheel well and some sort of radical ‘fuck you America’ kind of mutation.

[Peace, man. Anyway, Riley, Sam, and Ben each had some well-maintained version of the ‘boys’ haircut,’ short on the sides, parted on one side or the other on top. No ‘buzz cut’ or ‘butch’ like the Ag guys, no ‘flattop’ like (some, even many of) the jocks, no ‘slicked-back’ dos like many of the Mexicans and some of the Pauma Indians. Each had of my friends (boldly counting Cooper in this group) some version of blond hair. Ben’s was the blondest; Sam’s on the reddish side (not ‘red on the head like a pecker on a poodle,’ that was our sometime surfing friend, the same guy who stole the Surfboards Hawaii stickers), Riley with something like my sister’s hair color, dirty blond.

I was the one with the almost-black hair, and, on this day, mine was the closest to a dress code violation. This was only because it had grown out from the ‘high and tight’ cut many sons of Marines sported, just like their daddy’s, that my father insisted on when he marched (not like, really marching) his four sons into the barber shop, also insisting on a group discount.]

Riley nodded at the Marine guard, turned toward us, shrugged, said, “Another time.” He looked at his watch. There was plenty of time to get to school.

Sam stepped close to the guard. The guard looked around. “Hey, man; can’t you cut us some huss?”

It should be said that all this gate activity went very quickly. The guard had other things to do; the traffic had to move.

While Sam and Ben looked at the guard, Riley looked at me for a second with an ‘Oh, shit’ expression. Then we all looked at the guard. The guard looked at Sam, smiled, mouthed ‘some huss,’ seemed to want to shake his head, but didn’t, then smiled at Ben, looked toward Riley. Our driver was already headed for the driver’s door. He looked at me as Ben followed Riley’s lead, Sam crossed in front of a truck, stepped into the tiny office on the far side of the road.

The Marine lifted his properly starched and blocked ‘lid,’ revealing hair that was the next thing to shaved, a little more on the top. He put his lid back on, looked at the line of traffic, most with headlights on, looked back at me.

In an accent nothing like I’d expected, the Marine adjusted his military issue horn-rimmed glasses, looked at my thick lenses, asked, “Are you also requesting that I cut you ‘some’ huss?”

“It’s ‘a’ huss; right? Cut me a huss?”

FUCKING TONY (a bit of a preview of the next chapter, in progress)

This is the way I told the story to my old surfing buddy Sam, both of us hanging close to the fence at Pipes as my daughter donned what she thought might be a proper beach hat and proceeded down the gravel roadway to the sand, Once she got to the sand, she took some photos with her camera, mostly longboarders floating and waiting. She would occasionally waving back up into the glare, once waving her phone, once her hat; all the while trying to find the harder-packed sand.

“No. I was home. It was early.”

“Morning show. Channel, um; I don’t know. I wasn’t supposed to go on. Jakes wasn’t able to make it, held over in LA, and…”

“Yeah. Cindy had the TV on. You should have told me you were…”

“I wasn’t supposed to… wait? You watch that channel?”

“No. I had the remote; looking for, you know, weather. And there you were. I yelled, ‘Hey, Cindy; Alvin Hubbard’s on TV.” Pause. A surfer down below blew the bottom turn. “Eww. No, you looked… I recognized you right away.”

“Oh. So, now you see the camera didn’t add that many… pounds.”

“No, no; you look good. Owl, you should’ve seen me before I got back into surfing.”

“Well. Glad you did. Supposed to get a little bigger?”

OKAY, SO, THE STORY: “There is no way,” Tony Facciolo said, “that the station is going to do a telephone-only, or even a remote… interview with Jakes.” I was still backing away. “Even if it’s their affiliate in LA… no way.”

“You can do it, Dad.” I was shaking my head. Elizabeth was, of course, on the phone.

INSIDE BREAK- Chapters 1 and 2

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under Erwin Dence illustrations, surf adventures, surf illustrations, surfing San Onofre, surfing Southern California in the 60s

INSIDE BREAK

Love and Wars and Surf and Magic

CHAPTER ONE- Too Many Overlapping Stories

MISSION HILLS, SAN DIEGO

A beeping sound, audible through the radio news, started when the passenger side door opened.

“All good surf trips start in the dark.”

“Yeah, yeah, Dad; so you say. We’re a little late for zero-dark-thirty, though. Sorry.” My daughter, her hair wet, pushed her laptop, a straw bag with clothes spilling out, and a quite worn brown leather purse toward the space between the front seats. It wouldn’t fit.

I turned the key to the right. Beep. Beep. I pulled the key out. The radio and the beeping stopped. I nodded over my shoulder toward the back seat. “Liz, Lizzie, ‘Lizabeth… what are we calling you nowadays?”

“I think, today, only; Elizabeth. Formal. Grownup.” As Elizabeth moved the laptop and bag, I looked over my back seat supplies. Cardboard box, briefcase, camera, white plastic bag, towel. “What did you forget, Papa?” She was already backing out of the passenger door. “Today only; then it’s back to Dad, Daddy, Father, Owl, Alvin, Mr. Hubbard.”

“Sunglasses, watch…they’re at your uncle’s, um, desk, in the foyer; and one more cup of coffee; maybe?”

“Jeez-a-fuckin’-neez, daddy.”

I handed her my mug, the ‘Inside Break Publishing’ and the surfing graphic, cobalt blue on white, almost rubbed off. “Thirty-nine seconds on the microwave.”

She left the door open. When I reinserted the key, the beeping and the radio resumed. “Six-forty-six,” the radio voice said. It was lighter outside here than it would be at home, farther east, farther south. That not-quite-clean pre-dawn San Diego light. I looked at the cell phone on the dashboard, pulled the key out. The beeping stopped.

It was a Wednesday, March 17, 2004; almost exactly a year after the start of the actual war; the actual, as-promised, shock-and-awe war in Iraq started. Again. Bagdad revisited; and this time, it was personal.

Jeez, I’m sorry; couldn’t help but add a little commentary. This is where I’ve chosen to start the story. Stories, too many overlapping stories. Forward and backward. I’ll apologize now, upfront.

I chose this day because it was so… because I think of this day constantly. It was memorable. Yes, it was Saint Patrick’s Day, and it was about a week before my dad’s eightieth birthday; and the day we, we being his extended, very much extended, family, would celebrate that. That would be later.

[OPTIONAL [bracketed] TEXT- the idea for this came from the readings for Catholic mass. If you read more quickly than an official reader, you might as well read these slightly-tangential parts. Or, if you see the brackets, skip on by.]

[My day had started in the dark. I was in the sort of office slash foyer at Jack’s house, lights off, at his computer, checking out the surf reports. Unlike the rules at my house, my brother-in-law keeps his on; just turns off the screen. I wasn’t seeing what I’d hoped for, small enough for a guy who hadn’t surfed in a while; too long a while. It was smaller than that, even; some sort of lull between swells; la nina and el nino; “none to one and glassy,” as I used to say.

“Hey, man;” Jack whispered, slipping up behind me without turning the lights on, setting a cup of coffee, in one of his ‘Presidio Investors’ mugs, next to me. “Too early for me,” he said when I looked at his other hand. “You send the email?”

“Yeah.”

“Well; maybe they’ll figure out you’re not just… completely selling out.”

“Oh, I’m selling out, Jack. Maybe they’ll see I’m, maybe, not desperate…” I had to laugh. Jack smiled. “Not that desperate.”

“Whoever’s desperate loses.” It was his line; and he was only a split second behind me in delivering it. “It’s your…” he paused. “Look; I can do some negotiating… I mean; I do do it for a living. ‘Don’t show them the gun,’ I say…” He wasn’t pausing, he, former college history teacher, was waiting.

I knew the line. Through years of negotiating, success (and failures, and balloon payments and bad investments), success overall, Jack had earned his air of easy sophistication; still, white high-end-resort-robe aside, he was, to someone who knew him since he returned from Vietnam, sort of cheesy at the core. I don’t mean that in a negative way.

“Just show them the bulge.” His line. Cheesy. We both laughed; something short of a giggle; teeth showing; just a temporary lapse in self-consciousness.

Jack’s sister says the Marines hadn’t changed him much, but a tour in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive as a Second Lieutenant had; and I’ve seen him, and others, when some random event or song or shadow causes those black curtain memories to fall. Still, with all his credentials, his polish and sophistication, he’s just cheesy enough to be real.]

Lizzie went to the door of her uncle’s house, didn’t have to knock on the door. An inside light came on. Both of her cousins, then ten and twelve, in mis-matched pajamas, attacked and opened the door. And now one’s out of college, the other…

No, I’m focused. Focusing. Just getting going. And, and I had to call home.

“Hello. Hello? You up? Thought you might be. Hoped.” Pause. “Almost; we’re leaving.” I waved at Didier (family name- his mother’s family) and Holden (allusion/homage- cool name), both racing around their cousin on the front porch; Deeds striking a few surfing poses, Holden copying his older brother, throwing in a TV wrestling pose.

Not dropping the phone, I shot Didier a shaka, returned, Holden a devil sign, ‘hook ‘em horns,’ whatever it is. Holden struck another wrestling pose.

“Yeah, pretty exciting. For me, anyway. No, no eating in the car. No. I know. We’ll probably have to skip checking out O.B. and Sunset Cliffs, head straight for Pacific Beach.”

There was a longer pause. I let Kate go on a bit about her flight and how she’d get to Sea-Tac, and when she’d have to leave, and the security hassle; and how she’d call her brother later, and he could pick her up if I was surfing or still in Oceanside.

“Yeah, Jack always says, already said, getting to the airport is so easy; drop on down.” Big pause. “If I could… just… keep the imprint. Inside Break. Just for new stuff. I mean, some sort of… no, not control… input.” Another pause; with me fully aware we’d had this conversation, we’d made this decision. “No, no; sure; I know it’s all up to…settled, yeah, settled. It’s the great American dream. Sell out… retire…start another…project.” I knew enough to pause. “Yeah; tomorrow. Done.”

Our daughter was getting back into the car. The door to the house closed, the light went out. I handed the phone to Elizabeth. “It’s your mom. She wants to talk to you.”

“Hi, Kate. Mother. Okay; Mom. Morning.” Elizabeth gave me the ‘why’d you give me the phone?’ look. “Dad just did the phone hand-off.” I restarted my sister-in-law’s loaner car; quite a nice Mercedes station wagon, surf racks and a hint of that smoke/sand/mildew beachy smell. Didier was more into surfing than Holden, though both had, by this time, been to surf camp. Surf Camp. Later, Didier was, well, more into surfing, Scripps Pier his spot, mostly. But, right now, he’s…

I waved off the offer of the phone, and, almost to the second turn, slaloming past ever-bigger houses, towards the Presidio, I hooked my seatbelt.

“No, yeah; I wasn’t forgetting, mom; but Jakes is still in LA,” Elizabeth said, into my phone. She looked at me. “Jack in the Box.” I pulled into the open space at the switchback at the park entrance, not really sure which route I would have taken, back when Kate and I lived in Mission Hills, to get to where I was going; through the park or down through Old Town. “They don’t have them in Chicago. And…Daddy…” This was an aside to me. “Mom says you can’t go to El Indio(s) until she gets here. Promise?” I nodded, pulled around and headed back uphill. Jack in the Box

“No, no, Mom; we’re both super excited. Big day. Cowabunga!”

BEN’S HOUSE- A FEW MILES SOUTH OF FALLBROOK, CALIFORNIA

In the grainy pre-dawn light, the chubby kid; I’m going to say ‘husky;’ slid the nine-four stock model Hobie across the lawn, the nose slightly over the iceplant-covered (the old style, dark green spikes) berm, and jumped on.

“Real surfers,” he said, in the general direction of his two (thinner) friends, “real surfers go foot over foot.” It was that radio commentator’s voice any sixteen year old would use to announce his own play in a pickup game of football, the voice he used to describe his skateboarding down the neighbor’s driveway on Debby Street, slaloming toward, but rarely onto, Fallbrook Street. Too steep, too much traffic; his brother had scraped up his chin, arms, and knees in a ‘should-have-rolled’ wipeout still uphill of the Magarian tract because, he was told, still crying, jeans ripped and knees and elbows bloodied, “You have to know how to roll.”

“Mickey Dora threads the Malibu crowd…” He paused, creating his own ‘going wild’ crowd noise. The Mickey Dora stand-in’s right arm moved up, out, down, rhythmically; he slid his back foot forward, rotated slightly to more closely face the imaginary wave. His right hand was hit and moved backward by the imaginary lip.

“He… casually… slides his foot forward… Cheater five!”

The board slid forward on the iceplant and down. He, not-so-casually, and not foot-over-foot, back-pedalled, regained his balance, awkwardly, arms way-extended. He stomped the fin back down; but not until after the board had bumped into Ben’s board, it resting on Sam’s, with a ‘thwack,’ the sound a bit hollower, maybe, than wood on wood, and different than a board hitting, say, a jetty.

“Al-vin!” Ben yelled, he and Sam heading toward him from the front porch where they had been, coolly, watching me behave so non-coolly.

Yeah, it was me. I wanted you to get an image before you found out. Husky, not chubby.

My nickname before the glasses, ‘Alvin’ was always shot at me, by parents, teachers, friends, upper class assholes, with the same voice used in the Chipmunks cartoons.

“Watch it, Kooks! Valley cowboys!” I was above them, grabbing a rail, fighting through a curling section. “Head-dip!”

“Dip shit you mean.” That was Sam.

Ben checked for damage on his newer, but still purchased used, Hansen eight-ten, looked at Sam, who shrugged, then back at me. I looked at Ben, at Sam, at the rail of Ben’s board. I shrugged, since, obviously, a shrug was the proper gesture.

“You’re lucky, Owl,” Ben said. Owl was my post-glasses nickname. I hated it, originally, maybe less than ‘Alvin!’ or Al, as in ‘Sam, Ben, and, oh, yeah; Al.” But, there was, several years after the nickname became widespread, a surfer, who wore glasses, had his photo in “Surfer,” also nicknamed ‘Owl,’ Owl Chapman; so, it became okay, depending on who used it.

[Of course. A girl in class thinking I must be a bit smarter; fine. If she said, “So, you surf?” This was even better. Owl was my surf name. In a time, just past “Gidget,” when ‘Greaser’ meant, as far as I knew, someone who loved and worked on cars, and ‘Ho-dad’ meant poser, and ‘Kook’ meant some phase I thought I’d quickly advanced out of, ‘Surfer’ meant some semi-private club, individuals who… shit, they were like Knights, people who seriously challenged the ocean. Being a surfer meant so much more than the actual act; it was a tribe, and those who were the best at it, these were my first heroes. I wanted to be one of them, one of those surfers; not Sitting Bull but Crazy Horse.]

Sam merely glanced at his board, an even-newer Surfboards Hawaii nine-six with an inordinate numbers of patches and unfixed dings.

[In the back room of the shop (for years now the La Paloma Theater), the owner, John Price, had told us, the board had been used (he didn’t say owned) by an actual member of his surf team, Sidney something, as I don’t quite recall, and was “perfect for Swamis, or…” He looked over Sam and his three overly-impressed buddies. This particular grouping included Billy Butts, way taller than the three of us, who rode (tried to ride) a ten-six board from Orange County his parents had bought new. New. Billy (you know we always called him Butts; Big Billy Butts) had driven us this day, after school. Having him there had the added benefit of, by comparison, allowing me to be a bit cooler. “…Tamarack.”

Tamarack. I had switched from mat to board surfing there, June of 1965, soon joined by Ben, he and I riding to the beach and back in the very back of the surf-decorated (by my sister, including curtains and a ‘Surfer’ magazine ‘Murphy’ decal) 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air family nine passenger station wagon. We had most of a year’s head start before other freshmen at Fallbrook Union High School started surfing. By this time, on our second (still used) boards, we’d moved on to Grandview and Swamis.

Sam bought the board with the dings and patches only after twenty bucks was knocked off, and a bar of ‘special’ wax for each of us was added.

Butts, showing his lack of coolness, pointed to the Oahu-shaped Surfboards Hawaii decals in the front display case as Sam paid. “Those are for our team riders,” Mr. Price pointed out. Showing my own lack of coolness, I sewed a similar shape onto one leg of my trunks. A year or so later, two other members of the group who had tried surfing but, as with many of our contemporaries, didn’t stick with it, showed their lack of coolness and morality by stealing several of these stickers. “What can you do with them?” I asked. “People will know.”]

We all sort of froze as the unmistakable sound of a Volkswagen engine was heard, coming up the steep driveway, the weak headlights dropping down in the heavy morning air, hitting briefly but directly on Ben, holding his board in front of him, Sam, turning his board on edge, and me, stepping, foot-over-foot this time, toward the nose.

“Coop!” I yelled, waving wildly.

“Don’t call him ‘Coop,’ Alvin,” Ben said, throwing his board on the grass and grabbing my extended arm. “Cooper. I had to kiss his, and my sister’s, ass…asses, to get him to take us.”

“Cooper, Benny. Yeah, fine; Cooper.”

It was a Monday, a week before Easter vacation, March of 1967. We had picked this day (my idea, really, fiercely fought for) because, one, it was a week before the waves would be more crowded with surfers who would not wear wetsuits, and merely wouldn’t surf in the colder months, not to mention new surfers and those gremmies whose parents took time off to coincide with holidays, and were thusly available to cart the little a-holes to whatever beach the punks thought the coolest; and, two, because, if it’s a Monday, those real surfers who had surfed on the weekend might be at school, at jobs or, maybe, just temporarily, surfed-out.

[Easter, or before, when the water temperature got back up to 58 degrees, was the official start of ‘wear a wetsuit and look like a pussy’ season. Wetsuits were not really accepted as proper gear until the water dropped to the magic 58 degree mark; usually just before Christmas.]

By Wednesday, that urge to surf would be back.

I had; and this angered (at least irritated) my two friends, actually supplied the school, on Friday, a note to cover my absence. Still, for Sam and Ben, it was so cooler to hitchhike than ride the bus or get a ride from a parent, so much cooler to ditch. Yeah, well… coolness.

[I’d skewer any writer who submitted something with this much exposition, this many tangent lines. He or she would argue that “real life isn’t linear.” I’d agree; then add, “Do readers want real life?” “Shading, setting, background; some reality to make fiction seem… possible.” “Yeah, great; but just a bit simpler.”

Yeah, great, but…coolness; I have to discuss it. Samuel and Benjamin were so cool that, when they did get caught for ditching school, in our senior year; there weren’t enough detention hours left in the session; so, as a penalty, they had to pick up trash on campus during the morning break (called ‘nutrition’) and at lunch. This didn’t lessen, and, perhaps, enhanced their coolness quotient; poking wrappers and papers near cute girls on benches, girls who appreciate a bad boy who’s not that kind of bad, not a ‘hard guy’ thug. I did ditch several times (including this time), always to go surfing. No, there was once to go to these girls’ house in Temecula, this other guy’s (not even a surfer) idea. We sat around and listened to records. Not much fun for all the trouble it got me into (with my Mom, she didn’t rat me out- that time) And there was another time, with Ben and Sam; I just didn’t really enjoy hanging out on base, hoping my dad didn’t drive by. I still haven’t mastered the art of non-surf-related hanging out.]

The 1962 VW bus pulled toward the garage, did three back-forward-back maneuvers, pulled up close to the two surfers on the gravel, each with his board standing beside him.

My board lurched forward, nose into the gravel. I dismounted, clumsily, at speed, tried to regain my balance as I stumbled toward the bus; crashed (soft crash) against it, yelled, “Shotgun!” As I opened the door, I yelled out, a bit too loudly, “Coop!”

CHAPTER TWO

FIFTEENTH STREET, DEL MAR

“You used to be able to park out there,” I said, pointing to an area beyond the fence. “For free. This one time, a couple of days before I was going to represent Fallbrook High in this surfing contest; don’t know how we got to 15^th Street; my parents sat in the car and watched while I surfed. It was evening, glassy, and I was almost the only one out.”

My daughter was on her cell phone, in the car, a wire connecting it to the cigarette lighter, the car running just in case it had to be for the re-charging to work, and I was leaning, camera balanced on the roof, shooting a few (non-digital, still) photos of a pretty crowded lineup on a pretty small day.

I won’t go into how everything around the surfing spots had changed in the twenty-five years since I’d taken that job in Seattle. I did explain this in detail to my daughter as I took the wrong turn onto I-5, missed the turnoff for Ocean Beach, forgot which route I should have taken around Mission Bay, discovered the Jack in the Box is still there in Pacific Beach, though the restaurant at the head of Crystal Pier, which I thought was cool but never went to, was totally gone; probably has been for years.

Describing the old surf shop on the PB side, and how I would skateboard or bike down there to surf, I totally forgot the back alley routes I’d take to get back toward Tourmaline Canyon, her mother’s and my second apartment located up the hill and caddy-cornered from the steep access.

“La Jolla Bella,” I said, pointing as we passed; “I’m sure they’re condos now.”

Elizabeth had been on her cell phone for most of the trip; politely looking at the highlights, nodding and smiling.

We had barely stopped the car at Tourmaline, me glancing past the old surfers clumsily donning wetsuits, a couple of teenagers running from the water to get to school, the waves pretty much closing out in front, a couple of more lined-up ones toward PB Point, maybe a hint of a peak out there.

“The point always looked like it should have waves, it just… in the, um, couple of years your mom and I lived in PB… well, there was the one evening. It was… after work. I just kept moving closer as the waves got bigger. By dark, I was at the point and the surf was well overhead. I’d walked down, and it was too dark to… I climbed the cliff, went through someone’s yard, and…”

My daughter was nodding, politely; but had tears in her eyes, then a smile.

“No, Jakes,” she said; “if you can’t make it. No, no… that’s more important. If Tony says…” She turned to me as I pulled onto the wrong back street, not the one Kate and I would ride our bikes on, in the general direction of Windansea. “Jakes has another radio interview; Orange County.”

Now I nodded, politely, smiled. “Fuckin’ Tony. Promoting.”

“Yeah, Dad’s thrilled. No, more exposure. It’s good.”

We drove on, around soft corners and past plush estates worth unmentionable sums, and did, eventually, find Windansea. I double-parked, reeling off the story of my not being able to catch more than four waves in an hour; me, wave-hog, twenty years old; held back by the pack of locals controlling the single peak. Ah, but, when the surf got big… I described how it was all a takeoff and drop, bottom turn, cutback, kind of bob around while trying to maintain enough speed to make the suddenly-jumping-up inside section.

“I lost my board three times on the inside section in one day. Once, someone kindly stuck it on top of one of those big rocks.”

“He has a driver, Dad; town car; wherever he wants to go.”

“Big budget, Elizabeth. I offered him a rental, but he’d have to… I don’t know, can a person rent a car in LA and drop it off in San Diego? I don’t even know.”

Elizabeth’s cell phone rang again as we coasted down the last big curve towards La Jolla Shores. Jakes was caught in traffic in one of those indistinguishable Orange County cities.

“No, Dad, he can’t see the Matterhorn. He says Tony says…”

“Oh, so Tony’s, like, actually with him.” I leaned toward the phone. “Hey, Jakes.” Elizabeth pointed her phone toward me. “Fuck Tony.” She hadn’t pulled the phone away quickly enough.

“Yeah, he did say, ‘fuck Tony,’ Jakes.” Elizabeth looked toward me, almost laughing, mouthed ‘fuck Tony,’ added, “so, yeah, maybe Tony can… maybe you can give us the number, maybe we can pick it up from here. Another NPR station… I hope.”

After a bit of listening as I found a street I could make a left hand turn onto, Elizabeth said, “Tony says he really, really, genuinely appreciates your going on TV yesterday.”

Without waiting for my response, Elizabeth said, “Fuck Tony.”

I fumbled with the radio. “What’s the…number. Where do I find this station?”

________________________________________________________________________

SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF FALLBROOK

Oh, yeah; I was riding shotgun, but I was shotgun to the non-talking, not-responding-to-my-talking Cooper, and Sam and Ben seemed to be having more fun in the back, not bouncing (too much), but thoroughly checking out the latest “Surfer” magazine, so happily discovered on the homemade bed.

“It’s Billy Hamilton at the Santa Ana rivermouth,” Ben said, describing (reading, actually, Ben didn’t know Billy Hamilton from Billy Butts) the cover I’d had half a second to check out. “Bitchin cutback. Squared-off nose on his board. Yeah!”

Cooper reached under a sweater and towel, properly damp, between us on the bench seat, pulled out an older “Surfer,” kind of shook it towards me. I grabbed it.

“Shit!” Cooper said, glancing in his side mirror. “Waltersheid. Don’t look!”

“Cooper, there’s a Highway Patrolman behind us,” Sam said, peeking through the back window’s curtains.

“I said ‘don’t look,’ cheesedick. Damn.”

“He said ‘don’t look, cheesedick,’ cheesedick,” Benjamin said.

“Shit!” Cooper said again as the bubble light on the patrol car came on.

“Shit!” I said, “Why’d you look, cheesedicks?”

The bus slowed down, pulled off near a wooded area that frequently smelled of road-killed skunk. There was, in fact, one dead in the southbound lane, not all squished, but definitely dead. It had almost made it to the center line. Almost. Several southbound cars avoided the carcass. Cooper rolled the driver’s side window down. We waited.

“Skunk,” I said.

“No shit,” Sam said.

NOTE: Alright, I have to apologize for dropping back on this story a bit. My plan was to keep the storyline from 2004 and this one from 1967 in about the same time, dawn to dusk. There are other storylines coming. Okay, hang on.

BACK AT BEN’S HOUSE, we loaded the boards on the Aloha racks, mine on top of Cooper’s, the other two on the driver’s side, for balance. Anxious about losing my shotgun position, I ran back to the porch to pick up my old Boy Scout backpack, grabbed it, spun back.

“Oh,” she and I both said, mine a moment after hers, probably a bit higher. I was more startled, suddenly so close, face to face.

“Oh,” I said again. Ben’s sister had come to the laundry room door from the actual, but almost never used, front door; the formal entrance.

“Catherine,” I said as her left hand touched my shoulder. Only partially because her eyes seemed to be saying, ‘stop looking into my eyes,’ I looked at her hand.

“Oh. Al-vin,” she said, using that hand to move me aside, her eyes on Cooper, approaching. Yeah, I looked into her eyes again.

I probably shouldn’t mention that sleeping on a sort of Japanese couch thing almost outside her bedroom door had contributed significantly to a rise in my going-surfing-early anxiety level. Closed door, but still, I wasn’t yet sixteen, and she was, I thought, perfect, the perfect surfer’s girlfriend.

While so many of her contemporaries had teased and stiff hairdos, Catherine’s was blond and straight. She was thin and not ashamed of it, and, not trying to get too detailed here, she had that kind of aloof self-assurance that, among silly and worried and unsure high school girls, was just so alluring. She wasn’t mean, exactly, but didn’t seem compelled to be phony-nice; and, if she did feel one was worth speaking to at all; well… she had said, “Oh. Al-vin.” In my immediate memory, the period after ‘oh’ was replaced with a comma.

On the porch, a mere tip of Cooper’s head informed me I wasn’t needed there. I hadn’t had to say, “We’re going surfing; San Onofre;” but, of course, I did, backing away as Catherine took Cooper’s hand, both of them moving into the area away from the porch light.

The light did seem to be reflected in her eyes. Again, I shouldn’t have noticed.

A few moments later, I was back at the bus, holding onto the open passenger door. Sam approached the open side door from the garage, threw his cardboard box of gear onto the bed, then put the “Surfer” magazine on top of his neatly rolled, not folded, towel.

Sam followed my gaze over to the house. They were kissing.

“Friendly,” Sam said. Cooper’s hand moved a bit, inside Catherine’s light robe, around her back. “Very friendly.” Sam looked at me. “Are you holding your breath?”

“No.” Inhale.

Cooper pulled his girlfriend closer. I looked away.

“Whoa,” Sam whispered, grabbing my arm, trying to push me back around.

“Politeness, Sam,” I said, trying to match his whisper.

[It’s the sort of consideration for the possible embarrassment of others that, through the years, has meant I almost saw, or saw too briefly for it to really imprint on my brain, quite a few images. Example: Oceanside Pier, 1964 or so, some woman out in the surf with two Marines almost lost her top going through a wave. I looked away. Polite. The woman and the Marines just laughed.]

“Ben,” Sam said as our friend stepped out the side door. A wicker basket in his hands, he was four steps off the porch when he noticed we weren’t really watching him. Not seeing Cooper with us, he seemed to sense what might be happening, and shook his head. Sam and I would have looked away if Ben’s mother hadn’t suddenly appeared behind him; if Catherine hadn’t suddenly separated from Cooper, casually straightening her robe; if Mrs. Collins hadn’t abruptly looked to her right; if Cooper hadn’t taken the ‘Buy and Save’ bag from her with a smooth, “Mrs. Collins;” if Mrs. Collins hadn’t said, “Riley” as he took it, and then looked, a bit fiercely, toward her daughter, not quite waving at her brother and his surf buddies, the wave held long enough for her man to turn around.

Not that Cooper waved back. I’m sure he smiled.

No, I didn’t look away this time. If I had, I wouldn’t know the look I so wanted to see from my own perfect surfer’s girlfriend, only meant for me. Oh, and I waved, too. I did say I was five months short of sixteen, right?

BACK ON THE ROAD…I fumbled into my backpack as the California Highway Patrolman (they were all over 6’2” in those days) leaned into the driver’s side window.

“Should’a told the kids to not be peeking out the curtains,” Officer Waltersheid, Fallbrook’s main local Highway Patrolman, the one whose name was heard around the campus, including in driver’s education class, said. “You got a license, son?”

Cooper, his license already out, leaned toward me as the officer leaned in to check the two eager faces pushed forward from the back. And mine, leaning almost over Cooper as I pushed a note toward the feared Waltersheid.

“I have a note,” I said.

“Didn’t ask,” he said, glancing at it anyway. “Field trip? Oh. Good; I might’a thought you were all just skipping… truant; going (he did a bit of a shoulder twist) surfing.”

“It covers them, too,” I said, looking for reactions on the faces of my friends. As did Waltersheid. Sam and Ben tried to hide their surprise. No, I hadn’t told them that I’d typed in their names after my mom signed it; reluctantly, with a promise I wasn’t behind on my school work, and a question as to why I’d even need such a note. “Truant Officers,” I’d explained. “Just in case.”

“Just in case then.”

Quickly Samuel and Benjamin were smiling, nice guy smiles.

“Your mom work at Hooley’s?” The patrolman looked from their faces to the paper, back at me, this time for a half second too long.

I looked at him a full second too long, trying to determine if he was about to say something I’d have to hate him for.

“Used to. She got a job on base. Photo lab. She and my dad can ride in…”

“Nice woman. Got that weird religion, though. You?”

Pause, think; “I go; yeah.”

He handed the paper back with a smile. “You driving yet?”

“Couple of times. Just got my learners’… Sam and Ben are…”

“Didn’t ask.”

“I thought you said you have a driver’s license, Mr. Riley F. Cooper.”

Riley F. Cooper just splayed his hand out toward the card on Waltersheid’s clipboard.

“This is ‘bout to expire, son. Eighteen, almost. You better be gettin’ a new one. Oh…” He stepped back toward the highway, made a sweeping motion toward the back of the bus. “You can’t be driving around with the wheelwells all cut up like this. Illegal. Probably. I know you want to be all cool and shit, big tires and such; and I could measure… but…” and now he came closer, smiled at all of us. Each one of us, other than Cooper, returned the expression. Or maybe he did smile, but…a pause is needed here…ironically.

“I can see you’re all anxious to get to your surfing.” Now Waltersheid, having backed away a few steps, adjusting his gunbelt in his own version of wild west lawman, added, “or maybe… it’s too early for even teachers to be going to school. Better head on out.”

He made his right hand into a pistol, two fingers forward, pointed it at each of us younger surfers, individually, shot and recoil, said, “Don’t be driving foolishly, kids. Oh, and… and don’t be peeking out the curtains. Makes you look…” He dramatically pulled his sunglasses out of a top pocket, put them on, and, using an even deeper voice, finally added, “…suspicious.”

[Waltersheid was walking away. Ben and Sam were still leaning toward the front seat, each of us waiting to witness Cooper’s anger, hear his comments. It was taking too long. He seemed too calm.

“Your son’s queer!” Ben said after Waltersheid’s car drove past us. The car almost made a complete u-ey, had to back up a bit before slamming it in reverse, then scratched out, directly and purposefully over the skunk, on toward Bonsall.

A sort of automatic “Ewwww!” came from each of us, Cooper rolling the window up. Quickly.

Ben looked at Sam, beside him, then at me, then Cooper. Cooper didn’t seem to approve of the ‘queer’ comment. “Well, he is.” Ben said.

“For you, maybe;” Sam said, moving back toward the bed, flipping the bird with both hands in the general direction of the long gone patrol car. “Fuck you Waltersheid!”

“Yeah, fuck you, Waltersheid!” I had meant it to sound bold, practiced.

Cooper looked at me, almost smiled. “Fuck him,” Cooper whispered, restarting the bus.

“Yeah,” I said. Everyone looked at me. “Yeah, fuck (more emphasis on the ‘fuck’) you, Waltersheid.”

“You tell him, Owl,” Cooper said, making a point of swerving into the southbound lane and running over the skunk carcass.

“Ow!”

As we approached the first houses of Fallbrook, Sam pulled a package of cigarettes from his rolled towel (Tracytons, I think), and a silver lighter with the Marine Corp logo on it, in color. He handed Ben one, lit his and Ben’s.

At the first hint of smoke, Cooper pulled the bus over, looked in the rear view mirror. “You want to walk?” He looked at me as if wondering why I hadn’t been offered a cigarette. “Real surfers don’t fucking smoke,” he said, cigarettes extinguished, pulling out again.

Probably smiling, looking deep into my “Surfer” magazine, I didn’t even bother to repeat the phrase. Not outloud, anyway. Later, however, when I did smoke cigarettes, I would remember it.]

NOTE: Pretty happy with the last bracketed part, I feel compelled to add that somewhere in here someone mentioned I hadn’t had to provide the note; could’ve said we were going after school. Never mind; I’ll put it in with the section on actually crossing Camp Pendleton and eliminate it here. So, PREVIEW>

________________________________________________________________________

Real (and annoying OLD GUY) Surfers

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under northwest surfing, real surfers, surf adventures, surf illustrations, surf sessions, surf stories, surfing art, surfing Southern California in the 60s, Uncategorized

I don’t know how the top line got all crooked. I thought I measured it. Well, old guys, don’t even know how to do computer illustrations. Incidentally, I want to make the statement, “I’m here to surf!” I probably can’t copyright it, or trademark it, but it does define my mindset when I hit the water. Always has. Not apologizing.

Still, I never use the ‘old guy’ card to excuse any perceived over-zealousness; just as I never used my youth to excuse my wave-hogging to the limits of my ability and the constraints of ocean and crowd.

And I do have sessions and particular waves that I’ll never forget. Until I’ve forgotten just about everything else. Oh, and there’s no semi-self portrait here. I never surfed Rincon, epic or otherwise; but I did, once, surf small-but-decent Upper Trestles alone. Once. I will have to work on something to do with how surfers tend to think the waves can’t be any good because no one’s out. Or maybe just one guy. I’ll never forget… hey, get your own memories.

A Slightly LarGER VERsion of the Drawing for ‘Joyce Hoffman’s Bra’

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under surf adventures, surf illustrations, surf sessions, surf stories, surfing art, surfing Southern California in the 60s, surfing tales, uncatagorized

I posted the story before I finished processing the drawing; and then the drawing- I don’t know why- can’t seem to figure this stuff out- came out smaller than I’d like. So, I hit ‘edit.’ Not sure what happened to that version. Anyway, if you’re looking at this, just keep moving down to the next story. And the next, and… Hey, Happy New Year!

December’s Lost Boards- Swami’s ’69, Straits ’14

Posted on December 30, 2014 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under northwest surfing, secret surf spots on the Straits of Juan de Fuca, surf adventures, surf sessions, surf stories, surfing in Washington State, surfing Southern California in the 60s, surfing Swamis, uncatagorized

photo by Steve Kohr, stevekohr.com

12/28/14- FORMERLY SEMI-SECRET SPOT- STRAITS OF JUAN DE FUCA.
It would be half an hour before the winter sun would rise, and even then it would be blocked for hours by the Olympic Mountains, then the nearer tree lines. In fact, at this time of year, on the north shore of the west coast, the sun merely hugs the mountains like an all-day dawn. At 7:30 am, what could be seen was grainy, almost colorless; headlights in the parking area, semi-clear sky, the water was the color of drowning, of death at sea.
And I was in it trying to swim, side-stroke, one hand on my paddle; and I hadn’t even caught a wave yet.
Yeah, it’s over-dramatic; but I was the one caught in it, swimming because I had tried to cut across the usually waveless channel, the deep spot between two reefs; so confident; thinking I could snag an inside left on my way out to a lineup in which the first members of the dawn patrollers were trying to find the perfect place to take off in a crazy sea.
Sure, I’d seen, even in the dim light, the sets breaking on the outlside indicators, the roll-throughs, the waves that closed out the channel and the ones that could provide those storied rides that start on the outside reef and end up past the parking area, past the fence.
“I ended up way past the fence, man.” “Whoa.” Meaningful.
But this is my favorite spot on the Straits of Juan de Fuca; I’ve surfed here (first time, 1979, next time 2005, if this means anything) in every condition, from low tide rights you couldn’t catch with a regular board, fin clicking across rocks; to those just-mentioned left peelers; to bouncy just-after-a-storm surf, waves blown by winds from sideshore squalls, rain or sleet, cold offshores from fresh mountain snow; fun, user-friendly conditions- but I’ve also surfed days with these outside roll-throughs, almost out of control, where the hard part was not panicking, holding my position, waiting for the reef to catch the bottom of the swell, to shape it properly.
Big Dave had been on the wave, dealing with an inside close out, almost directly in front of me; the wave that ripped the leash that, evidently, hadn’t had enough Velcro ‘bite.’ It wasn’t a big pull; my board was just gone.
Oh, I could see it, tantalizingly close, just out of reach; then, another wave, and it popped up again, farther away.
I was only yards from the beach, but I knew the waves wouldn’t help push me to shore. The tide was too high, washing up on the river-rock bank; pushing up and rolling rocks and foam uphill. Then there were clackity-thunk sounds as the energy tumbled back down, crashing into the next surge. I knew there would be no bottom to put my feet on to take a last leap forward.
still, not panicking.

actual shot from ’69

DECEMBER OF 1969- SWAMI’S-
It was the second day of the famous swell. I had survived the first, seriously undergunned with my regular short board (probably around 6’6”) in well-overhead waves with an unusually strong Santa Ana offshore. Yes, I was one of those guys hanging on the shoulder. In my memory bank’s version (probably in a Super 8 format- still), I was out very early and the tide was at that height where there is no inside and outside; merely a long wall that required a crazy-late takeoff, offered a crazy-long barrel past the shoulder-hoppers, and rewarded the best surfers with the best rides Swami’s could possibly offer.
I know I didn’t do a ‘paddle (in) of shame,’ but I couldn’t say I caught anything but a few insiders.
But, on the second day, the waves only a bit smaller, on a different, longer (still round-nosed- hate a pointy nose) board, the weather was stormier, the tide lower, the waves more broken up, and I was attacking the inside lineup, lined up on the palm tree on the cliff, that below the solid line of onlookers at the edge of the parking lot; scratching into waves that ‘went wide’ and peaked on the inside lineup or had closed out on the guy riding from the outside peak.
Still, I was looking for the smaller waves. I caught a few, but it was rough. I did keep getting caught inside, part of the crowd the riders had to navigate. The thrashing-to-riding ratio wasn’t really going my way, and too many waves I wanted went to others. “One more wave” I told myself.
And I caught it. If you know Swami’s, particularly the inside section, you know there’s a drop and a wall, then an area to cut back, cruise back and forth, and then, over the grassy finger slabs inside, often there’s another little section. Maybe I was too far outside. I made the drop and was totally in position for the wall. Too far back.
It wasn’t like the worst wipeout/holddown of my career, another wave at Swamis where I fell from the top (of note: On a turn, not dropping-in), to the trough, had the wind knocked out of me, came up seriously out of breath, sucked in part of twelve inches of foam. This was more a whacking, a full-body punch, the energy as much out as down.
I wasn’t panicking. I was swimming. “Fine,” I thought,” I’m done for the day.”
STRAITS- After a couple of shorepound knockdowns I found footing, slogged up the steep beach, my paddle in my hand; breathing in deeply, coughing out. The water, probably 45 degrees or so at the nearest buoy, is so much colder when you’re between two streams coming off fresh mountain snow; and seems even colder when you’re swimming.
My board was not on shore, however. It had drifted down past the fence and was headed out. I hurried down the beach until I was even with it. In that time it had moved farther out, headed toward the other reef. Tim Nolan, who, for once, I had beaten to the beach, was ready to paddle out. I was too far away to yell at him to help me and a bit too shaken up to swim, my board now a hundred yards out. I threw the paddle up onto the higher beach and thought, “Maybe it’s just not my day.”
FATE AND KARMA- Each of these seems to be about things in life kind of evening-out. My own philosophy is somewhere in there.
Maybe it was because I had thought it amusing when I saw someone in a car with a longboard getting a ticket over by Discovery Bay when I was on my way home from working in Port Townsend that, earlier this very morning, I had gotten a speeding ticket near Port Angeles. Maybe it was fitting that several of the folks in the rigs in the parking area had passed by us (Stephen Davis, Keith Darrock also in my car) in front of the car with the flashing lights, maybe it was only right other surfers should mention it, chuckling as they did.
Maybe there’s some wicked form of Fate/Karma in that, cruising up Surf Route 101, we chanced to be behind someone either sleepy or drunk, weaving across the center line, then across the fog line; and Steve called 911, and we gave them the license number; and I had Steve tell them the car would be behind a white car with several boards on top; and, when the officer returned with our tickets (Keith got one for no seatbelt- also, really my fault), the drunk-or-sleepy guy drove right past.
“I hope he gets home all right,” the State Patrolman said.
That karma’s on him. Maybe. Oh, and maybe it’s this: The last time I was out in similar conditions in the Straits, the first (and only) guy out that morning tried desperately to catch an inside wave, caught the third he tried for, came in, ran up the beach, and, wide-eyed, asked, “Is it always like this?” “It’s never like this.” Another surfer and I, both on longboards, started paddling out, he a bit closer to the reef. A wave closed out immediately in front of us. I turned turtle. When I came up, he had lost his board. I kept paddling.
At least he was close to the reef.

another retro shot; I’d be further to the left.
RESOLUTION-
IN 1969, not finding my board on the rocks or beach, members of collective crowd on the bluff were pointing and yelling, “It’s in the rip!” It was. I looked up, looked out, swam almost to the inside lineup, climbed on my board, caught one more wave. A good one according to my Super 8 file; and went in, did better the next day.
THE OTHER DAY I almost thought I’d lost my board forever, thought I’d be watching Keith and Stephen deal with the Dawn Patrol Syndrome, watching the waves get more and more crowded. But, Big Dave left the lineup, paddled over, grabbed a hold of my board, started paddling it in. Push, paddle, push. When he got close to the inside waves, I swam out. I still had a bit of trouble getting it and me in. When I did, I dragged it (by the leash) up the beach, took a break, reclaimed some (not quite all) of my usual confidence. Four hours after Keith was the first one in the water, the day now sunny, the tide more normal, the waves more in control, way too many people in the water, we all agreed it had been, ON BALANCE, a great session. Each of us had a few good ones, a few ‘past the fence.’
Maybe not for everyone (there were some words exchanged among others, at volume, in the water), but for each of us.
THANKS, Big Dave; I owe you (another) one.

A Christmas Retelling of “Joyce Hoffman’s Bra”

Posted on December 25, 2014 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under surf adventures, surf sessions, surf stories, surfing art, surfing Southern California in the 60s, surfing tales

This piece was originally written in March of 2013. I did reach out to Joyce Hoffman, via her website; but did not receive a response. Okay. It’s fine. It has, however, given me some sense of (maybe) accomplishment, that, if you google “Joyce Hoffman,” somewhere on the first page, is my little story. I have a couple of other ideas for Christmas stories as I sit here on the very morning, thinking about how the present surfers were given yesterday are probably still working today; but I have places to go and… maybe this isn’t atypical: If I hadn’t stayed up so late last night I’d be out right now. Well, I did open my present early… a few long lines… anyway… hope your season has a few that stay open long enough to tuck in or glide through, Oh, the stuff in [brackets] is kind of like the commentary. The stuff in the (these things) was already here.

JOYCE HOFFMAN’S BRA

My boss, Buddy Rollins [real name Lacy, which partially explains why he went to prison in Florida, where he learned sign lettering], of Buddy’s Sign Service, sold Christmas trees for several years at an otherwise empty lot next to Master’s Automotive, right on Oceanside Boulevard (U.S. Highway 101) in Oceanside, California.

Master’s Automotive, or, as we, in my family, referred to it, Mac’s Garage. Mac’s was where my father worked all day on Sundays, and Tuesday and Thursday evenings after his regular job on Camp Pendleton. It’s not like my dad and I hung out during the two seasons I untied bundles of trees, cut a little off the bottom, set them up on wooden supports, sold trees, and tied trees onto cars. We were busy.

I enjoyed the selling of the trees the most. I had received some experience helping out at the lot set up by my Boy Scout Troop (724, Fallbrook, California). At that time, I thought the whole place was like a clean, moveable, and fake almost-Disney Christmas woods, conveniently set up on blacktop. I could easily imagine background music from the March of the Tin Soldiers. I could fully visualize the cute girls who occasionally came in frolicking with me in the big military-issue (originally) tent; the little post-Mouseketeer, pre-Beach Party Annette Funicellos all giggly and…

Hey, I was, like, eleven to, maybe 13. So, not much actual frolicking. Mind frolicking.

But now, on Buddy’s lot, I was eighteen [the first year], then nineteen. I had a girlfriend, Trish, a real surfer girl- blond hair, not afraid of waves, not irritated by the sand as Annette had been rumored to have been.

And, in 1970, my second season on Buddy’s lot, Trish [who had her own job] worked a few shifts with me. That is, she sold lots [lots] of trees, and kept me busy loading and tying-on, while not merely holding several for her customers to decide between. “What do you think?” they’d ask. They’d ask her.

“Um, Erwin; could you load this please?” Sure.

So it was that I didn’t sell but did get to carry a tree to Joyce Hoffman’s VW bus, two surfboards on top. This was JOYCE HOFFMAN, the famous surfer, world champion, everything champion, the first woman to surf [I read this- didn’t see footage] the Banzai Pipeline, the only surfer to be named “Person of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times, the first woman to (later) be be inducted into the Surfer’s Hall of Fame.[‘On her way home from surfing Trestles, Rincon, some other mythological spot, she had stopped in here!’ You should read the previous line like the voice-over from “A Christmas Story”]

Blonde, fit, Joyce Hoffman had competed in a male-dominated sport and conquered. “Hey,” I wanted to say, “I surf. I have a VW bus. I, I surf, too.” I didn’t. I did say something like, “Joyce Hoffman,” to which she responded with something like a polite, casual, “Uh huh.”

It seemed just knowing who she was would have been enough to prove I was a surfer. A real surfer, dammit.

Then she opened the side door. There, on the bed, was a bra. Nothing else. [nothing else I instantly focused on] “Um.” I turned around quickly, politely, adjusting the tree a bit. When I turned back, the bra was gone. Joyce looked only slightly less casual, arms kind of crossed.

taken from Matt Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing

NEAR MISS. In 1976, living in Encinitas, I was painting most weekends for Two-Coat Charlie Barnett. I had actually gone back to work for the Navy Public Works in San Diego. Charlie wanted me to call in sick a couple of days to help out him and his brother, Olie, on a job in Leucadia, near Moonlight Beach. An added incentive was that the job was for a famous woman surfer, Joyce, and her husband.

I really couldn’t, and I didn’t. It turned out that the job involved bleaching and stripping real wood paneling, and somewhere in the process, Olie, who regularly sprayed lacquer without a respirator, got ill enough to have to be rushed to the hospital, and then stayed there a couple of days. No smoking, either.

Well. Missed opportunities. Had I worked the job at Joyce’s house, I could have said, waiting for the ambulance, probably in an only slightly chemically-altered state, “Hey, I once loaded a Christmas tree in your VW bus, and…” chuckle, chuckle, end of this imagined scenario.

Other than Joyce Hoffman might have said, giving me one more, slightly skeptical check-out, “Uh huh.” If she’d kind of crossed her arms, I’d have known she remembered.

[Merry Whatever-you-celebrate-during-this-season to all the real surfers; to all the former surfers who remember there was, on rare occasions, something magical about surfing; to all the kooks and posers and after-work-and-weekenders; to all the girls who couldn’t just sit on the beach and watch; to all the young frothers, and to all those who merely simmer. If I can’t be surfing, I do feel thankful that I sometimes have a few moments to write about it (Not that I wouldn’t rather be pulling up high and tight on a runner)]

My Custom-Tailored 1965 Shortjohn Wetsuit

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Erwin A. Dence Jr. under northwest surfing, surf adventures, surf illustrations, surf sessions, surf stories, surfing art, surfing Southern California in the 60s, surfing tales, Uncategorized

My First Wetsuit- 1965
Because it’s December, because I’m thinking about what wetsuit items I need for the colder WINTER season, it seemed like a great time to relive a few things about my first wetsuit, the classic CALIFORNIA SURFER’S SHORT JOHN, custom fit in 1965, and purchased for the sum on $15.00, plus tax. Not to give too much away too soon. So:
BOOTIES- Very fine. My daughter, Dru, bought them for my birthday. Because I have a bone spur/bursitis on my heel of my left foot, I’ve been sticking with the zip up pair I bought from a dive shop in Bremerton, though I’ve ripped through the material in a few places. So, no new booties; I can take the tightness if I don’t have to hike too far.
VEST/HOOD- In pretty good shape. Fine. This piece adds an added mil of rubber for my core. It’s a bit tighter than I might like, but, well, maybe that’s something I can work on. No, not cutting it and adding more material.
RASH GUARD- It’s fine, does its job; could use a higher neck area, and it never seems to dry out. Yes, I could bring it in the house. Okay, no new rash guard.
3/2 MIL (or is it 4/3?) BODY GLOVE LONGJOHN WETSUIT, with back zipper- Broken string replaced with longer, sturdier shoe laces, this piece was purchased in a Seattle surf shop (I was doing a job in Queen Anne, it’s the shop by the Aurora Avenue Bridge) for about one hundred dollars (plus tax), and had been (lightly) used in the shop’s rental/surf school operation down at Short Sands in Oregon; so, though I’m sure it did contain some residue of someone else’s urine, it was probably a specialty tea drinker from some Portland office complex, trying to seem more interesting (“You do know I surf, right?”), and maybe (because it is big enough to fit me, maybe the renter wanted to lose a few pounds. Yeah, the suit is getting a bit thin in the places I grip to get it into position, yes, I have patched a few spots with material cut from my previous wetsuit… So, probably not getting a new wetsuit this year. And, incidentally, I did offer the folks at my local(ish) surf shop, NXNW SURF, in Port Angeles, an opportunity to sell me a rental wetsuit; the kid working probably didn’t pass the word on to Frank Crippen. Oh, and, as I did when I got this suit, I want my next one to be a size smaller. Working on it.
GLOVES- I have several pairs of worn out gloves. I definitely need new gloves. Santa?

PHILLIP C. HARPER , my first surfing buddy, now Dr. Phillip C. Harper (I added this for when he googles himself), as with all things surfing, found out for both of us how to get proper gear for our first winter season as surfers. He may have already gone for his fitting, but was kind enough to go, after school, with my Mom and me to the shop over by Oceanside Harbor. It was somewhere around December tenth.
The date meant the wetsuit would be my main Christmas present. It also related to the unofficial (but very important) rule that REAL SURFERS don’t don wetsuits until the water temperature drops to 58, and cease wearing them when the temperature comes back up to the magical 58 degree mark, usually some time around Easter Vacation.
MEASURING- This is always embarrassing for a chunky kid. It was somewhat lessened by the fact that Phillip and I had both gone out for wrestling as freshmen at Fallbrook High, and we both knew he weighed somewhere around a hundred pounds, and I had started out the season at 130, but somehow, with strict dieting and exercise (and as much surfing as possible) had ended up the season at 136. Vertical growth, maybe. I got through the measuring, and we got to do some surfing before going back home. Phillip was the guy in a wetsuit. Fine; he needed it more.
STYLE- The wetsuit had no zipper, but did have a, new that year, stainless steel closing mechanism on one shoulder. Stylish and out of the way.
PERSONAL STYLE- Maybe it was more modesty than fashion that made me want to wear trunks over my wetsuit. I’m going to say it was, perhaps, consideration for other surfers who were more, um, err, modestly-endowed, because… anyway; I did soon discover that my Hawaiian Jams, all the rage (according to Phillip) would rip out even faster when worn over the suit. They just didn’t ‘ride up’ properly. But, this didn’t stop me from wearing a t shirt under the suit; sort of an early rash guard effect, though the extra layer did nothing to promote warmth.
NOWADAYS (and for a long time now) surfers wear wetsuits in the summer, even longjohn wetsuits in the summer. Hey, I’m not judging; it’s no longer cool to be cold; and, it must be said, wetsuits are better than ever. I rarely get as cold in water that drops to as low as 43 degrees, possibly lower near the rivers coming off the nearby Olympic Mountains, as I did in the depths of winter in 1966, clad in my Beach Boys (style) striped shirt, my custom short john with the stainless steel closure, and my first pair of Hang Ten trunks. Phillip, no doubt, pointed out the unofficial (but strictly enforced by peer pressure) requirement for real surfers to wear surfing trunks, along with my surf wardrobe of Levis (not Sears or Pennys) jeans, Pennys t shirts, and a properly-showy windbreaker.
Actually, I purchased a pair of Jantzen trunks before the Hang Tens, at the Men’s Shop in downtown Fallbrook, along with gym trunks and an (and I was so embarrassed to ask for this that I wandered around the shop for a long time) athletic supporter. Not wanting to be measured, the trunks (and I think they just ‘ran’ small) were too tight to wear even under a wetsuit; but the other items, with the ‘boys large’ stickers, fit fine.
Not bragging.
No, I don’t wear trunks over my wetsuit. I did mention how cold the water is, right? Colder for some than others.
Again, not bragging.

Real Surfers

Shoulder-hoppers and name-droppers

Category Archives: surfing Southern California in the 60s