Category Archives: surfing Swamis

“SWAMIS” Chapter 6, Part Two, and Review

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surf fiction, surf novels, surfing Swamis

It’s almost Wednesday. TO SAVE TIME that might be spent scrolling, the recap/review, the ‘previously’ the “Swamis” So-far follows. Thanks for reading, or attempting to. I’ll have other content on Sunday, probably with updates on local Olympic Peninsula surfers going elsewhere, Meanwhile, find some waves.

            CHAPTER SIX- PART TWO- TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1969

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

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

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

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

There was an American flag, folded and fit into a triangular-shaped frame, leaning from the seat cushion to the armrest on one side of the portrait. A long thin box with a glass top holding his military medals, partially tucked under the portrait, was next to the flag. If I was expected to cry, or worse; break down, to have a spell or a throw a tantrum, the mourners, celebrants, witnesses, the less discerning among whoever these people were, they would be disappointed. Some, who had never saluted the man, saluted the portrait. This portrait was not the father I knew, not the man the ones who truly believed they knew him knew.

No. I walked past the detectives without looking at them, went down the hallway and opened the door to what was to have been a den but had become storage.  I returned to the living room with two framed photographs pressed against my chest. I did my fake smile and set the portraits on the carpet, face down. I took a moment before I lifted the one on top, turned it over, and leaned it against the footrest part of my father’s chair.

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

Wendall displaced the person to my right, moved close enough to bump me, said, “Gunner,” and toasted. Others followed suit.

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

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

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

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

“It was… taken,” Wendall explained, “in Japan, where they… met, color-enhanced… painted… in San Diego.” I looked at the photo rather than at the people. My father’s arm was around his even younger bride. She was in a kimono.

“The colors of the dress,” my mother always said… she said, ‘they are not even close to the real colors.’ She said our memories… fill in the… real colors.”

I had spoken. I wanted to disappear. I was, perhaps, not out of tears.

I backed my way through the middle of the semi-circle and to the window. I didn’t look around to connect faces with questions and comments. I was somewhere else, imagining what magical waves were breaking beyond the hills that were my horizon, trying to perfectly reimagine a photo from a surfing magazine.  The view was from across highway 101, above the railroad tracks. across the empty lot just south of the Swamis parking lot.  There were, on the horizon, distant swells on a field of diamonds, already bending to the contours of underwater reefs. To the right there were dark green shrubs and trees, palm trees beyond them. Further to the right, large gold lotus blossoms sat atop the corners of a white stucco wall.

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

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

The yellow van with the two popout surfboards on top pulled out of the driveway, a black Monte Carlo behind it. I didn’t recognize the car. I looked around the living room. Wendall and Dickson were holding court with one of the Downtown Detectives over by the sideboard, a two-thirds gone bottle of some brownish liquor between them. The Downtown Guy finished off Langdon’s bottle of wine, looked at the label, laughed, and moved the bottle next to the other empties. He looked around the room, and laughed again, louder.

I looked back out the window. A black Monte Carlo seemed about right. Oversized, pretentious. An investment, likely purchased before he made Lieutenant up in Orange County.

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

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

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

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

The woman swiveled in the seat, picked up a thirty-five-millimeter camera with a medium length telephoto attached, used the top of the windshield to stabilize it, and aimed it at me. Snap. Me in the center of the window, my arms out, hands on either side of the opening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

            Mr. Dewey seemed to realize he had gone a bit too far with this. He tipped the glass up high enough to get the last of the whiskey, and said, “I have a theory.”

“Well, you are the Political scientist, Mr. Dewey.” I turned away.

Mr. Dewey grabbed my arm. “I think, Joseph, that he wanted all the Okies and all the new people to think he was… one of them.”  

“Or…” I looked at Mr. Dewey’s hand. He dropped it. “It’s tradition though, really. Isn’t it, Mr. Dewey? Kill the men. Take the women.”

Mr. Dewey looked into my father’s glass. Empty. I looked around the room, past the dining room, and into the kitchen as if I was looking for a particular person. I turned back toward the window. Mr. Dewey followed me, setting the glass on the sill.

“You know, Joseph; your father was a busy man.” Mr. Dewey was looking from the unfinished garage to the unfinished fencing. “I’m not teaching summer school this year.” I shook my head a bit, waiting for more. “I have time. That’s… If I had a place like… this, I…”

“Yeah. Needs… time. Work.”

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

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

“You. Of course.”

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

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

“Better,” I whispered to myself and the window and the cars and the property that needed work. “I better be.”

… 

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

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

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

            “Correct.”   

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

            I moved a bit closer to the reporter and Dickson. “No, Detective Dickson, I am not getting any help from Downtown,” she said, shooting a look toward the Downtown Guy, who returned a wave and followed Wendall. I moved between the pineapple upside down cake and a plate of frosted brownies. I took a brownie. “You could just tell me how an experienced driver could…”

Dickson looked at me. “Could,” he said, downing one of the pre-filled glasses. “Won’t.”

The reporter looked at me, took a glass from the sideboard, downed it in one gulp, stepped toward me. “You,” she said. “Lee Ransom.” She extended a hand before the alcohol she had thrown down her throat forced her to spread her fingers, lean back, and open her mouth wide enough and long enough to emit a totally flat and involuntary, “Haaaauuuuuh.”

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

Dickson laughed and said, “Smooooth.”

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

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

            “White?”

            “A… man.”

            “Do I write like a… man?”

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

            Lee Ransom may have wanted to chuckle. She didn’t. She extended her hand again and said, “Thank you, Jody.” Dickson snickered.

I took Lee Ransom’s hand, trying to use the grip my father taught me, the one for women. I imagined him, telling me; “Not too strong, not too long, look them in the eye. No matter what they’re wearing… cleavage-wise.” Lee Ransom was wearing a black skirt, knee-length, with a not-quite-black coat, unbuttoned, over a long-sleeved shirt; tasteful, one unbuttoned button short of conservative. I didn’t look at her cleavage or her breasts. I was aware of them.     

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

            “Joey. I go by… Joey.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Flower people,” I said, looking at Lee Ransom until she did a half-smile, half-head tilt.

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

Lee Ransom turned toward Sakura Rollins. Her expression blank, my mother’s best friend shook her head before Lee Ransom could ask her anything.

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

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

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

“I didn’t… ask… you.”

“No, and you wouldn’t.” She tilted her head. “Your mother… she so enjoys having someone she can speak… Japanese with.”

I nodded. “She does, Mrs. Rollins, but… but… thank you.”

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

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

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

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

“Swamis” Recap

CHAPTER ONE -Monday, Nov 13, 1968-

Seventeen-year-old JOEY DeFREINES is talking with his court appointed psychologist, DR. SUSAN PETERS. Joey’s father, San Diego County Sheriff’s Office DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT JOSEPH DE FREINES made the deal following an afterschool incident at Fallbrook Union High School during which Joey put his foot on GRANT MURDOCH’s neck. Dr. Peters asks if, once bullied, Joey has become a bully.

TWO- Saturday, August 14, 1965-

13-year-old Joey tries surfing at PIPES. JULIA COLE is out, already accomplished. She says boy surfers are assholes, surfing is hard, and she stays away from cops and cop’s kids.

THREE- Sunday, September 15, 1968-

Joey tricks SID and other locals in the lineup at GRANDVIEW, gets a set wave. Sid burns Joey and tells him he broke the ‘locals rule,’ that being that locals rule.

Joey, driving his FALCON station wagon, comes upon a VW VAN. Locals DUNCAN, MONICA, AND RINCON RONNY are looking at the smoking engine. They are unresponsive if not hostile to Joey, but Julie (to her friends) asks Joey if he’s a mechanic or an attorney. “Not yet,” he says. There is an attraction between Julie and Joey that seems irritating to, in particular, Duncan.

FOUR- Wednesday, December 23, 1968-

Joey has a front row spot at SWAMIS. He has already surfed and is studying, notebooks on the hood of the Falcon. Arriving out of town surfers want the spot. Joey, hassled by one of them, informs BRIAN that he has a history of striking out violently when threatened, and says he’s on probation. Joey has an episode remembering past encounters, witnessed by the out-of-town surfers and Rincon Ronny, who seems impressed and says those kooks won’t bother Joey in the water. “Someone will,” Joey says, “It’s Swamis.”

FIVE- Thursday, February 27ut-

At breakfast at home in Fallbrook, Joseph DeFreines confronts his son (who he calls JODY) about an acceptance letter from Stanford University Joey hid. Joey’s father is also upset with his wife, RUTH, for some reason, and leaves in a huff, saying he’ll take care of it.

Joey and his younger brother, FREDDY, get a ride home from surf friend, GARY, and Gary’s sister, THE PRINCESS. Ruth is loading the Falcon, says she spoke on the phone with DETECTIVE SERGEANT LARRY WENDALL, and says she will, as always, be back. Freddy blames Joey. Their father calls as their mother pulls away. Joey, looking for the keys to his mother’s VOLVO, speaks briefly, somewhat rudely, with his father. Freddy says he’ll wait for their father. The phone rings. It’s ‘uncle’ Larry. Joey runs toward the Volvo.

SIX- Tuesday, March 4, 1968. PART ONE-

There is a post-funeral wake/memorial/potluck at the DeFreines house. Joey, avoiding the guests, is standing in the big west-facing window. MISTER DEWEY, a teacher at Fallbrook High, says he is surprised that Joey’s ex-Marine, ‘practically a John Bircher,’ father is married to a Japanese woman. “Traditional,” Joey says, “Kill the men, take the women.” Mister Dewey expresses interest in the property Joey’s father never had the time to work on.

A delivery van from ‘Flowers by Hayes’ comes up the driveway, guarded, for the wake, by San Diego Sheriff’s Office DEPUTY SCOTT WILSON. The driver of the van is CHULO, a surfer several years older than Joey. Chulo was arrested along with JUMPER HAYES for stealing avocados. Chulo was crippled during the arrest, went to work camp, became a beach evangelist.

Joey has an episode, during which he replays the accident in which, while driving the Volvo, he follows the Falcon and another car around the smoking JESUS SAVES BUS. Joey’s father, in an unmarked car, passes very close to him and pulls off the highway at high speed. JeJ

Chulo was driving the Jesus Saves bus.

Detective Wendall and DETECTIVE SERGEANT DANIEL DICKSON are at a makeshift bar in the living room. ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT BRICE LANGDON, dressed in a just out of fashion Nehru jacket and rat-stabber shoes, isn’t popular with the two remaining detectives from the VISTA SUBSTATION, or with the other civilians and deputies from the San Diego Sheriff’s Office.

THERESA WENDALL, putting out food, tries to talk to her husband. He avoids her. Their two boys are running through playing cowboys-and-Indians as Langdon seems to corner Chulo.

SIX- PART TWO- TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1969

The wake/memorial continues with various guests praising Joe DeFreines. There is a large portrait on display with the scar on Joey’s father’s left hand showing. Joey’s mother, Ruth, is led to her room by GUSTAVO and CONSUALA HAYES. Those seeking to talk with Ruth are vetted by MORIKO ROLLINS. Theresa Wendall is allowed to go in. Reporter for the North County Free Press, LEE RANSOM, gains access to the property, passing by Deputy Wilson by waving at Joey, in the window, with Joey returning the wave. Langdon seems to be following Chulo away from the property. Lee Ransom questions the detectives on information about Joe DeFreines’ accident.

“Swamis” is copyrighted, all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. Thank you for respecting this. See you. Oh, and Fuck Cancer, and remember, Project 2025 wants to take away porn, even, maybe, surf porn.

WESTPORT Longboard Classic, “Swamis” Ch.5…

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, old surfers, real surfers, surf culture, surfing novels, surfing Swamis, surfing the strait of juan de fuca

IT’S FINALS DAY at the WESTPORT LONGBOARD CLASSIC and realsurfers has a correspondent embedded in the event. Longtime explorer on the coast and the Strait, TOM BURNS, is a *judge, and has agreed to send a few photos and some commentary my way.

PHOTOS- Logo; O’Dark Thirty a Westport; Photo from the ‘memorial wall’ of TOM LE COMPE (RIP), one the ‘harbor boys,’ and one of the first to surf the jetty in the sixties, and Tom Burns; a shot of ‘The Corner” early this morning; Someone Tom didn’t give me a name for; and BARRY ESTES (RIP) with Tom from a RICKY YOUNG contest back in the late 1980s and 90s.

I competed in several of those contests, pushed to do so by my friend from my shipyard days, RAPHAEL REDA. I didn’t meet Tom there. I met him on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Tom, a month or so older than me, was years ahead of me in knowledge of where and when to find waves, but still has a fairly high ratio on the skunk-to-score chart. Tom is, among surfers I know, the preeminent name dropper, with a long history, great memory, and a willingness to talk story. We quickly discovered we have some friends in common, Drew Kampion and Pathfinder Darrell Wood to name drop two, AND Tom was perfectly willing to adopt some of the colorful folks I’ve run into: Tugboat Bill, Big Dave, Concrete Pete, folks without nicknames.

*I helped out at the precursor to the Longboard Classic, the CLEANWATER CLASSIC, a couple of years. Not surfing, I was volunteering and sort of representing SURFRIDER. Not satisfied to stand on the beach with a flag, I pushed my way into being a spotter for the judges, Tom being one of them. I refused to leave. Partially because I do bring the fun, and I do watch a lot of WSL contests on the computer, Tom convinced the head judge to allow me to be a judge the next year. I brought the fun. Too much fun for the head judge. I got in trouble for not matching the other judges’ assessment of rides. “6.5? No, I gave it a 4.6. I mean… really? 6.5?” I wasn’t asked back. Tom wasn’t either. Somehow I was his fault.

EVIDENTLY TOM has served his time in judge purgatory.

OF COURSE, being as tribal as anyone, I’m rooting for surfers from the Olympic Peninsula. We’ll see.

I am up to Chapter 9 on the re-re-re-reedit and tightening of “SWAMIS.” Remember, this material is copyright protected, all rights reserved. Thanks for honoring this, and thanks for reading.

CHAPTER FIVE- THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1969

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

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

Looking out this window, I felt almost level with those hills. Morning light, descending, brought out the details of the ribs and rocks. Afternoon shadows crept from it until the hills once again became a blank shape. There were waves of hills in irregular lines between my hills and the unseen ocean. I had spent time looking away from my studies, imagining the hills in timelapse, the sun setting at one place in winter, another in summer, lines off clouds held back at the ridgeline, breaking over the top; torn, scattering. I had imagined the block as transparent, the ocean visible, late afternoon sunlight reflected off the water and into the empty skies.

… 

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

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

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

My father’s questions demanded an answer or a response.

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

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

Though we had been at the ranchette for more than four years, because the garage had never become water and weather tight, most of the boxes in my room remained stacked and taped and marked. Grease pencil. Yellow, mostly. Some black. I opened an untaped box marked “Cowboy stuff” and took out the legal sized envelope.

As I walked up the hallway, I heard my father ask, “Is this who we are now, Ruth?”

“Not we, Joe. Me. You… didn’t want to be…”

“Involved? No!” I heard a thump, hand to a solid surface. Less than a slam. “Fool that I am, I am… and have been involved this whole time.” 

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

My parents were standing at the counter to the right of the double sink. I placed the envelope on the tablecloth, next to my father’s plate. Sausage and eggs. Uneaten. Cup of coffee. Half full. I sat down. I looked over. My father signed at the bottom of two pages. My mother refolded them into thirds and put them into an envelope. She set the envelope on the left side of the sink, on top of several other loose papers. Legal size. Eight and a half by fourteen inches.

“I’ll fix it, Joe. Today.”

My father grunted, stepped around my mother. He was looking at the pages, shaking his head. He looked toward his wife. Her back was to the sink, both hands behind her on the edge of the counter. She looked at my father’s hands as he folded those papers in half. He took in a breath, turned toward her, let out the breath slowly. He handed her the papers with his right hand. She took them with her left hand, handed him the brown lunch sack with her right.

“Ruth. You could… This could give you… freedom. Ikura desuka?”

My mother only rarely spoke Japanese, my father almost never. My mother froze. “Freedom, Joe?” My father’s expression was one of instant regret.

I replayed the words. “E’-kew-rah des-kah.” Again. “E’-kew-rah des-kah.” There was something in the flow, the rhythm of my mother’s native language I had given up trying to capture. “E’-kew-rah des-kah?”

…

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

“Going.”

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

“Go. Yes.”

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

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

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

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

Freddy asked, “What about taking your car, Mommy?” Our mother looked at me and shook her head. I shook mine. Freddy looked at me. “What did you do this time, Jody?”

…

            Gary and Roger were my closest surf friends. Roger started board surfing the summer I did, 1965. Gary started the next summer. By the time we were seniors, many others had tried surfing. Most didn’t stick with it for long. Though Roger lived closer to me, Gary offered to give me a ride home.

            I was riding shotgun. Gary’s sister, squeezed tightly against the backseat passenger door of their mom’s Corvair, said, in an unnecessarily whiny voice, “Glad it’s all cool with you, Gary.”

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

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

“Princess,” Gary said.

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

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

“She’s a sophomore, you know,” the Princess said, looking at me. “Sophomore.” I gave her the expression she was looking for. The relationship was wrong. And creepy.

“Roger’s business, Princess. Now, Joey, maybe, after school… days are getting longer. We could do Oceanside pier. Tamarack, if I drive.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Possible. Timewise.”

“Cool.”

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

“Creepy,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bell on the two-story part of the house rang. “Telephone,” Freddy said, dropping books as he ran. I set my school stuff on the grass and walked to the front of the Falcon.

“There’s some money… on the counter. Take the Volvo. Later. Six-thirty or so. You and Freddy can go to that Smorgasbord place he likes. Or Sambo’s.”

“Sambo’s… closed, Mom.”

“Oh. Yes. You know how to find the Rollins Place; right?” I nodded. “No eating in the Volvo. Right?” I shook my head.

“Mom,” Freddy yelled, “It’s Daddy.”

“Tell Freddy your father knows where to find me.” Our mother got into the Falcon. She chuckled. “Stick shift. Hope I haven’t forgotten how.”

“Daddy! He wants to talk with mom. He wants her to wait… for him. Jody!”

“Waiting,” our mother said, shaking her head. “Not waiting.”   

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

“Fine.” My mom smiled, turned away, started the Falcon. “I called the station. Your father was out. I talked to Larry.”

“Larry? Oh. Sure. What did you tell… Wendall?”

“Nothing. I just… no, nothing. I told him to tell your father… I was going to… straighten everything out, that it would be… fine. I will.”

“If it’s about… college… I will, of course, go.”

“Of course. It isn’t… I have to go.”

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

“Tallulah.” The horse turned around for a moment.

I looked toward the west. There would have been enough time for a few waves between school and dark if I had gone to the pier. I wasn’t crying. Freddy, clearly, was.

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

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

I grabbed the keys. Freddy pushed me. I pushed him down and took the phone from him. “Freddy, stop the blubbering. Dad?” I wasn’t really listening. I tried to direct Freddy toward the kitchen, rubbing my fingers together in the gesture for ‘money.’ I leaned down toward my brother. “Yes, Dad; still here.” Pause. “I am sorry about whatever Betty Boop and Wendall, and everyone at the station… thinks.” Pause. “Insolent? No.” Pause. “I don’t know. Freddy and I are going to…” Pause. “David Cole?” Pause. “Too late. Hello.” Dial tone. “Too late.”

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

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

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

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

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

I’M NOT POLITICAL, BUT… I couldn’t help but notice, this week, with citizen don refusing to acknowledge that he got trashed and thrashed in the debate, that he also went back to his greatest wiffs and denied the sexual assault issue he also, very expensively, lost, saying the woman he assaulted was not his type, not ‘the chosen one.’ ALSO, this week, asked if he had any apologies to make about, like, anything, the elderly douche said he had nothing to apologize for.

Speaking of which, I couldn’t help but wonder if JESUS ever apologized for telling the truth. “Oh,” you say, “but Jesus paid a terrible price.” So, who pays the price for someone who only tells lies?

Again, not political. Get some waves.

Additions and Corrections and, Yeah, More

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surf fiction, surf novels, surfing art, surfing Southern California in the 60s, surfing Swamis

“SWAMIS” UPDATE- Working on it. Here is a quickie flyer for a fictional Newspaper. I can’t say that there wasn’t such a weekly paper back in the time my novel covers, 1969. My guess, yes. I do know, based on a story I heard, later, like 1971, when I went to work in the Big City, San Diego, from an older guy, that there were Free Clinics, or, at least, one. “So, I picked up this hitchhiking Hippie chick, and I’m thinking… you know, free sex and all that, and she says she’s trying to get to the free clinic.”

Also not related, directly: I noticed, on occasional trips south, in the narrow strip that is Mission Beach, a storefront law office that, real or imagined, seemed to offer free services. Hard to imagine that now. Parking, incidentally, was pretty much as bad then as it is now.

If writing, journalism or fiction, or drawing, or any form of art is someone trying to transfer imagination to paper or wood or film or any other medium, images stored and remembered are the critical ingredient.

Although I haven’t quite gotten to THE END of the fourth or fifth rewrite of “Swamis,” I do have plans, beyond it, for the main characters. The storefront law office might be part of that.

MEANWHILE, I am still recovering from cuts and an infection on my leg, the treatment keeping me out of the water for at least the rest of this week. SO, IF THERE ARE WAVES, I won’t be competing for them. GOOD LUCK.

SCREW UP of the day- I did write something, using Microsoft Word, filling in some omissions from my last posting. Halfway through this, I realized I hadn’t copied it. Not wanting to lose what I had, I… well, I’ll get back to you on what is partially “Guilty with an explanation” stuff.

In the “I’M NOT POLITICAL, BUT…” category, something about the delays in the trials of the former president, and the inability of some other citizens to see a grift when it’s reaching into their pockets, caused me to draw… this:

It’s already, liike, last week’s news. Ordinarily I claim all rights to my work, but, this time, in the spirit of freedom, free press, all that, if you want to borrow it… FEEL FREE.

Original Erwins in Progress, “Swamis” Again

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, Erwin Dence illustrations, northwest surfing, Original Erwin t-shirts, real surfers, realsurfers illustrations, surf fiction, surf novels, surfing art, surfing Swamis, surfing the strait of juan de fuca

Now that I am committed to putting out a new round of ORIGINAL ERWIN t-shirts, I’m going through my past drawings AND doing some new ones. I scanned these two on my printer AND I have two more illustrations that I have to take to a print shop. AS ALWAYS, attempting to go simpler, I fail.

LET’S DISCUSS THE SURF SITUATION on the Olympic Peninsula and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. NOT GOOD. Now, if you’re almost anywhere SOUTH of here, you should be scoring. AND the forecast is not too… thrilling. BUT I do have my HOBIE patched up and I’ve done some work on the MANTA. I’m ready to leap into some wind chop when it… let me check the forecast. Yeah, wind chop. That’s official.

As far as “Swamis” goes, I am committed to what JUST HAS TO BE a final draft before the ridiculously scary act of trying to actually sell the novel. I moved the former first chapter to the end, and though I am dying to write about what fictionally happened to the fictional characters between 1969 and now, I’m going to NOT… not yet.

My hope is that, now that I’ve completely mind-surfed the hell out of plot and characters, I might be able to cut the length down from the current 104,000 thousand words. HERE IS the new prologue and a bit more:

“SWAMIS” A novel by Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

                                    PROLOGUE

            Some events, terror and bliss, mostly, which occurred in seconds, in moments; those almost nothing in the expanse of time; expand, over time, into placemarks; a corner turned, a road taken, a life changed. Magic.

            Half a century after the events, I started writing “Swamis,” as memoir. It no longer is that. This is my fourth full rewrite, with so many discarded words, deleted chapters, all in attempting to turn notes and dreams, images and remembered dialogue, into a story. I have tried to do justice to the various people, characters here, but real people with real lives, who changed mine. There are people who have come into my life, changed it in some way, and gone out. Somewhere. For the most part I do not know where they went, but I do wonder. Wonder.

            The story centers on a very specific time, 1969, in a very specific place, North San Diego County. I was turning eighteen, in love, and the world I wanted swirled and revolved around surfing, and surfing revolved around Swamis.

            My apologies for my writing style. Years of writing briefs, documents. Dry, perhaps, but thorough. A friend’s review of an earlier draft concluded I went for detail and clarity rather than flash and description.

“I don’t use a lot of adjectives in regular speech,” I countered.

“But this is writing,” she said, “The prologue shouldn’t be an apology.”

“Honest.”

“Sure, and it is… your own voice. Yes, it is that, and, as your mother said, ‘the mind fills in the colors.’ Different thing, I know. Photos, stories; it still applies.”

“Not arguing.”

“Not yet. But… ambiguity and bullshit aside, you don’t exactly nail down who the killer was. Or killers were. Some detective novel, Atsushi.”

“It’s in there. And… doesn’t that explain the need for detail and clarity? And, more importantly, I never said it was that… A detective novel. Trueheart.”

“There’s no such thing as a seventeen-year-old detective. Not in real life.”

“It’s in there; that quote; in the text. And… as far as real life goes…”

“From your particular viewpoint.”

“That’s all any of us have.”

 “But… Joey… you called me a friend. ‘A friend’s review.’”

“Just another draft, Julie; I can… change it.”

“To what?”

“Keep reading. It’s in there.”

                                    CHAPTER ONE- MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2023

            “The allure of waves was too much, I’m told, for an almost three-year-old, running, naked into them. If I say I remember how the light shone through the shorebreak waves, the streaks of foam sucked into them; if I remember the shock of cold water and the force with which the third wave knocked me down, the pressure that held me down, my struggle for air; if I say I remember anything other than my mother clutching me out and into the glare by one arm… Well, that would be, this all happening before the accident; that would be… me… creating a story from fragments. Wouldn’t it, Doctor?”

            “Memories. Dreams. We can’t know how much of life is created from… fragments. But, please, Joey; the basketball practice story; I didn’t get a chance to write it down. So, the guy…”

            “Locker room. After. I’m not here because of that… offense.”

            “I am aware. Just… humor me.”

            “He said I had a pretty big… dick… for a Jap. I said, ‘Thank you.’ All the Varsity players came in. Most stood behind him. He said, ‘Oh, that’s right; your daddy the cop, he’s all dick.’ Big laugh.”

“Detective,” I said. “Sorry about your brother at the water fountain, but I’m on probation already… and I don’t want to cut my hand… on your front teeth.’”

            “Whoa! Did that end it? Joey. Joey, are you… You’re remembering the incident.”

            “I tried to walk away. He… Basketball. I never had a shot. Good passer, great hip chuck.”

            “All right. So, let’s talk about the incident for which you are here.”

ALL RIGHTS to all ORIGINAL WORK by Erwin A. Dence, Jr. are reserved by the author/illustrator. THANK YOU for respecting these rights, AND, AS ALWAYS, for checking out realsurfers.net

“Swamis” ‘Sexy Scene’, FrankenSUP, More from the Adam’s Family Big Island Vacation, and…

Posted on by under "New Yorker" cartoon submissions, northwest surfing, real surfers, surf addiction, surf novels, surf-related short storties, surfing Swamis, surfing the strait of juan de fuca, writings of Erwin Dence

…that’s about it. Oh, yeah; HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

I AM, AGAIN, at the end of the latest complete rewrite of “Swamis.” As in, where an author is supposed to write, in case a lack of more pages isn’t enough, “THE END.” I wrote, “NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THE END.” The current version is, after thousands of words were cut, at a little over 103,000 words. As I explained in an earlier post, I was forced to move the first chapter, which, cleverly, I thought, set in something more like the current time, answered a lot of questions I didn’t want to spell out at the end.

AFTER several attempts to write something concise AND with the all important AWESOME first line, I am pretty much just changing all the chapter numbers on my next go-through. LAST? I hope so. ONE OF THE ISSUES I wanted a new opening chapter to deal with is the writing style of the fictional narrator, JOSEPH DeFREINES, JR, aka Atsushi Defreines, aka Jody, aka Joey.

It sort of comes down to whether, as I’m hoping, the clues JOEY finds along the course of the novel are enough for a reader to draw conclusions. It’s not some conscious attempt at might-be-cool (or another failed attempt at it) AMBIGUITY, but Mr. DeFreines, who, after years as an attorney (alluded to but not overtly stated) writes in a very controlled way, clarity over flash. To that end, I wrote, and will not use, a line like, “I don’t use a lot of adjectives in my regular conversation, why should I do so because I’m writing rather than telling the story.”

WHAT’S CHANGED in my constantly working and editing and thinking about the story, “Swamis,” is that it has become much more a love story, Julie and Joey, tangled in the rush and roar of 1969. I have tried to convince the LOVE OF MY LIFE, TRISH, that it would make a great HALLMARK MOVIE. “Oh, with a guy being burned alive and all that?” “Yes I mean, it’s not gratuitous.”

I might be if Joseph DeFreines used more ADJECTIVES.

With apologies for going on about this, I wrote a sub-chapter, moved it to another place because I didn’t know where to fit it in. The place is now the depository of the latest rounds of cuts. AND, when I asked our daughter, DRUCILLA, to check out something on the laptop I am borrowing from her, she had to comment, out loud, “Oh, ‘Sexy scene,” to which Trish responded, “Really? I might have to read that.”

Sexy Scene for “Swamis”

“No, Julie, it was more you than me… The kissing. I was… more… controlled.”

It was late in the afternoon. There were still three surfers out. Julie and I were on the point end of the lifeguard tower. Our towels had slid into a single pile on the x shaped cross members. “No, Joey. You certainly were not.”

“I certainly tried to be… controlled.”

Julie reached into her big gray bag, unwrapped a top, basically something like a small apron. “Controlled. You… weren’t. But… enthusiastic. Yes.”

“More like surprised.”

“Are you going to… look away?”

“You look away; I’m the one who’s… topless.”

“Yes, you are.” Julie put the palm of her left hand on my chest. “You and your stick out nipples.”

“Nipples?” I crossed my arms over my chest.  Julie untied the strap on her bikini top, her left hand holding her top to her chest. She widened her eyes. I turned, untangled my towel from hers, spun around and backed up a bit closer to her, holding the towel up and out in front of both of us. “In case those guys… in the water, have… really good eyesight.”  

“Really good? Thanks.”

“Not a… I didn’t mean…”

Julie pressed her body against mine, slid her arms around me, her hands on my chest until she had my alleged stick out nipples between the first two fingers of each hand.

I tried not to inhale. Failed. A deep breath I was afraid to exhale.

“Don’t giggle, Joey.”

“You are.”

 “You know it was my birthday…” Julie stopped giggling. “…over the weekend. I’m legal!”

“Congratulations. I’m not… legal… yet.”

“I’m willing to risk it.” Julie took a breath. “If you are.”

The towel dropped away as I spun, slowly, with control, Julie’s arms never fully pulling away, toward Julie, my arms squeezing her closer.

Closer.

I FEEL DUTY-BOUND to now mention that, whether or not I use this for the novel, it is still protected by copyright. Thanks for respecting that.

WIPEOUT UPDATE- This is the EMU Adam “Wipeout” James’s son, EMMETT caught off the Big Island. It was prepared by a chef in Seattle, presumably the woman in the photo. ALSO, and it may be because, like realsurfers.net, Adam and the HAMA HAMA OYSTER COMPANY have a world wide reach, my site got a higher than average number of hits since I posted the photos and story of the Adam’s family vacation. So, thanks.

FRANKENSUP UPDATE- Thanks to Joel Carbon for the apt description. Yes, that is my thumb. Yes, I did need a skil saw to cut the fin box out of the tail section of the first SUP I owned. And chisels, and knives. I filled in the big divot with foam from the same board, used some leftover cloth and some resin given me by Keith Darrock to cover the wound. Oh, and the sawhorses were from Mikel “Squintz” Comiskey, cutting down on possessions before he moved to the Big Island. I am also holding on to binoculars and a trophy he won at the Cape Kawanda Longboard contest a few years ago. I’m using the trophy, a beautiful turned bowl, for my keys, not that I still don’t still misplace them.

SPEAKING OF OLD DUDES WITH BAD MEMORIES, I’m thinking that will be my new excuse for bad lineup behavior when I get back to searching the Strait of Juan de Fuca for waves. “Backpaddling? Oh, sorry, I didn’t notice you.” Yeah, age, along with my wearing earplugs and my hearing being no better than marginal without them.

I DO PLAN on doing more board repair on the HOBIE. I guess I’ve had it for six or seven years, way longer than any other board I’ve ever owned (and thrashed), and ALL I WANT is another six or seven years out of it.

It’s still Winter. Get some waves when you can. And, again, HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY to all the lovers out there.

INSTANT COMMENTARY from (obvious alias) Frank Lee Darling: “If your taking a swipe at Biden. He doesn’t remember all the good things he’s done. Marmalade Man can’t thinnk of any. Because bone spurs never don anything that wasn’t self serving. That’s it. Connot wait til you book comes out. Probably banned and or burnt in Fla.

Chapter 12, Part One- Joey Goes to “Swamis”…

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surf novels, surfing Swamis, Uncategorized, writings of Erwin Dence

…looking for clues to Chulo’s murder. He talks with witness, possible suspect Baadal Singh. Because each chapter follows a specific day, this day had to be split into three parts.

            CHAPTER TWELVE- PART ONE- SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1969

I couldn’t say for certain if I had slept at all. I was outside the house at five. I had my lunch, in its pastel blue paper bag, in one hand, my dad’s big flashlight in the other. The Falcon was pointed toward the road. Getaway position. My new board was inside, my nine-six pintail on the by-this-time rusted-on factory racks. I carefully closed the driver’s side door, rolled the car down the driveway, turned the ignition key, popping the clutch, in second gear, at the county road. I turned on the headlights and retrieved a half a pack of Marlboros from under several Pee-Chee folders, those stacked on top of a four-track tape player, that set in the middle of the bench seat.

Waiting for a truck to pass before I could turn left onto Mission Road, I reached into the inside pocket of my windbreaker for matches. I had considered, briefly, pulling out ahead of the truck. I grabbed the flashlight from the dashboard, shined it on my fogged-up watch. “Should have left earlier.” I passed the truck on the last straightaway before Bonsall.

The wood-sided Mom-and-Pop store in Leucadia, perilously close to the southbound side of 101, didn’t open until six. It was parked in the pullout just past it at five-fifty-two. I reran the TV coverage from the previous nights, waited for the lights in the window to go on. Hostess donettes, frosted, a quart of chocolate milk, a tiny can of lighter fluid, and package of flints.

I pulled into the Swamis parking lot, did a soft left, and looped into a hard right. I stopped the car, shone my lights on the portion of the wall where Chulo had been killed. It looked the same as it always had. White, not even gray, not even yellowed by the headlights, low or high beams. I backed up and away, made a big lazy arc in the very middle of the empty lot, and pulled into a perfect spot, ten spaces over from the stairs. Optimum location. I leapt out, stood at the bluff. Not loud enough to suggest waves of any height. I exhaled the smoke from my third cigarette of the day. “South wind. Fuck!”

…      

            The Laura Nyro tape re-running the songs from side one of “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.” It wasn’t the tape. It was the player. Side one of albums from the bargain bin, Leonard Cohen and Harry Nilsson and the Moody Blues, side one of The Doors.   

I looked at my increasingly water-logged diving watch each time another car pulled in, each time car doors slammed, each time a surfer or surfers walked out onto the bluff, peered into the darkness, and decided to go elsewhere.

            It was still an hour before sunrise, overcast, almost drizzly. I stuck my father’s flashlight under my left arm and walked straight across the pavement, across the grass. I followed the Self Realization Fellowship compound toward the highway, toward the forty-five-degree curve to where the compound’s original entrance had been. There were two large pillars, gold lotus topped, an arch between them, the wrought iron gates long secured with long rusted chains.

Two bushes had been replaced with full-sized plants. The soil around them, the grass next to them, were new. It would all blend in. Quickly. I touched the wall. I looked at my hand. Dry. Perfect, as if no one had been burned to death there.

Backing away from the wall. I walked across the wet grass and onto the pavement at the entrance to the Swamis parking lot. This was where the crowd had assembled, where the sawhorses and rope had been. Unlike the compound side, there were cigarette butts and candy wrappers and straws and smashed paper cups on the rough pavement, scattered and stepped on and run over.

Clues, I thought. Killers returning to the scene of the crime, blending in, hanging on the ropes. Missed clues. I pulled out the Marlboro hard pack from the inside pocket of my windbreaker, stuck the third to the last cigarette in my mouth, lit it with two matches held together. I turned on the flashlight, held each new clue close I had picked up to the beam.

Cigarette butts. Various brands. Lipstick on two of them. A partial pack of matches. “Carlsbad Liquor. Beer, Wine, and Spirits.” I opened it. “Left-handed,” I said. I pulled out several of the remaining matches. They left a red streak when I tried to light them. “Too wet.”

I put selected cigarette butts and the pack of matches into the Marlboro hard pack. I moved back and forth along the de facto line, established where dead center was. I crouched down to study the patch of debris in front of me. “Menthol.” I picked up a butt with a gray, slightly longer filter. I blinked, possibly from my own cigarette smoke in my eyes. “Different.”  

There was a noise. Slight. Footsteps. Pulling my flashlight out from under my arm with    my right hand, I stood up, right foot sliding back.

“Gauloises Bleaues,” a man, ten feet away, said.

I flipped the flashlight around and into my right hand. The beam hit just below his head.

“Picasso smokes these. Jim Morrison and John Lennon smoke these.” I slid my right foot up and even with my left and lowered the flashlight. The man was holding a push broom. Stiff bristles. “My uncle imports these. I smoke these.” I nodded toward the broom. “You and I spoke… before. You gave me a… sort of… newspaper.”

“I did? Okay. So, no one cleaned… here, behind the… the line.”

“So, you. You. Here. Scene of the crime, eh?”

            “Me? Here? Yeah. I don’t know… why.”

The man took two steps, closer. “Joe DeFreines, Junior. You surf. You work at a grocery store, Cardiff, weekends.” I leaned back. “I look a bit different than… I did.” He nodded toward the west end of the wall. “Meditation garden.”

             I flashed to that time. Four seconds, at the most. “Swami,” I said.

            “No. Not nearly. Gardener. I was with a Swami.”

The gardener’s beard and hair were tucked into a dark coat. The man’s eyes were almost the only part of his face showing. He had a bandana pulled up and covering most of his face. He had on the type of felt hats older men still wore; probably brown, pulled down around his ears.

“Lost most of my eyebrows. Eyelashes just got a good curling. Singed. Still there.”

“No! Shit!” I took half a step back. “It was… you.”

 “No shit.” The man extended his hands. He had a leather glove, dirtied calfskin, on his left hand. He had a white cotton glove on his right hand. His first two fingers taped together, as were the other two, and, separately, his thumb. The bandaging wrapped around the main part of his hand and was taped at his wrist. Three of his fingers showed stains that were either, I thought, something that had seeped through, ointment or blood. I was staring. “Second degree,” the gardener said, “Flash burns. Fools.”  

I turned and looked toward the highway. There was a late step-side pickup in the spot closest to the telephone booth on the highway side of the original parking lot. There was a three-legged fruit picker’s ladder on the rack over the bed, gardening tools bundled upright against the cab, the handle of a lawn mower hanging over the tailgate.

“You must have gone to the… hospital, Mister… You know my name. Mister…?”

“Singh. Baadal Singh. Baa, like ‘baa, baa, black sheep,’ sing like… sing.” I nodded. Baadal Singh laughed. “No hospital. They keep… records.” This seemed amusing to Mr. Singh. “I was two full days… downtown. Not in a cell. Interview room. Just… Dickson calls you Jody.” I nodded. “Your father… sorry about him, incidentally. Wendall, he calls your father Gunny.”

“They both do. Marines. Wendall and my… dad. Not Dickson. Why would they even mention… me?”

“They didn’t. Downtown detectives. One of them said… I am under the impression he was giving Wendall some… grief. And Langdon, he said…”  

            “Langdon?”

“Langdon. Yes. Fuck him.”

“But, Mister Singh, you were a witness; not a… suspect.”

 “Witness. Yes. Suspects have rights.” Baadal Singh looked at the little pile of cigarette butts and candy wrappers he had pushed close to my feet, then at me. I squatted to look more closely. Baadal Singh lowered the bandana that had been over his nose. “’Nice sunburn’ one of the detectives told me. ‘Hard to tell,” Dickson… said.”

Mr. Singh pushed the broom handle toward me. It leaned against my chest as I turned off the flashlight and stuck it back under my left arm. “Marines, you say?” Mr. Singh pulled the glove from his left hand with his teeth. He pulled back his coat. He reached into his coat and took a thin box of cigarettes from the coat’s breast pocket with his bandaged right hand. He laughed. The glove fell to the ground. I slid my right hand down the broom handle and picked up the glove.

Baadal Singh took a cigarette out of the pack. “Gauloisis Bleaues” he said. He showed me a book of matches from the Courthouse Bar and Grill. “Downtown. Langdon treated me to lunch on my… second day. Clientele of lawyers and bail bondsmen and cops and criminals. He told me I would, eventually, be charged with Chulo’s murder.” Though he didn’t laugh, Mr. Singh did smile. He pulled out three matches from the right-hand side with his right hand. “Right-handed,” he said, striking the three matches as one, and lighting the cigarette. “All clues that make me what Langdon called ‘completely convictable.’”

I didn’t react. I was playing back what Mr. Singh had just done.

“Joe. Chulo wasn’t a Marine, though, was he?”

I had, evidently, forgotten to inhale. My Marlboro was down to the filter. I spit it out on the clean part of the asphalt. I stomped on it. Too much information, too quickly. I was starting to hyperventilate.  Baadal Singh put his left hand on my right shoulder.

“Chulo? No.”

 “You’re calm. Right?” I nodded. “This is how real coppers work, Joe. Blackmail. Bluemail, maybe. Information is currency. You know that.” I coughed and took in a more normal breath. “Langdon… not really the other guys, he wants everything I know in exchange for… temporary, at least, freedom. What I know is there is too much money around. Cash. Fine for small… purchases. Someone needs to… Do you… understand? Good citizens. Businesspeople.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You’re looking, though. Langdon was right about that. You get enough clues and you… analyze, you imagine.”

 “I don’t… imagine. I… memorize. I… remember.”

“Yes. Some… another day; you’ll have to tell me the difference.”

“So, Mr. Singh; you told them what you know?”

Baadal laughed. “Not even close, mate.”

            …

            It was closer to sunrise. I had been talking with Baadal Singh a while. “White pickup,” he said. “Farm truck. Double wheels in the back.”

            “White pickup. Farm truck. Double wheels in the back. Duelies, I think they’re called. The other vehicle, black car, loud muffler. Straight pipes. Made a rumbling sort of sound.”

            “Right. And?”

            “And Chulo had been in the white truck with a Mexican and a tall, skinny, white guy. Chulo had already been beaten. You believe the Mexican and the skinny white guy were taking Chulo to the Jesus Saves bus, but if they had, they would have had to face… Portia. So, they knew her?”

            “Drugs, Joe. You had to have known… that. Portia and Chulo? Marijuana?”

            “I told you, Mr. Singh. I just… didn’t pay attention.” Baadal Singh shook his head. “You weren’t a friend… of Chulo’s?”

            “Not… really.”

            “So, again; why are you telling me all… any of this?”

            “Because, if I… disappear, I want someone to know the truth.”

            “Not me. Not a good choice.”

            “You’re my only choice, though. So… remember.”

“So, the black car pulled in. Lights off. Two guys jumped out. Also a Mexican and a white guy. There was an argument. Between the two… groups.”

Baadal Singh, with me following, stopped between the phone booth and his truck. “The two white guys…” he said, “The one from the car pushes the skinny cowboy dude over here. He says, ‘We have customers lined up. They are serious. Call someone. Now! You need change, A-hole?’ Meanwhile, the Mexican guy… from the black car, he kicks Chulo a few more times, drags him across the parking lot.”

“Where were you, Mr. Singh?”

“Call me Baadal. Please.” Baadal pointed toward the concrete shower/bathroom facility. “Cowardly. Yeah.” Baadal stood by the door to the booth. “So, the… let’s call them gangsters… White gangster is outside, cowboy’s dialing. I see him… he kind of ducking, looking up…”

Baadal stepped away from the booth, looked across the street, past the railroad tracks, and up the hill. “Not sure if that is relevant.” Baadal turned toward me. “I’m just trying to understand this myself, Joe.”

  “Okay, Baadal. So, whatever was said on the phone, it wasn’t what the gangsters wanted to hear. Obviously. A-hole, he’s still on the phone, right?” Baadal nodded. ”You’re still thinking it was a joke?” Baadal shook his head. “No. The white gangster goes to… your truck?”

“My truck. It was on the highway. Chulo’s gets dragged all the way to the wall. Skinny white guy… whoever was on the line must have hung up on him. He slams the phone, chases after the white gangster, meets up with him halfway across the lot. The gangster stops, sets the petrol can down, looks way over where the bus is parked. I sneak over to… here, the phone booth. Chulo, he’s… sitting, back to the wall. He sees me. He yells… something.”

“You couldn’t hear him?”

“I could. He’s saying, ‘No! Not her!’ That’s when I, I ran past the two guys and over to the grass. I yelled out that I had called the cops.”

“Had you?”

“No. That’s when the Mexican gangster poured the petrol; my petrol, on him. Chulo.”

Two vehicles pulled into the lot and passed us. I recognized both vehicles. One from Tamarack, one from Swamis. Both had surfboards on the roofs. The second car’s exhaust was louder. “Rumble,” I said.

Baadal Singh shook his head. “Louder.” We both nodded. “I fancied myself a revolutionary back in London. I didn’t run away so much as I was… banished. Sent… here.” Baadal put his right hand over the place where his inside pocket was on his coat. He looked at me for a moment before he flattened his hand as if it was a sort of pledge. I am not a killer, Joe. Remember I told you… the truth.” He smiled. “Not all of it, of course.”

“This isn’t over, is it?”

“This? No. Here is the… a secret part, Joe. I… so stupid. I walked up to Chulo, got down on my knees.” Baadal took a deep breath. “Do you want… to know?” I closed my eyes. I envisioned something I had seen in a magazine, a black and white photo of a Buddhist monk on fire. I opened my eyes. Baadal Singh was close to me. “The white gangster was talking to the cowboy. He said, ‘You know Chulo is a narc. Right?’”

“Narc. Chulo?”

“That’s how the guys from the truck responded.” Baadal Singh didn’t move his head. “At first.” He kept his eyes on me as he half-forced the calfskin glove onto his left hand. I must have looked away for a moment. I might have been elsewhere for a moment. Seconds.

Baadal Singh was somewhere else.

“Mr. Singh. Baadal; may I ask you… why were you at Swamis… that night?”

Baadal reached for his boom. He grabbed it in the middle, moved it up and down several times. “Another time, Joe. You have a lot to… memorize.” Baadal and then I turned toward the latest car pulling into the Swamis lot, Petey Blodget’s once-fancy fifties era four door Mercedes. It had a diesel engine sound and smell. There was a single pile of five boards on a rack, a browned and battered kneeboard on the top of the pile. I shifted my focus to the girl sitting in the middle of the front seat. Julia Cole. Baadal Singh looked up at the palm fronds, swaying in the trees above us. He hit my shoulder with his left hand. “Another time.”  

“Wait. Baadal.”

I wanted more information, but I couldn’t help but follow the Mercedes as it pulled in, clockwise, and backed into a spot two spaces closer to us than the Falcon. Surfers bailed from three of the doors. Julia Cole was the second person out of the front door on the passenger side. The guy riding shotgun was Petey’s son. My age. Nicknamed Buzz. The four kids from the back seat ware all too young to drive themselves.

While the others rushed to the bluff, Julia Cole looked at me through the space between the stack of boards and the roof. At me. Not for very long. Petey was looking at Baadal Singh and I from the driver’s seat. He slowly opened the door, slowly pulled his feet out and onto the pavement. Julia Cole pulled her big gray bag out of the Mercedes as Petey walked toward the bathrooms.

Baadal Singh backed up a step. I took two steps toward him. ‘Gingerbread Fred. Fred Thompson, did you see him?”

“Later. Only. I was… busy.”

“But he saw… them?”

“He did.” Baadal lit up another cigarette with three matches and handed me the pack. “And they saw him.”

“Did he seem to… recognize… any of them?”

“You mean, did I?” I nodded. “No one I had seen before. But… I will never forget them.” Baadal Singh moved his face very close to mine. “Since you claim you don’t… imagine. Maybe you… guessed. I am not here… legally. More to it than that. I am, in England, legally… dead.” 

There was no way to hide or disguise my confusion. “They… Langdon, he let you go.”

Baadal Singh chuckled. “Bait. Yes. It’s a game, Joey; but you were right. Langdon did ask me, as you did, why I was at Swamis… that night.” Baadal Singh shook his head as he backed away. “And… if you know more about me you’ll know more about why.” He laughed as he turned away. He turned his head slightly as he let out smoke from the Gauloisis Bleaues cigarette. “Again, Joe, it’s Langdon I lied to; not… you.”

 -All rights to “Swamis” and changes to the original copyrighted manuscript are reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. Thanks for respecting this.                     

REMEMBER to check out realsurfers.net on Sunday for non-Swamis content.

Too-Epic “Swamis”

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surf fiction, surf novels, surfing Southern California in the 60s, surfing Swamis, Uncategorized

My novel, “Swamis,” keeps growing, keeps reaching past ‘novel’ to ‘epic novel’ length. I keep editing it, deleting stuff, then, tightening and polishing and making sure all the little moves are clear; it just keeps rolling past the 120k word zone, that fictional border that keeps a fictional story at a readable length.

Yeah, and as much as it hurts me to cut chapters, with where I am, so close to an ending that keeps evading me in the rewriting and editing, I definitely need to cut a couple of thousand words. SO, I keep moving them to the backup, shadow story, labeled “Sideslipping” on my laptop. I have published some of these on realsurfers, and, if I can swing the computer moves, I will stick some ‘edits,’ don’t want to call them ‘deleted scenes,’ here. MAYBE ‘deleted scenes’ is acceptable.

See the source image
John Witzig photo, Australia, sixties; but it sure looks like Swamis

The following is actually two big outtakes. Remember, though there is a lot of actual people and real events included in “Swamis,” this is fiction. I transplanted my best surfing friends Phillip and Ray into situations that never happened, stuck myself in there, too, mostly so readers don’t think I am Jody. I am not. And, yeah, it’s a lot of words to delete; still not enough:

                                SIDESLIPPING- OUTTAKES FROM “SWAMIS”

Here we go:

Someone I met much later, a former member of the La Jolla/Windansea group, ten years or so older than me; old enough to have dived for abalone and lobster; old enough to have ridden a new balsa wood board, said, of surfing in his era, “We just sort of plowed.”

When I switched from surf mats to boards, in 1965, diving for and selling abalone and ‘bugs’ (lobster) for cash was already over; being a ‘true waterman’ was no longer a priority.  This only added to the mystique.  There was a certain reverence, respect, held by surfers of the “Everybody goes surfing, surfing U.S.A.” era for the members of that post-war generation; beatnik/hotrod/rock n’ roll/pre-Gidget/rebellious/outsider/loner surfers plowing empty waves. 

That is, for those (of us) who actually gave a shit.

Tamarack was obvious; one peak in front of the bathrooms on the bluff, a bit of a channel; a parking lot at beach level.  Good place to learn; sit on the shoulder; wait, watch, study; move toward the peak; a bit closer with each session.  Get yelled at; get threatened; learn.

Eventually, if you wanted to improve, you would have to challenge yourself to ride bigger waves, beachbreaks with no channel, tough paddle outs.  You would have to learn to hold tightly to the board’s rails, your arms loose enough to move with the violence of a breaking wave.  If you wanted to surf the best waves, the set waves, even at Tamarack, you would eventually have to challenge a better-than-you surfer for a wave.

Chapter Eight- Thursday, March 20, 1969

Phillip and Ray lead the discussion about the murder and the excitement.  There was a bigger than usual crowd at the big concrete planter boxes, designed with seating all around, trees and bark inside them. The break was called ‘nutrition,’ between second and third periods, and there were two trailers set up where nutritious snacks like orange-sickles and twinkies could be purchased.  

Mostly Ray was talking, with Phillip adding key points, and Erwin looking out for any nearby teachers.  Mark and Dipshit Dave and three of the Billys were there. I was in my usual spot, standing in the planter, observing, listening.  Some of the local toughs and the cooler non-surfers were, unusually, part of this day’s group; listening; more friends of friends of Ray and Phil. 

Two of the Rich Kids came over from the Senior Area.  Mike, who had been my best friend up until third grade, jumped up next to me on the planter.  “Missed the excitement, huh Joey?”

“Guess so, Mikey.”

I had already heard the story.  My mind was somewhere else.  

“Um, hey; Joey; you know…”  I knew what Mike wanted to say.  “We’re still; you know, friends.”  He tapped me on the chest, tapped his own.  “It’s just… your dad.  Sorry.”

I tapped Mike on his chest, three times, held up a flat palm between us, went back to being somewhere else.   

…

In our freshman year, the most crowd-centric of several big concrete planters became the pre-school, break, and lunchtime hangout for the entire crew of Freshmen surfers (as far as we knew); Erwin and Phillip and me. With the administrative building behind it, the gymnasium/cafeteria downhill, most of the classrooms to the west, and a bit of shade provided by the trees, it was a good place for observing while still laying low, avoiding… avoiding the other students; the older students in particular; but also any awkward interactions with girls and rich kids and new kids who had gone to other Junior high schools, Pauma Valley (East, toward Palomar Mountain) and Camp Pendleton (West) and Bonsall (Southwest) and Rainbow and Temecula (Northeast).

Temecula. In my senior year, 1969, there were four or five kids from there; three were siblings; two Hanks sisters, one brother. These days, if people don’t know where Fallbrook is, they have heard of Temecula. Big city. “Yeah, sure, Temecula; out on The 15.”

Putting “The” in front of the name of highways came later, along with traffic helicopters and rush hour destination forecasts. Later.

I-15 was Highway 395 then, and Temecula was, often, twisted into Tim-meh-cu’-la; not for any good reason except, perhaps, it was more inland, farther East than Fallbrook, Fallbrook, a town that self-identified (with signage) as “The Friendly Village;” but was nicknamed, in a self-deprecating way, Frog-butt.

Again, the planter was a good place to observe the daily run of mostly manufactured dramas, crushes and romances and slights and breakups, from.  High ground.  The planter offered a good view of the slatted, backless wooden benches where the sociable girls, this clique and that one, sat (one or two sitting, two or three standing), in groupings established through some mysterious sort of class/status jockeying, some girls able to move from one group to another; some not.

The planter was adjacent to the Senior Area, a sort of skewed rectangle of grass and concrete with covered picnic tables.  This chunk of real estate was off limits and jealously guarded, mostly by guys in red Warriors letterman jackets, against intruders; though any senior who made any effort to appear cool (particularly when talking with underclass girls) would feel obligated to say the exclusivity of the senior area was no big deal to him. 

Girls.  Yeah, the planter was a good place to observe girls, some I’d known since kindergarten. Changing.  So quickly.  Heartbeat by heartbeat.  Girls.  So mysterious. 

It’s not that I didn’t try to understand how a (comparatively) poor girl with a great personality could be in with three rich girls, at least one of whom was totally bitchy (I mean ‘slightly difficult, quite mean, and unreasonably demanding,’ but I would have meant and said bitchy back then).  I figured it was because they knew each other before we figured out whose parents had more money than whose (ours).

…  

Phillip was new when we were freshmen.   He had come from Orange County; but he had done some surfing and his older sister was going out with a guy who was definitely one of Fallbrook High’s four or five real surfers.  Phillip and I shared a couple of classes.  I’d known Erwin since kindergarten.  He was a Seventh Day Adventist, which was, he explained, “Kind of like Christians following Jewish traditions.”  “Oh, so that’s why you’re not supposed to surf on Saturdays?”  “It’s the Sabbath.  Holy.  Sundown Friday until sundown Saturday.”  “Too bad.”  “Well; we have gone to, um, Doheny; somewhere we wouldn’t run into anyone from, you know, here.”  “Oh?”  “Yeah; hypocrisy and guilt. If surfing isn’t, you know, actually sinful…”  “Oh, but you know it is.”  “Sure is.”

Erwin was one of the only Adventists at our school, and he started board surfing right after junior high; about the same time I did; when his sister, Suellen, beguiled by “Gidget” movies and an episode of “Dr. Kildare,” probably (no doubt, actually); got herself a used surfboard and let her brother borrow it. 

Sinful, yes; addictive, undoubtedly.  I once, early September, just after school started, saw Erwin sitting on his sister’s board, toward the channel of the lineup.  Sunday.  Tamarack.  It wasn’t big, really, maybe a little bigger than had been average over the summer. 

“You’re in the channel, Erwin.”  “So?”  Closer to the peak meant closer to the crowd.  We challenged each other, had to go.  We both paddled, over and out; and sat, anxiously, outside of where the waves were breaking, watching other surfers, from the back, take all the waves.  When a set wave showed up, we were (accidently) in position.  We both; heads down, paddled for it; Erwin prone, me on my knees.  We both caught the wave.  I pearled, straight down, my board popping back up dangerously close to other surfers scrambling out. Erwin rode the wave. Probably quite ungracefully, but, if only between him and I, he had bragging rights.

Bragging rights, but only between Erwin and me.  Being ignored for a mediocre ride was far better than being noticed, called-out as a kook, told by three surfers, only one of them older than I was, to go surf somewhere else, go practice my knee-paddling in the nearby Carlsbad Slough.

I never did.  I persisted.  I got better.  I had significant surf bumps by the time I started riding boards that took knee-paddling out of the equation.

Sometimes I, or Phillip and I, would go (on a Sunday) with Erwin’s mom and his many siblings; sometimes Phillip (on a Saturday) or both of them (on a Sunday, after school, or on a holiday)  would go with Freddy and me and my mom.  Always to Tamarack.  Lower parking lot.  Freddy never surfed a board.  Surf mat; the real kind, hard, nipple-ripping canvas.  Sometimes Freddy and I would get dropped-off, try to fit into the crowd, ease close to someone else’s fire when our mom’s shopping took longer than the time we could manage to stay in the water.

…

Ray and some of the other guys our age didn’t start surfing until the summer before our sophomore year, so Phillip and Erwin and I were ahead of them, better than them.  Many of our contemporaries at least tried it.  Anyone newer to surfing than you were was a kook and/or gremmie.  Surfing had its own dress code and, more importantly, a fairly strict behavioral standard.  A code I thought, at the time.  It was fine to get all jazzed up among other surfers, going to or from the beach, but not cool to kook out among non-surfers. 

Even in the proper surf gear, Phillip and Ray, both blondes, looked more like what TV and movies said surfers should look like (unless you were foolish enough to believe Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon were anything even close to real- real surfers knew the extras, the background guys, Miki Dora especially, and Mickey Munoz, were the real surfers).  Erwin and I, dark haired; even when dressed in the requisite surf garb of the time, weren’t immediately recognized as surfers, weren’t immediately given whatever prestige we thought surfers received.

Or we were, and the prestige wasn’t what we thought it might be. 

By the time we were seniors, most of the other Fallbrook surfers our age had dropped off; surfing was less important than whatever they were doing; though they still looked like surfers and always asked when I’d gone last; always said we’d have to go, together, some time.

Some time.  We still rarely hung out in the Senior Area.  The planters.  

We all seemed to have cars; hand-me-downs from parents or older siblings off somewhere new.  We could go surfing alone.  Phillip and Ray had girlfriends, on and off.  Even Erwin had a girlfriend, Trish; not an Adventist.  Separate lives.  Separate adventures.  Romances.  Drama.  Sometimes we’d still surf together; usually not.

The stories of those adventures connected us. Loosely, probably.

I studied, I surfed. But, at nutrition and at lunch, pretending not to notice the swirl of so many stories around me, this concrete planter box was my social scene.

Fixating on “Swamis”

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surfing art, surfing blogs, surfing Swamis, Uncategorized, writings of Erwin Dence

While simplifying my manuscript for “Swamis” has actually become more complicated, I have also spent some time complicating illustrations; adding more color than necessary, going full psychedelic. Maybe that’s all right and even acceptable; the story does take place in Southern California, 1969.

You’re most likely too young to have any memories, or, if you were there, it may be more flashback than memory. A former cliché that may, through disuse, may have reached the statute of limitations on repeating is this: “If you can remember anything about the 60s, you really weren’t there.”

Okay, I googled it. The quote has been attributed to: Paul Kantner, Robin Williams, Paul Krassner, Pete Townshend, Grace Slick, Timothy Leary, and others. If you know who all of those people are… whoa! Look at you!

So, here are my latest workings:

overdone positive, line bending negative.

ANYWAY, I’m still getting my stuff together for the ZOOM event with the Port Townsend Library, Thursday, August 20, 7pm. There’s supposed to be a slide show of some of my stuff so people who tune in don’t have to look at me. Here’s a link: https://ptpubliclibrary.org/library/page/art-and-writing-erwin-dence OKAY, so how do I make that all blue so you don’t have to type it all out.

Oh, some of these and others are available at Tyler Meeks’ DISCO BAY OUTDOOR EXCHANGE. Stop in when you’re cruising out to the Peninsula, Thur-Sunday, 10am to 6pm.

Ginny Cole at “Swamis” 1969

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, Erwin Dence surf illustrations, Mistaken for Angels illustrations, Original Erwin t-shirts, real surfers, realsurfers illustrations, surf art, surf illustrations, surf novels, surfing Southern California in the 60s, surfing Swamis

This is my latest attempt at the negative-to-positive technique:

Virginia (Ginny) Cole late afternoon Swamis, 1969

I’m pretty satisfied with the illustration, at least partially because it pretty much turned out as I imagined it would, hopefully, pretty; and I don’t feel the need to go back on this drawing and make changes.

Not yet, anyway. I am considering going back to the original and adding something referencing my novel, “Swamis,” Ginny Cole being a main character in the in-progress (still) manuscript.

AND, this image may end up on an ORIGINAL ERWIN t-shirt. If not, or if so, I’ll get a signed, framed, limited edition (limited, as always, by me) copy over to Tyler Meeks’ DISCO BAY OUTDOOR EXCHANGE soon, like, maybe today.

MEANWHILE, look for, wait for, or enjoy surf when you can, make sure you’re ready to vote in November, and STAY SAFE.

More Work is, Evidently, Necessary

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, Erwin Dence surf illustrations, real surfers, surf fiction, surf illustrations, surf novels, surfing art, surfing Swamis, writings of Erwin Dence

I’ve sent out copies of the unexpurgated version of “Swamis” to several people. This waiting for a response, as noted in an earlier post, tends to push one further into the area of neurosis previously only visited for, say, a long weekend. That was before the omni-demic pushed the boundaries of crazzzzzinesssss to the place where we are now.

So, if I’m a bit more crazed, maybe, statistically, I’m pretty much where I was. If some of us could just go surfing, then, maybe, perhaps, then… we…

Anyway, I have gotten some feedback; and it’s mostly that I need to make “Swamis” less confusing, less prone to jumping forward and backward in time and place, fewer peripheral scenes; more reader friendly. I already knew I would have to drop some of the side stories. The thing is, I have enough of those to write another book. Maybe I will.

“Side-slipping.”

Meanwhile, I am trying to get some more drawings together, hopefully enough to put in with each chapter. Since I need to break the manuscript into more chapters, I evidently need more illustrations. I do have Stephen R. Davis working on a few; and we have discussed the look I’m going for. Black and white, kind of moody… I’m hoping he can do some real portraits of fictional people.

I’ve also discussed formatting and such things with my daughter, Dru, pressing her into service to help put together a slide show of my illustrations (not just surf stuff) that can be shown to folks who are willing to listen to a reading from “Swamis” without having to also look at me reading it. This is for a presentation with the Port Townsend Library, set up by surf rebel librarian Keith Darrock. Not set up yet; we’re working on it.

I’ll let you know, but, meanwhile, out here in crazy land, I am putting a lot of thought into the screenplay version. Too much for a movie. Prime Netflix stuff. It just takes more work. Evidently.