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The Ghost of Bill Birt

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We have a framed photo on our living room wall, a photo that survived a fire that destroyed our first home in the Northwest, near Dabob Bay in Quilcene, Washington. The photo features Trish, at our wedding, going down the aisle with her father. The image has definitely ‘ambered’ and darkened since November of 1971, but, there in the background, in profile, with his signature thick, black-framed glasses, is Bill Birt.

Actually, the pair of glasses would be truly Bill Birt-characteristic if they featured finger- dirtied medical tape at the bridge.

Now, and for years, though he was one of the first of my friends to pass on (and I’m not totally pleased with using a softer version of ‘to die,’ which he did, and tragically), somehow, Bill Birt hangs around, sort of a ghost.

Bill might laugh, too loudly, at that dumb little joke.

I have too many Bill Birt stories to tell here. There’s “The Bill Birt Shirt,” “Bill Birt and the Magic Lougie,” “Bill Birt and the Stream of Urine,” “Bill Birt’s Stolen Surf Racks,” “Bill Birt and the San Onofre Octopi,” “Bill Birt Talks to Girls,” “Bill Birt Tries Out (too many) Boards from the Surfboard’s Hawaii shop,” “Bill Birt Follows up the Psychedelicizing of the Senior Area with Vandalism,” “Not-Quite Ditching Bill Birt,” “Bill Birt Goes a Hundred mph,” “Bill Birt and the Three Fingers.”

WHAT I should mention is that William Birt, Jr. was one of my friends since first grade or so, and that most of the stories reveal him to be someone who so desperately wanted to be cool; at least cooler, at least as cool as the cooler among his classmates. This proved almost impossible for a guy who was bigger than his contemporaries, who had hair on his chest in the sixth grade; enough, as my comment at the time went, to seem to want to choke him. He always seemed to have a little wad of white spittle in one or both corners of his mouth. 

WHAT (and this was somewhat surprising to me) I became aware of as I started writing about Bill as another one of the guys who started surfing a year or so after I did, is that I was (and am) a (possibly) just-slightly-cooler version of Bill Birt; so desirous of the same things he wanted; to be part of some group. 

WHAT most of these stories have in common is that Bill Birt rarely filtered things that came into his mind before he spoke. And, in speaking, when most of us wanted to be present but sort of unnoticed (because each of us is aware that any grouping of teenagers reveals the often-cruel struggle to develop and maintain some sort of hierarchy), Bill spoke out.

This was brave, and, often, I was the beneficiary of some new insight. When Bill told a girl in the line at the snack trailer at school (really, ice cream and candy) when we were, probably, Juniors, that he had heard she and her boyfriend were now having sex, and she, sort of shyly, looking at both of our faces (my expression no doubt not containing the shock at the question and the anticipation of the answer), nodded.

“And how is it?”

“Billlllll.”  Long pause, during which her shocked expression turned to a (slightly wicked) smile.

WHAT our so-soon-after-high school and now long-broken circle of friends didn’t really grasp, is that, away from us, in other groupings, Bill found a wonderful girlfriend, got married, and achieved real success. Bill Birt was the youngest registered lobbyist in the State of California. And then, on some rain-slicked highway… this story isn’t at all clear, he went off the road.

But, he’s still in the photo on my wall.

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                                                                   Bill Birt On Every Wave

Still angry about my ‘borrowing’ his wetsuit for Donn Franzich to use, Bill was talking about me at school. And I, of course, was defending myself.

“Yeah, well, his mom got on the phone after I admitted taking it…Bill said he wouldn’t get mad… and, you know, they were at church… besides… and his mom said, ‘Billy needed his wetsuit. He went surfing, and he got cold.’ So, Billy’s mom…”

“Yeah, well; next time, I’ll…besides, your mom… his mom got on the phone with my mom and said she was sorry her son is such a thieving dork.”

“I have to go.”

“So,” continuing the rant to Phillip and Ray, “next time we’re surfing, I’m going to take off in front of Erwin on every wave.”

“Every wave,” I heard from Phillip, and Ray, and probably Mark, Bill Buel, Billy McLain. “What’re YOU gonna do?”

“Every wave?”

The next time turned out to be the day after Ray, and Bill Buel and I stayed up way too late (for me) at Phillip’s house, smoking cigarettes, listening to the Doors, Buel acting all scary and weird. I rode to the beach in the back of Ray’s Ranchero, maybe trying to sleep under some blankets and boards. When we got to Grandview, it was stormy and overhead. 

Bill showed up a bit later, alone. Someone must have told him about the night before. Bill Buel, probably. “And Erwin was, like, freaking out.” Buel, no doubt, went into the same Jesus-on-the-cross (in this case, with a cigarette) pose. “‘This is the end… my only friend, the end…’ He was all scared and shit.”

Later, up on the bluff, one of our mutual friends asked him about his threat, supposedly (the way I heard it) after the wave on which I got briefly covered up, came out sitting down. “So, every wave?”

“Well. You know…”

“But you never even made it out.”

“Well. You know; Erwin probably did think I was at church. I mean, I was.”

“Uh huh.”

WHAT I’d like to say is I rode back home with Bill Birt, shotgun, comfortable in his parents’ super big car with the super big trunk with the big cardboard box (for wetsuits, trunks, damp towels) with big block blue letters that spelled out, ‘KOTEX,’ all caps.  No, I’m sure I rode back in the back of the Ranchero, under a blanket, under some boards, knowing (or merely wanting to believe) I was somewhat cooler than Bill Birt.

WELL. You know…”

Of all my old surfing friends, I see Bill most often.

NOTE: Wanting an illustration for this piece, I actually considered removing the photo from the professionally-sealed oval frame. Checking it more closely, beyond Bill is the woman who would become his wife. Very attractive. She didn’t come from Fallbrook. She supposedly asked Bill why, when they would run into old friends of his, they always seemed surprised.

I’m imagining Bill just shrugged.

Remembrance of Something I May Not Have Seen

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Surfing, really, has been the only sport in which I could be (take a quick pause here) competitive.

It was because I was an Adventist, one of very few at Fallbrook High, and because wrestling events did not take place on Friday nights (start of the Jewish and Adventist Sabbath), that I went out for the sport. This was right after I competed (take another breath) in Freshman Football, third string replacement lineman. Though I had running back size and short distance speed, I couldn’t catch for… couldn’t catch well. “Afraid of the ball” the coach said. “Only if it’s thrown at me” I said (to myself). 

Basketball had too much running, and I never had ‘a shot.’ Oh, I could pass, play defense; hip check to some tall guy’s knees, but shoot for the basket. No, pass.

Swimming might have been a good fit, and I did go out, but, evidently, my breast stroke was ‘unconventional.’  I finally dropped out when the coach said wearing the bunhuggers would be required. [I backspaced several attempts at further explanation here, including any parsing of the word ‘modesty.’]

Not that Fallbrook High’s wrestling outfits, evidently purchased in the mid-fifties and sewn from some wool/cotton blend, were less embarrassingly ridiculous; particularly for junior varsity athletes, but were preferable to wearing gym shorts, any ‘accident’ during lunchtime exhibition matches met with titters from any groups of girls in the bleachers.

I must add that, at my best, I was a technically proficient wrestler. What I didn’t have (then) was the competitive (let’s say ‘killer’) instinct.

On this afternoon the Fallbrook Union High School wrestling team, with those of us on the J.V. wearing the retro, crotch-snapped, long-sleeved tops with matching red tights, was the visiting team, going against San Dieguito High (Encinitas, Leucadia, Cardiff). And we were losing too many matches.

Their team members all seemed to have huge upper bodies. “That’s from the surfing,” the coach said, “They have the big lats.”

“I surf,” I said.

“Yeah, well…”

In what would be one of my best results, I achieved a desperate and last second takedown, having pushed myself with some real belief that I was only behaving in such an (over) aggressive manner ‘for the team.’ With those points I scrapped to a draw.

“Sorry” I said to my opponent.

I wasn’t. I was elated; still feeling some aftereffects of victory as I sat in the bus, going over the hill from the school toward Highway 101, toward the railroad tracks, toward…

Image

 

…toward Swamis. It was dusk. I could see the golden dome gleaming, shimmering glassy water beyond and extending toward a horizon line hidden in the same glow; and, in the midst of that brightness, there was one person sitting outside, board angled upward as if preparing to turn with an approaching sunset line, that line a subtle shadow.

And then the bus turned right, parallel to the tracks, heading home. The image was gone.

Not from my memory. Ten years later, when I lived in Encinitas, a place I’ve always thought was washed in magic, I tried to reproduce the image. I drove up and down that very hill. I got out of the car. No, you just can’t see the lineup, even on some astronomically huge day; not from there.

Now, almost forty years beyond that, I’m more unclear about the results of my attempt to see again what I thought I saw than that I did see something on an evening in 1965.

The solitary outside surfer slowly turns as the waters swell, rise. He drops the back of his board, springs forward, paddles; one stroke to even out, one toward shore. The wave lifts him. At the top, one last stroke and…

Maybe you should check it for yourself.

So, my current illustration is temporary, something to show my sister Melissa what I’m going for, only more…more intense; prettier, better, something to match the clear 48 year old memory.

Northwest Spinner

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Northwest Spinner

As much as we wish to capture a moment,
freeze movement long enough to focus on the image,
focus just long enough to create a new file,
slide it among the others,
preparing for some future dream as the reality,
cold water moving, bending, spinning upward,
forward, tide changes and subtle wind shifts…
there is no way to hold it;
merely to be a part of it, and then,
only for a moment.

Skip Frye Should Have Won

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“Skip should have won,” one person said. “He was just TOO smooth,” another said, “He made it look TOO easy.” “North County judges,” a third San Diegan added. Their boards already loaded, each of them, two guys, one girl, dressed in 1965’s appropriate après surf uniform of Levis, t shirt, windbreaker; they looked at me long enough for me to realize I was part of the North County surfing audience intended to hear the criticism. 

Really? No, I was a chunky just-turned-fourteen year old kook walking from the far end of Tamarack’s lower parking lot carrying my ridiculous, used, already-an-antique Velzy/Jacobs balsa wood board, wearing some sort of unfashionable and stretchy trunks that were, in reality, a compromise between the Hawaiian print jams I wanted and the Australian bunhuggers (like my Dad wore) that my mom had purchased for my trips to the beach two years earlier.

Sure, I’d have preferred to be carrying a newer board, wearing Kanvas by Katins trunks; those had surf integrity; or the colorful striped nylon trunks featured in “Surfer.” Jantzen, maybe. Nope.  Later, after appropriate whining, I’d get some jams. After catching several times on my knees, they ripped out.

While still not quite past the San Diego visitors, Skip Frye himself, dressed, carrying his board, walked close to the group. “You should have won, Skip.” “It wasn’t… fair.” The criticism and the support were shrugged/brushed off with a cool nod and a sort of awkward smile that said, “I’m not really a contest surfer.” (Actually, he was… then, and quite successfully so)

Still, to shrug off a near-win/loss was stylish.

Though he was featured in many a classic Ron Stoner photograph, arching or crouching in the tube at The Ranch, sliding across crystal waves at Blacks, and scored well for years in the annual “Surfer Poll,” Skip Frye wasn’t a flashy sprinter.

He was in it for the long run; super marathon; steadily, consistently sliding.

Skip Frye has been quietly ruling the waves between Pacific Beach Point and Crystal Pier, and, of course, beyond, for what is forever in the lives of most surfers. Already well known in the mid-sixties, he continues to surf with style somewhere beyond his mid sixties.

I’ve written about Mr. Frye before, how I, probably in my lucky Hang Ten trunks, walked past him at Tourmaline Canyon in the early seventies. I was carrying my brand new, pirated version of the Waterskate he had been working on for Gordon and Smith in conjunction with Tom Morey.

Image

 

It seems I’ve always had a connection with, not surf shops with snarky, judgmental, guaranteed-to-be-good-surfers-because-they-work-at-a-surf-shop sales people, but those back rooms where shapers shape and glassers glass. So it was, on some pretense or need, resin or cloth, I visited the G&S factory on the other side of I-5 (over by the dog pound) a few times. Skip Frye was the guy not to be bothered, not that I would be so bold. He was busy. “So, what was it you wanted?”

“Um, uh, some resin, maybe.”

Information, insight, some connection to the craft.

In a crowded Saturday morning lineup north of Crystal Pier in the early seventies, all of us scrapping on our short boards, Skip, on some almost-a-joke-at-the-time longboard, would paddle laterally, then ease toward shore, picking up some unseen wave-between-waves, stand, ease into a perfect little peak.

When my friend Archie Endo lived in P.B. in the eighties, while attending UCSD, Skip Frye was, he says, with proper respect, “The Emperor of Pacific Beach.” 

And, this many years after that, he still is.

 

Check the previous piece for apologies and disclaimers.

 

Skip Frye slides from there to here

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Skip Frye slides from there to here

“Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind;
Down the foggy ruins of time; Far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, Out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach… of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free;
Silhouetted by the sea, Circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate, Driven deep beneath the waves;
Let me forget about today… until tomorrow.”
Bob Dylan
This drawing was taken from one of a series of photos taken by Harold Gee in 1965 at Pacific Beach Point. At about the same time, Dylan’s song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” had already been covered by popular performers of the time.
The thing is, both artists are still going.
Here’s the story: I wanted to do something more on Skip Frye, someone I mentioned in another piece from my days in Pacific Beach. I started writing it, and, at the same time…
Somehow illustrations have become a bigger part of my site than I originally planned. This is fine, even great with me. Classic Ron Stoner photos of Skip at The Ranch are part of my image-centric memory. Maybe yours, too. I started drawing one… wasn’t happy with it; Skip in the slot, hands at his side, arching slightly. And the lighting was perfect.
And, at the same time, I wanted to say something about other local PB surfers from my years (1971-’74) there. I couldn’t think of this guy’s name.
Then I did. Dale Dobson. I googled the name, got a video of a longboarder at Swamis.
Wait, wasn’t Dobson a goofy-footer? I checked farther, found a photo of Dobson at Big Rock, 1965. Yeah; goofy-footer. Then, in this group of photos by Harold Gee, there was this shot of Skip Frye at… he might have called it PB Cove, which I’d have to guess is somewhere between the Point and Tourmaline Canyon.
And the photo looked so familiar. It may have been used in Gordon and Smith Surfboard ads from the time.
Anyway, this is the black and white version. I just purchased some watercolor pencils, and, now that this version is on the computer, watch out!
Meanwhile, if Dylan or Gee, or even Skip Frye, have a problem with me using images or words… maybe their people can contact… wait, I have no people.
So, hey, check back later. Thanks for dropping in. realsurfers is not intended to be a secret spot.
To quote Dylan, again, “No, I’m not reclusive; I’m exclusive.”
NOTE: I tried to scan the drawing in black and white; didn’t work. The black would have been… sorry you can see a drawing is really just a bunch of lines.

Empty Wave

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Empty Wave

Real surfers know when to say, “I’ll just watch.”
Not always.
Those who don’t know the power of any wave talk of wave size.
A wave is unseen energy made visible.
“Made manifest” some would say.
Fools don’t realize a four foot wave can smack you down,
leave you rag-dolled, dizzied;
clumsily seeking footing…
and the next wave catches you, still unprepared,
floundering.
Oh, waves will usually push you toward land.
Not always.
Yet we love the power. Grind, thresh, thrash, trash.
Spin on.
We’ll watch, with respect, and fear, and time the intervals, and
when the ratio of fear to (what?), maybe fear to desire;
when that ratio moves toward one to one,
we heave ourselves off, out, into.

Running Over Archie Endo

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Running Over Archie Endo

This is a photo of my friend, Archie, known along the Straits for his classic longboarding skills, his polite demeanor, his classic rides (as in vehicles- this being one of several).
This is a typical day on the Straits of Juan de Fuca, so, if you’ve heard there are sometimes waves, sometimes great waves there, no; rumor; don’t bother.
In many ways Archie is a throwback to a time when surfing was about the flow, the style; any aggression aimed at the waves rather than other surfers.
Archie learned to surf in his native Japan, and, though riding a nine foot plus board was out of fashion when he started, he never wanted to be a short boarder.
Archie, now long-but-selectively Americanized, is an expert on salmon production, specifically salmon eggs, and has been all over the world, always near a coast; usually spending the summer in Alaska, working long, long hours.
This gives him some freedom, when home, to look for waves along the points and rivermouths of the Olympic Peninsula.
He owns a classic Dewey Weber Performer and another ten foot board. That would be the one I ran over on our last session. Having been skunked the previous two trips (see, skunked?), we were delighted to find rideable waves, and, even rarer, some rights.
Paddling out, I watched Archie catch the first one… knee paddle takeoff, drop, turn, glide.
In my usual over-amped mode (knowing the waves could just stop coming), three waves later, a little too far up the reef, I thought for a second about going left, then right, then… there was Archie, evidently confident that I had some control.
Nope, already dropping, I ran straight over his board as he bailed. I heard a solid ‘thump,’ figured I’d ended my session with a broken fin.
Nope; but I did put a four inch cut into the nose of Archie’s board. Luckily, on this occasion, he was riding with me. Otherwise, and it might have been fitting and just, I’d have been be hitchhiking home.
Nope. Archie chuckled about it; told me how he’d fix it. “Sort of a memento,” I offered.
“Um,” he said, “may be.”

realsurfers1.jpg

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Drop In! We can all enjoy the ride together.
Nice sentiment; not that I mean it; not in the water.
I am trying to get over my wave greed; not trying that hard.
Oh, maybe if it’s a really long wave and you give me room.
Maybe if we’re friends.
Maybe if we can laugh about it later, on the beach.
Maybe if, on your next wave, you concentrating on the feathering lip,
dropping, preparing to turn up into the power source;
maybe then I make my move.
Maybe I’m laughing.
We all have the same obsession; different levels of passion.
Maybe. Drop in and see.
And thanks.

Image Imagined

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Image Imagined

I’m not sure what happens when I try to capture an image. Sometimes I lose control. Am I ever just totally satisfied with the results? No.
In this instance, I saw a photo of Dane Reynolds in a magazine; Dane defying gravity, blowing out of a powerful left, not putting his board on rail, but using the fins as a hinge, swinging back into the very power he’d just escaped.
But, I couldn’t find the photo again.
Was it really there, somewhere, a little farther down in the stack?
So, this is the result, third or fourth attempt.
Could be better. A little too much this, not enough that. We keep trying.
So much of surfing is really, in our imaginations, memories not quite like the hard copy.
When I find the original photo… we’ll see.

A Painting by Stephen Davis

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A Painting by Stephen Davis

Stephen Davis is a surfer/painter/kite-surfer (and much more) living in Port Townsend.
He was exhausted and surfed-out by the time I disenfranchised the rest of the local surfing population by wave-hogging.
But he heard about it.
Stephen continues to amaze me with his combination of casualness and his ‘gleam in the eye’ enthusiasm, his deep love of the (he’d say) intense emotions and excitement from riding on the natural energy occasionally thrown our way.
And yet, the first thing I liked about him is he said, “Your wave, Erwin; go for it.”
And I, of course, did.
If that says something about me, it says more about Stephen.