It’s not that I don’t believe a mellow surf session is not something worthy of, um, consideration, it is just that my image of surfing has a tough time slipping seamlessly into even the idea (or is concept a better word choice?) that waves are gentle bundles of energy one can just float on, flow across, arms out, graceful, dancing from one subtle pose to another. And if one is sharing a wave? Beautiful.
And yet, despite my belief that every wave is critical, as capable of drowning as crowning another Prince or Princess, I have, occasionally, experienced… mellowness.
Yeah.
I think the last time was 1966, Tamarack. Somehow, and how is lost in the years, I was there, after school, sharing the water on a glassy (it’s the glassiness I remember almost most) afternoon, the tide and the wave size pushing each wave into a single takeoff/ride zone; with fifteen or so floaters and bobbers and riders and, yeah, me, barely-fifteen-years-old, kind of hoping there would be a wave I could catch. And ride. Alone.
And I stayed out until the sun, hanging in the dirty orange sky…
Yeah. Shit; I don’t actually remember if I got a wave; I was just happy to be there. I was happier the next day when a substitute teacher at Fallbrook High went on, in the most lyrical language, about how beautiful the sunset was at Tamarack the previous evening, with surfers floating and bobbing and… “I was out there. Tamarack. In the water.”
“Oh,” she said, sizing me up, “great.”
Great. Mellow. I cannot, with certainty, tell you if I got more than one ride. Oh, at least one.
So, there I was, recently, after spraying out a house and a shed, my work van squeezed into a spot on the water side of the pullout (and only because I talked a guy into moving his big-ass truck), looking at foggy/glassy high tide conditions, thirteen floaters and bobbers and rippers in the water, crowded, because of the wave size and the conditions, into another narrow takeoff/ride area.
I waited. I counted. 14. 13. 16. One of the guys two rigs over said, “I see you’re counting. What’s the number you’re looking for?” “Two, maybe; three.” “That’ll never happen.” “Oh, okay.”
“Wow, look at the view. Here I am, dreaming of a fully-built-out Sprinter, nicer equipment, better food preparation options. Ahhhh!”
Just for clarification, not me in the above photo. I gave up easily after searching “modern hipster camper rigs.” The ones the dude in this photo might want is… ewww, so fancy. VW camper vans and Subaru station wagons… make way. But, yeah; I do kind of, occasionally, consider how my big-ass painter van, if I ever could retire, maybe one of my friends who actually builds out vans, Reggie or Aaron, could… Yeah, I’m dreaming. A cooler and a seat that reclines; that will get me by.
APREZ-SURF- So, it was dark, foggy, still thirteen in the water, and I’m sitting on this log, peeling out of my booties. This kid I saw in the water is changing-out, using his not-the-fanciest version of the stripping-out robe thing behind the camper parked next to me (one of at least two, maybe three people who arrived in this rig). I asked him how his session went. “Fun. It’s always fun. Isn’t it.”
I cannot say if I saw the kid catch many waves. “Yeah, it is,” I said. Mellow.
TOMORROW, TRESTLES- I was kind of hoping the WSL finals would go today so I could watch some of it while waiting for, and watching the SEAHAWKS. No. When it does go, Stephanie or Conner will have to surf five heats to win it all; Carissa and Gabriel only have to win one. I’m not sure why I root for a seven-time world champion and a (as far as I can determine) rich kid from Oprah’s neighborhood. If Kelly was rated number five, I would root for him.
To be clear, I have nothing against any of the contenders. I have watched enough of the WSL to feel as if I know something about them. I would be pretty thrilled Sally Fitzgibbons, so often runner up, actually won. There are a lot of scenarios. I will definitely hang around to watch the first two heats and check it out during my work day.
Here is my latest piece originally written for the Quilcene Community Center Newsletter, offered here to get a few more eyes on it:
Seasons
It is still SUMMER, technically, the season when lines of tourists seem to roll up and down Highway 101, passing through Quilcene on the way to somewhere else, mountains or beaches. They come through in bunches, more than five vehicles, typically, and despite the signs and pullouts provided along the Hood Canal, all are stuck behind someone towing a boat or trailer, or both.
Yes, some drivers are slowed by the seemingly random and constant road construction, some do stop (for directions or hand-dipped ice cream), some (hopefully out-of-staters, locals should know better) are stopped, pulled over. This (make note) is usually by the Village Store, caught up in the seemingly random but constant speed trap, usually by the Washington State Patrol, though the ‘Staters’ seem to be spelled by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputies.
So, if it helps balance the books and they don’t get me, great.
FOOTBALL- There are, for some folks, two seasons- Football and Non-football. No, that’s a bit simplistic. There’s the Pre, the Season itself, and the Post; and, for a true Seahawks fan, if our team isn’t in the Superbowl, we go back to following all the intriguing stuff that occurs off season. There’s the Draft, the trades, the Combine, the Training Camp, the Drama (like, maybe Richard Sherman could come back… oh, no, Richard, no!), the Rumors about how happy (or not) Russell Wilson is. Basically, a true fan is up on everything that happens between the last game, in which, without doubt, bad calls and bad luck led to our team’s elimination, and the current season.
Yeah, so, just so you might think I’m more of a fan than I am, ask me about Luke Willson’s career-ending illness; ask me who is going to be cut from the running backs. Yeah, and I’ll ask Trish and get back to you.
As always, we have the chance to buy more team merchandise. Maybe we’ll get a bigger flag. Anyway, we’ve got a break before the first real game, and, if it’s cold enough, I go outside, sit in my Seahawks beach/lawn chair, enjoy the game right; on the radio, with Steve Raible; only running inside for a replay of some great play. Yes readers, it is true, all the network commentators and analysts (especially Joe Buck) are either against us or think Seattle is closer to Alaska than we know it to be.
I might even break out, to go along with our Beast Mode and Doug Baldwin Funkos, my D.K. Metcalf t shirt, my Seahawks socks, my “You mad, Bro” hat.
Yeah, I mean, Yea; real fans would get the allusion.
OTHER PROFESSIONAL SPORTS- There’s, um, uh, baseball… Mariners; just, I heard on the radio, within strike out distance of a playoff berth. I think I heard that right. There’s basketball (Women’s) and soccer (Men’s and Women’s) and… oh, yeah; the Kraken. I’m not sure if they’ve actually played yet, but merchandise is available; hard to resist with such a colorful name. I’m waiting for the door mat with “Wipe your feet so you don’t track in.” Oh, they’re working on it. Toilet paper, the slogan writes itself. It’s not like I’m not a fan. If a Seattle team makes the playoffs, yeah, I’ll watch… the news coverage.
OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES- We have hunting and fishing and clam digging and crab caging… yeah, all those things, most of which require permits and fancy equipment, some knowledge of rules and regulations and how to actually do these things, and some desire to actually spend more money on food than one would by just going to the market.
We have lots of water from fresh to salt, from cold to very cold. Not everyone realizes this temperature reality, which explains why, when people learn that I surf, I am frequently asked, “What, there are waves?” Not in Quil Bay. Second question, “Do you wear a wetsuit?”
Yes.
Yes, we also have mountains for hiking up and getting lost in or rescued from. I have done some hiking. Have done. Once it was to help rescue a woman with a purse who made it halfway up the trail to Mount Walker viewpoint. “What, there’s a trail?” Yes. Arnie Finley, taller than I am, was on the downhill end of the stretcher. I do have a fear that if I went hiking now… No, I wouldn’t put that burden on anyone, and yes, the woman did weigh a bit more than I do now. Plus, the purse.
PAINTING- September is the busiest month for exterior painting. People, including painters, get worried about rain and cold, as if time is running out. October is crazier; I’ll worry about that later. No, already worried.
HEATING/AIR CONDITIONING- We are at that time of the year when, at our house, the portable heater and the cooling unit with the tube that goes to the window are both set up in the living room. Even if we get another heat dome, the shorter days pretty much assure us that the nights will be cooler and the air conditioner will be put away.
RAINY SEASON- It’s coming; pretty sure. Luckily, I have my Seahawks raincoat. It’s reversible, goes with my assortment of green and blue caps.
“Yeah, it is, technically, a mask and all, but… okay, thank you for shopping at Walmart. If you need help at the self checkout, just holler.”
COVID- You do, perhaps, remember that lovely, brief, idyllic period when people who were fully vaccinated could mingle, mask free, with those who decided, for any number of perfectly valid and occasionally changing reasons (according to them, freedom of choice being chief among them) to not get injected. Yeah, well, now we’re all back to wearing the masks (not arguing mandated versus required). I do tell my vaccine-refuser friends that, one, I can, according to the data, infect them, with the result to them being somewhere between no symptoms and death; but the odds of them killing me are, statistically, low. Oh, and two; they are taking away some of my freedom because we’re a long way away from the herd immunity that they must be counting on.
I hate wearing a mask as much as anyone does, but, in public spaces, I do wear it. You’re welcome.
OF ALL THE SEASONS, the one we’re all looking forward to the ending of is COVID. Stay safe, slow down through town. See you around.
The main complaint I’ve gotten in the feedback from my most recent manuscript is the side-stories, the deviations and detours from the direct route. I-5 is the fastest route from where I live to San Diego. If you’re in a hurry, take it. I have, and, metaphorically, I am trying to do the same with “Swamis;” focused, tight, direct.
It won’t happen. Because I am past this point in my latest rewrite, I will post it here. I have always envisioned my friend Stephen Davis as Gingerbread Fred (maybe it’s vice-versa). Steve and I have, particularly on long drives to and from surf trips, gotten a bit… verbal. Scream therapy I call it. If you know Steve, sure, picture him. He says he doesn’t mind.
We’ll scream it out soon.
Oh, I mention the Holders in this chapter. That’s going away. I haven’t really done the research to know if Carson Holder, about my age (70- echhh), who I met years ago at Grandview, is related to Dempsey Holder, legendary surfer from the late 1950s, or not. It’s a minor thing in the story, and it’s being cut, but, yeah, I do wonder.
Because I definitely over-explain, including this and other little true life references, is in part, part of my trying to make anyone willing to push through the turns and twists to possibly, actually believe this fiction is… believable, maybe even part of a view worth slowing down for. This doesn’t mean I disagree with the criticism. It is accurate.
I just realized my friends Day and Phillip are in this chapter. It is true they were busted for ditching school and did have to do cleanup for team remainder of our senior year.
Although some of this won’t survive, it is still copyright protected.
Thanks to real life role models for fictional characters.
the real Ray Hicks, circa 1968, Surfboards Hawaii Model A. Note the shadow of the fin.The real life Stephen Davis, fashion model for Gingerbread Fred
CHAPTER 12- FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 1969
It wasn’t even dusk yet. I could have been surfing. Instead, I was at home. I had pulled the cord to the phone in our living room as far as it would reach, pulled the cord from the phone to its limit, and leaned against the picture window with a view to the coastal foothills to the west.
This paragraph is in present tense; it works better.
“I get it, Phillip, you can’t go.” I listen. “Okay. Hanging out at the base stables, yeah; probably more important.” Listen. “No, I think she does… like you. You have to… passing glances aren’t enough. You must… talk to her.” I nod, tap on the window. “No, man, before dawn; beat the crowd. Weekends. Shit.” Move toward the coffee table. “Yeah; it is so…” Set the base of the phone down, whisper, “Fucked up. Chulo. Yeah… so weird he was there… when my dad…” Inhale. Chuckle. “No, you’re right; he wouldn’t have intervened with the school board. Not for you and Ray… or for me… whatever people say.” Listen. “Really. Superintendent; not just the Vice Principal? Multiple truancy. Ditchers. So, what’s your punishment?” Turn on the TV. “Really? That’s it; pick up trash around the campus?” Laugh. “Every day? Nutrition and lunch?” I sit on the couch. “Well; no; I knew there weren’t enough detention hours before graduation. Still…” Laugh. “Good luck with the horsie girls then. Bye.”
…
My mother had not allowed me to go to the coast after school on the days immediately after Chulo’s murder. Just after arriving home, with Freddy, she was questioning my going on Saturday. “Too soon,” she said. “I don’t trust… the station wagon. It needs a tuneup. And… Larry says the investigation is ongoing and the scene is all a mess.”
“Larry says?” Larry. Wendall. She clamped her mouth shut. “I do have to go to work. Saturday? Tony’s? I can take the Volvo.”
“My car?”
The Volvo had been picked out, with my father’s help, from vehicles the Sheriff’s Office had impounded for various reasons, and, for various other reasons, these vehicles had not reclaimed. While my father would say, “it’s Swedish,” he meant ‘exotic,’ my mother routinely followed “Swedish” with “Safe, and practical.” What she meant was that it was hers. Freddy and I were not allowed to eat in it, and it was definitely not a car she would, or I could take to the beach. The Falcon had been the family station wagon, mostly, before the Volvo, before my father was allocated a full-time county rig, before I got a license. It had become the school and back vehicle, the beach vehicle, the mildew smell probably permanent.
“Just be careful. No one’s been arrested… yet.”
If my mother had been able to read my mind, as I often believed (not just mine), she would have known my look was a question as to whether this was inside information- Larry. I held the look a while. “It was on the radio,” she said.
The sound came from the TV before the black and white image cleared. A commercial. We would get a color set when they got it perfected, my father had said, not because my snotty and spoiled friends had one. Ours was the kind where the TV screen was only one part of the TV/record player/AM FM radio console. Furniture, nonetheless. Swedish modern. Blonde. Exotic? Practical.
I considered sitting in my spot on the sectional my mom had covered with some sort of almost-burlap fabric that was pretty much impervious to spills and such. I looked over at my father’s chair, overlarge, overstuffed, a rough sort of brocaded material in a purple-ish red, worn armrests. I hadn’t sat in it since his death. Actually, I had never sat in it.
My mother looked at me, turned her eyes toward the recliner without turning her head.
“We sent a crew back up to North County, following up after Tuesday night’s… murder.” I sat down. It was comfortable; it had the perfect view of the screen. Optimal.
“Gingerbread Fred,” I said, louder than the news anchor, jumping up, moving closer to the screen.
It was daytime in the footage and the camera seemed to select him, Gingerbread Fred, from the small group over by the bluff. No shoes, no shirt under a well-worn v-necked sweater that I knew to be tan on the greenish side. He had on an almost-matching and equally worn, hand-crocheted watchcap on his head, his almost-matching blondish-red hair exploding from underneath it. The camera seemed to move in, then up to his face, a lot of gray in his beard.
I hadn’t noticed Freddy behind me, takeout from the Fallbrook A&W, my dinner, in his hands.
“Fred,” the man on the TV said, microphone too close to his face. “Fred Thompson, Ma’am. Folks ‘round here call me…”
“Fred,” Freddy said, moving around the chair, and very close to blocking my view, “like me.”
Our mom smiled, ruffled Freddy’s hair. “No, Freddy; you will get a haircut.”
“Nothing like you, Freddy,” I said. “Gingerbread Fred’s supposed to have surfed Tijuana Sloughs and Killer Dana, and some mysto breaks outside of Windansea. Simmon’s Reef.” Not looking away from the TV, I added, “It was verified, I’m told, by one of the Holders.”
“Oh,” my mother and brother both said.
“The kid, lives… around the corner; he’s a Holder. Not sure if he’s related. Dempsey, Dempsey Holder… pioneer, legend.”
“Holders,” my mom said. “You should ask him… the kid.”
“I just saw the flame, man; it was so, um, uh, intense. You know?” Gingerbread Fred’s hands seemed outsized, moving around the same way they did when he talked surf. “Bright. You know? I thought I’d heard something, over by the…” All his fingers, both hands, were pointing. “The… compound. There was just a sliver of moon. I was coming up, just at the top of the stairs when I seen it. The flames.” Fred clapped his hands in front of him, way too close to the reporter. “Flash!”
She and the camera angle jerked back.
“Poof!”
It was a woman reporter this time; young, thin, with a sort of post-beehive but sprayed-stiff hairdo. When she didn’t move the microphone closer, Fred moved closer to it. He was looking at her, then directly into the camera. “And a car was pulling away. No lights. It didn’t squeal out, but… it was loud.” Fred moved his right hand to mimic a car taking off fast.
Gingerbread Fred mimicked the sound. A rumble turned into “Errrrrrrcuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh!” He stopped, put a hand on the reporter’s hand, on the microphone. The camera jerked again, from her frightened expression to Fred’s face, his eyes equally as wide. “Just, um… that might have been… before… before the, the… fire. Yeah. No. After. That’s why I looked over; it was the fire. And then, there was… screaming. The… all at once. In the air. Scream. Ffffwwwwwwweeeeeewwwww! And… it seemed like someone else, like… I thought I saw… on fire. Fire. Fire in the air.” He paused. Rather, he just stopped speaking, but kept looking straight into the camera.
The camera panned smoothly back to the reporter. Fred released his hand from hers. When he stepped back into view again, he was crying. “It was, it was a long ways away. I couldn’t…” He stopped again. His hands dropped down, out from his sides; then moved forward, palms out, then up, into a gesture, I thought, of surrender. “I ran, but, you see, I don’t run. Used to.” The camera moved in too close to Fred’s creased face. “It was like, um, the second coming; maybe; But then… then I could smell the… the fire. Chulo. Good surfer. One time, down at Windansea…”
Gingerbread Fred was gone, gone into his memories. The camera switched, abruptly, to the reporter. She seemed more frightened than moved by Fred’s meltdown. Irritated. “Well,” she said, “we will continue to follow…”
She continued. She looked, I thought, angry, pissed at herself for losing her composure. TV. It shows every emotion. I stopped listening. Gingerbread Fred, looking even more confused, walked past, in the background, and over to an older man in a heavier-than-necessary coat. That man allowed Fred to come close enough to embrace him.
“Wally,” I said, pointing at the screen.
I jumped up and moved closer to the screen. I was pretty sure I had seen Ginny Cole, a camera at her face, standing with but behind Wally; but the pan of the crowd passed too quickly.
“Ginny,” I said. “Ginny Cole,” I whispered. Ginny. There was no rewind.
I had my own rewind. Words. Images. Blink. Remember.
I was standing. I was frozen.
“And now, the weather,” a voice on the TV said.
“It’s all right, son; you can sit in your father’s chair… if you wish.”
“No; it’s fine, Mom.”
“Well, sit somewhere; your food’s getting cold.” I sat in the middle of the larger section of the sectional. “Oh, and… I, we… have an offer on the place. Where would you like to live?”
I briefly tried to picture everyone who had been at the wake; then, in my mind, I was cruising Neptune Avenue, looking at houses. Waterfront, on the bluff. Out of reach.
“Nine seconds,” Freddy said, sitting in our father’s recliner, motioning me away from his view of the screen. “I took a few of your fries because, you know… nine seconds.”
I’m working on condensing, tightening, de and re-constructing my manuscript for “Swamis.” In the process, the plot has changed- just as thick, just not as dense (weak joke). As promised, I am posting some of the stuff being deleted or shortened here. Even with that, I couldn’t help but add a little to this to bring it slightly more in line with where the someday-finished book will end up.
Sketch, not anywhere near the style I want to end up with for “Swamis”
I feel compelled to add that “Swamis” is fiction. The characters Phillip and Ray are named after my two best surfing friends, but most of what happens to and with them didn’t actually happen. Most, not all.
Oh, and now I should add that Joey is not me. Yes, he knows all about me; I am still finding things about him. Yeah, and the other fictional characters I am trying to make real.
CHAPTER ELEVEN- THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 1969
There were, at Fallbrook Union High School, several large, flat-topped (for seating) concrete planters between the administration building, the Senior Area, and the majority of the school’s classrooms. On the downhill side there was a parking lot, the gymnasium/cafeteria, and two trailers that served snacks and pre-made sandwiches and ice cream at lunch and ‘nutrition.’
From my first days in the ninth grade, I spent most of my non-class time standing, usually with a book in my hand, in the planter closest to the action, studying, memorizing; and, increasingly, not-exactly-secretly, observing the rites and rituals, fights and romances, the cliques and the loners. Eventually this became the spot where the surf crowd hung out.
It was lunch time. Murder was the topic. A crowd had gathered and grown. Murder. I pulled Ray up onto the planter. He continued talking about the blackened wall and the cops and the TV crews; not loud, but for Ray, who I have only witnessed being uncool once (and not that uncool) since he moved to Fallbrook in sixth grade, somewhat enthusiastically.
Wearing a tie but no coat, the Vice Principal approached the crowd. He had been my Biology teacher when I was a Freshman. Because I had asked him on one of my trips to his office, he admitted to not enjoying this job. More money. Resume’ builder, he said the job seemed more tolerable around paydays.
Ray stopped talking. Squints (nickname- big, thick glasses), who had jumped onto the planter and stood by Ray, nodded along, interrupting occasionally with something like a cheer.
“Rah, rah, gooooo… Squints,” I pretty much whispered. He pushed me into the tree before he jumped off the planter.
“Saw you on the news, Ray,” the Vice Principal said, as Ray crouched, then jumped down from the planter box.
“Busted,” someone in the crowd said.
“Where’s your running mate; Phillip?” The crowd separated. Phillip stuck out both hands, as if ready for handcuffs, then looked at Ray. Ray followed suit. Both had smiles that looked more like smirks.
“Busted,” one of the Billys said; though it was more like, ‘Busss-ted.’
“DeFreines,” the Vice Principal said, “kindly step out of the planter box.”
Ray and Phillip walked toward the office, followed by the Vice Principal. B-2 Bomber Billy yelled, “Free-dom!” Even before the end of lunch bell, everyone had pretty much turned away.
I was still in the planter box, running the TV scenes back through my mind, freezing the image of Ginny Cole watching Ray walk past her for a moment. Again, with Ray turning toward the TV camera, giving it that smile, as if he knew something. Then again, with Ginny looking at Phillip as he passed, then at Ray, as if she should know who he was, then at the TV camera. Freeze.
“DeFreines, you’re late.”
“Oh.” It took a second. “I, um, thought, maybe, over at the office; maybe you’d be needing… me.”
“No; we know you didn’t ditch. It’s more than that. Please, get down.”
I did a cross-step to the outside corner of the planter, a quick hang five. The Vice Principal didn’t look overly impressed. I dropped to the ground, collected my notebooks from the woodchips, restacked them. “Okay. It’s Earth Science. I’m the…”
“I know, Joe. Uh, back at the office; it’s more than truancy. We have a Detective and a Deputy in the office, and the Superintendent. What…” We were halfway past the first block of classrooms when he asked me what I knew about marijuana, and, specifically, who one would buy it from.
“Nothing about any of this is… shared with… me.”
“No.” We stood outside the door to the Earth Science class. “That goes along with what Ray said.”
“Over at the inquisition?”
The Vice Principal looked more tired than anything else. “Earth Science, science for dummies. Sounds good right now.”
“In between paydays, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“My, um, guess is, some kid got caught with a joint or something, started squealing.”
“He didn’t give your name.”
“But someone did, um, mention me?”
“Can’t say.” The door opened. The new Earth Science teacher let me pass. I was opening the door to the little store room hang out between classrooms when the Vice Principal led one of the science for dummies students out and into the glare.
A few years ago (not sure how many) Big Dave and I were the farthest surfers out. Not unusual. An outside set was approaching. “Oh,” I might have said, “I would love to get that one.” “Well,” Dave said, “It’s your birthday.” It wasn’t, but I appreciate the act. And, perhaps, the second wave was better. Doesn’t matter; it’s gone. Over.
A while back, Big Dave and I out again, I was at that ‘one more last wave’ stage of my session when I suddenly remembered this was, most likely, my birthday session; but, whoa; there was a wave I just had to go on. Staying as high as I could on the wave, somewhere, while sideslipping, I just couldn’t help but say, “Happy birthday to me!” Not that loud by human standards, but loud enough that, when I paddled out for one more one more last wave, a woman in the water said, “That was a pretty good birthday present.” It was.
I’m pretty used to watching other surfers from the water, not so much from the beach. On this occasion, hanging too long on the shore, possibly considering a second paddle out, I did watch Big Dave take out from farther out and farther over than anyone else, hang mid-to-high on the wall, and, when a section broke ahead of him, he plowed through it and back onto the face.
A guy who has been surfing a few years, sitting on the tailgate of his truck and to one side of me commented, “Oh, it’s not like he hasn’t ridden that same wave twelve hundred times.”
Oh, that explains it.
Same wave?
OKAY, since I’ve gotten off topic, I’ll shelve (actually, just not post) the piece I’ve spent too much time working on today. I have been thinking about the social scene in parking lots. OKAY, I don’t really want to get into that. It’s my birthday, I have shit to do.
Big Dave, a few years back, discussing beach politics
I have been thinking about burning, getting burned; it’s just, if I want to get my work done ahead of rain and while there is some chance of… something; I have to get going. To work.
Burns. First degree, second degree, third degree, go. Oh, and what about a party wave? No, not necessarily a believer; unless it’s just for fun and between consenting, uh, consenters; and, even then…
I had a couple of reasonable explanations for selecting this photo; let’s go with facial expressions. Captions: Him- “I’m gonna nail this bottom turn, then foot-over-foot to the nose, and then… damn; should’a hooked up my GoPro.” Her- “Hope I don’t have to run over this dickwad.”
Meanwhile, while I’m trying to hype myself up enough to face another day of brushing oil-based stain on sun-baked shingles; I am also reminding myself that, when in the water, one should just be calm, patient, and be sure to adhere to the established rules of etiquette and decorum and… yeah, all that.
Five-thirty am, on the dot, the bug hit the windshield. I hit the washer/wipers. The last of the wash just smeared the bug carcass in a big semi-opaque, whitish green arch. Driver’s side. My side. I was committed to my journey; there was no way I would stop. I was pretty sure I had the last of the last bottle of all season window solution in the back of the van.
So, later.
Much later. There was no real moisture in the air. There was no real question, the dead bug rainbow would stay. Was it light enough to surf? Yes, already light enough, and it got increasingly lighter as I approached the Strait; curvy roads, hills and trees so well known to me. It was kind of a joke when I told one of my surfing friends that I just put the cruise control on 60 and… cruise. It was also kind of true.
It is also true that where I attempt to surf is one of the more fickle areas I’ve ever heard of. There are, no doubt, places where rideable waves hit even less frequently; my guess is people just don’t talk much about those spots. Secret, secreter, top secret.
Bug splatter on the windshield, minor. 65 on the speedometer on some straightaway, checking each road mile sign, looking for flutter in flags and old Trump banners and trees, following an empty log truck; wailing.
You learn through experience that waves are not the norm.
The windows are small for any particular pulse of swell, and you have to know something about where the tide suits the possible-but-never-guaranteed swell, how winds miles away can just mess it all up, how local winds can blow out whatever waves make the move down the throat of the Strait. It’s a guess on khow many people in Seattle and Tacoma and Great Falls and Dubuque are looking at the same forecasts and thinking… “Yeah, I think there just might be some of them there waves;” all these things are taken into consideration on the drive out.
And then I arrived at my destination… secret, secreter, top secret.
SORT OF. There were some issues; not new ones; involving my frothing/manic/wave-crazed activities in the water. I was reminded, quite heatedly, of rules of surfing etiquette I had (true in this case; did I really think he’d let me have the wave? kind of) broken. Asked for a second opinion of the third person in the lineup at the moment, the response was, “You have to follow the rules.”
“Yeah,” I thought but didn’t say (and now I am) he didn’t have to call me a Kook.” He also told me I need to calm down. I probably did… have to.
“Ahhhh!”
A little later on in the same session, after I apologized, after I asked each of the two other original surfers which wave he wanted, which one he was going for; it got more crowded- not super crowded, just more. I turned to go for a wave. A woman told me I had surfed the last set wave and she was going for this one. I think that is somewhere in the rule book, so, okay.
Okay, here is something, frothing/manic/childish, doesn’t-like-to-share Kook that I am, that I have learned in the years since 1965, when I started board surfing. So, um… fifty-six years (though I am perfectly willing to deduct ten or so when I was just too busy working to go); what every surfer does before entering the water is size up the waves, decide whether his or her skill level matches the conditions.
OBVIOUS. Then, in the water, and particularly when it gets more crowded, a surfer sizes up the competition. Aggressiveness and ability are the key components. When I started out, I would never challenge the top surfers for a wave, whether I was in position for it, had waited outside longer than anyone else; these were not factors.
Don’t tell me (or yourself) you don’t do this sizing up. You do.
MOSTLY I tried not to fuck up someone else’s ride, tried to improve, tried to surf better. Eventually, I had to challenge dominant surfers for a wave.
Or maybe I didn’t have to. If you have a private beach with decent waves, good for you. Eventually, if you want to surf Windansea or Rincon or Westport or Seaside or Bali or anywhere with a crowd… you will have to be more… assertive. I alternated between scrapping for inside waves and trying for a position at the peak at numerous breaks. I continue to do so.
MINOR POINT- Surfers frequently have unkind things to say about surfers who wait outside for the bombs; such as: “How come that dude gets all the set waves.”
Friends and Friends of Friends
BACK to the day in question. The woman who told me she had priority, since I was in her vicinity during a a lull, I pointed out which of the other surfers in the water would, on a wave, go straight or not pull into the wave fully enough to make it (exception: Successfully making a slow wave makes slow surfers believe they rip). She asked me how I knew. “I’ve been watching.”
NOW, I didn’t mention the loss of priority rule (at least in WSL contests). When a surfer paddles for a wave and misses it, he or she loses priority. Yet, otherwise rule abiding folks sometimes ignore this one, go for the next wave, even though you didn’t go for the first one based on their perceived priority status.
In this very same session, a woman who I never saw even attempt a reasonable bottom turn, who never made a wave, totally burned a friend (for the purposes of this piece, we’re all friends) by dropping in on a wave he was well into and charging. Then she went for another one, same rider coming down the line. “Hey, you gonna burn the guy twice?” “Oh. I didn’t look.” Then, according to another friend, the surfer mean-mugged me every time I rode past her. Yes, I did call her off once. Politely, but I do have a loud voice.
And then I burned (as in took off a bit down the line from) Dr. Death, another surfer who paddled like a demon and stood up like Matthew McConaughey in whatever surf-kinda movie he was in, just a little too late to even attempt a bottom turn. Twice. I know it was twice because he told me so. By name.
It’s worse when they know your name. Like, “Erwin, that makes two times you burned me…” “Oh, it won’t happen again.”
ON THIS SAME DAY, other spots are, possibly, breaking; other little skirmishes and mis-steps and such activities are going on among the surf enthusiasts. Friends and friends of friends told and will tell stories. Dr. Death told Reggie about how Erwin burned him. “Well, Reggie; if he’s a friend and all, and if you have his phone number, send him one of the photos you took of me getting ragdolled in the shorebreak and face-planted in the seaweed.”
Okay, if Reggie sends one to me, I might just put it on realsurfers.
So, pretty much surfed out, I stopped off at Walmart, Costco, Costco gas station, Home Depot, and QFC. I picked up some window washing fluid at Walmart, threw the two ounces that wouldn’t fit into the container, did a little scrubbing. The bug is gone.
SOMEWHERE in there I texted back and forth with my friend, Stephen, in Hawaii. I confessed my sins, admitted that, as an obvious sociopath, I keep committing the same ones. Steve said he’s a frother also. I texted, “If loving waves is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”
The truth is, when I stop frothing, I will stop surfing.
This is another piece for the Quilcene Community Center Newsletter, modified a bit for realsurfers. Oh, and let me complain, first thing, about how I’ve been too busy to chase surf or do anything serious on my manuscript for “SWAMIS.” No time today, either.
“Where did I… what did I… how did I miss the clue? Where’s my other shoe? Who… what… where… why… huh?”
Have trouble sleeping? Sure, maybe it’s just too hot, maybe there’s too much on your mind. Worries. Here’s what I do on those rare occasions when even contemplating something like counting backwards from one hundred does not put me under, out, somewhere on the trolley to dreamtown: It’s like a mantra, like meditation for the shallow thinker. I merely repeat, silently (usually), “Nothing, nothing, nothing…”
“No, this elevator does not go to Dreamtown, Sleepytown, or, in case you’re a surfing/skateboarding aficionado, Dogtown… ZzzzzzBoy.”
The next thing I know I’m at some exotic location (this is merely a recent example), say, an elevator with glass walls, descending; me and a few well-dressed folks, strangers, sophisticates, each one with a large wine glass in his or her hand, each one obviously enjoying the bouquet, each one skilled in the twirl. Each socialite, in turn, turns to me. A woman asks, “Merlot?” as if it’s a joke I wouldn’t get; a man hisses, “Zin-fan-del.” I hear myself answer. “Chase,” I say, feigning a Katherine Hepburn accent, “And Sandborn. Never actually developed a taste for wine, but I must say,” twirling the crystal stemware as I continue, noting that all the others, each one looking at me, stops twirling their glasses. “I do love me a fancy wine glass.”
“Okay. Don’t know how that Kook got in; but, as I was saying… ‘Tesla, Tesla, Tesla.'”
The other revelers look away. There’s a ‘ding’ and the elevator doors open.
I wake up. Briefly. “Nothing, nothing, nothing…”
There are, perhaps, some twilight moments between the last ‘nothing’ and when I, inevitably, go back to dreaming of surfing (usually of trying to get to somewhere to surf) or painting. It’s what I do and what I have done for fifty-two years. Seems logical.
I didn’t really want to write about dreams, but because I’m always influenced by recent events, I can’t help but think how happy I am that I am not one of the people I saw yesterday, butchers; out in the sun behind the cleanest, shiniest, best equipped portable slaughterhouse I’ve ever seen. Butchers. Two of them, with three recently killed hogs on the gravel waiting to be hung up and skinned and disemboweled and…
No, I didn’t really look; I just kept painting the barn. I did notice they weren’t talking to each other. No music was playing. This was serious. When they left, all that remained was some blood on the gravel. Not that much. Still, I wondered about what haunts their dreams.
“So, then, we watched a movie. Yeah, I wanted an action thriller; but, no, a Hallmark movie… maybe she was right, and it’s what I needed.”
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
As far as waking up goes, it’s a different sort of program in getting myself motivated to roll out of bed when I had awakened forty-two minutes earlier than I planned (it varies- something under an hour on average). This isn’t from me worrying. More likely it’s some sort of urinary clock. Still, it’s an irritating interruption, particularly if there is no way I could get a nap during the day.
This lack of a solid sleeptime is way less irksome on those pre-dawns, based on swell forecasts and some level of hope for the best, in which I have awakened, checked the buoy readings, decided there might be actual waves somewhere on the Strait, and that I’d better get going to beat those other seekers who have the same dream.
Yeah, but work; painting with the sweating and climbing and all… a tougher sell.
However, there’s a tried-and-true procedure. All I have to do is start worrying. Yeah, it’s summer and there’s more work, but what about winter? What about the drought? What about the snowpack? It’s clearly gone. Oh. What about the virus and the failing infrastructure and the perpetual logjam in Congress? What if someone sees me without a mask and thinks I’m one of those free-riders who never got vaccinated? What about bills and… durn; where did I leave my keys? The checkbook? The bill for… money; what about… money?”
It isn’t that the mantra for getting motivated always switches to “Money, money, money,” but, what is true of worrying is that, when something is taken off my personal worry list, I merely move something else into the spot.
Conclusion: The things that keep you up also get you up.
Please don’t misinterpret this. I’m worried you will.
OKAY, the parts I changed were in the dream thing. The slaughtering of the pigs was at a farm where I was helping the preparation of the barn for a wedding to be held there. Two surfers/farmers, Cass and Niles, and some other young farmer wannabes, including Natalie, to whom Niles is to be married, right about now. live on the property. There’s at least one good story in this; maybe two if I include how I got all manic and verbally assaulted Cass’es father, ‘Rip’ Curl (easy to figure out why). Farmers, right now, are too busy to surf. Must be frustrating. You’ll have to wait for those stories. Don’t worry, I’ll get to them.
It is my sincere belief that it is better to have too much material, too many stories, with editing and cutting, as painful as these things are, still preferable to padding. I have to cut, cut side stories, possibly even characters. Painful. And it’s not just that I think my words are precious; they are just words, keystrokes, blocks… whatever; words.
And I am going to do it, cut “Swamis” until it becomes… readable.
I do think each of the side trips I’ve taken have been worthwhile; each of the stories has been crafted, built from the strokes, worried over and thought through; each one edited down before being added to, and now subtracted from the manuscript.
This chapter is years out from 1969.
the condo wall, pretty much unbroken from Solana Beach to Del Mar
CHAPTER 12- FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 2019
I spent about ten days in my mother’s condo, two bedrooms, ‘en suite,’ she liked to say; five days before she died, four days with Freddy and/or his wife, Marcia. Mostly Marcia. “Freddy’s just not strong enough,” Marcia said. The unit was all on one floor, the building indistinguishable from the rest of those forming a barrier along the bluff from Del Mar to Solana Beach.
“Your father,” my mother told Freddy and me on the third day, “has been gone so long. A lifetime ago.”
On the tenth day, paperwork mostly handled, a realtor with a proven record in waterfront sales selected, I set the urn that the funeral home provided, silvery and plain, on the table on the deck. Outside. She had wanted some of her ashes dropped down the steep and constantly eroding cliff, always under siege by wind and water, chunks of sandstone occasionally falling onto the riprap at the base, new rocks constantly being added to protect the investments of people who just had to be by the ocean.
Even with an early morning offshore wind there was just enough of an updraft that the lightest of the ashes blew back onto her deck, some onto the neighbor’s. My mother would have been amused. I was.
Marcia arranged for a portion of the ashes to be in a place adjacent to my father’s gravesite. Freddy and I each have an urn, decorated in a way that just might suggest that they contain the remains of a woman who was born in Japan, orphaned early, pulled into a different world, and pushed into another; suddenly, dramatically, tragically.
Yet, her last years were calm, undramatic for the most part; and she slipped into her last phase with, I more imagined than believed, a certain contentment. I put the urn on a mantle over a natural gas fireplace. Behind it I have something resembling a double pane glass window, a bit thicker, with a frame on the bottom and two sides, open at the top; not square; a bit of a swoop. The water inside has a blue-green tinge.
Behind that, leaning against the wall, I placed a more silver than black and white photo, mounted on wood rather than framed, and enlarged, two feet wide, three feet high. The image is from a photo Virginia Cole took wading out at Swamis late on an afternoon. It is a wave, though the few visitors I’ve had haven’t immediately recognized it as such, even with the subtle patterns on the water’s surface from the energy that is coursing through it, left to right and up and down; the dark core two-thirds of the way down; a lightness three-quarters of the way up; almost transparent, almost white; the sun almost shining through.
In random moments there are waves; left to right, right to left, never breaking free.
“It’s my mother, her spirit.” When no one else is here, I say, “Yeah, Mom; I know.”
I have gotten enough feedback on my second completed version of “Swamis” to know that what I feared might be true is true. I tried to pack too much information, exposition, backstory; way too much backstory into what is, at it’s heart, a very tellable tale, even a very readable novel.
And it still could be. It will be.
“This just isn’t working. It’s neither a nose ride-sideslip-to-save nor a really cool Hawaiian pullout; maybe I’m at the wrong angle.”
I sent the latest manuscript out to, as I recall, six, maybe seven people I trusted to be honest in their (subjective) assessment. So, while one of my contemporaries (age-wise, surf experience-wise) initially was into it, farther in he was less so, bogged down by drop-backs and time-changes and such. Okay. Legitimate comment.
One of my oldest clients, a woman who has run her own successful business for the more than thirty years I’ve know her, and who is well read enough in the detective novel genre to spot any hole in a plot (including in some episodes of “Vera,” which Trish and I love; including “Bosch,” also one of our favorites), admitted “Swamis” is a difficult read, but said, after heroically completing the first, ‘unexpurgated’ version, that she remembered and “really had a feel for each of the characters.” Partway through the second version, she said the manuscript had “Sort of European feel.”
I’m fairly sure my taking this as a compliment is, subjectively, correct. I read a couple of the American paperback detective novels she gave me. So American.
My third review came by way of e-mail and included apologies for not loving it, a sentence on knowing what I was going for that included ‘a slice of life,’ and something about ‘cutesiness.’ Give me a second to defend myself against that slander. No cutesiness, I was trying to make fictional characters seem real with anecdotes, ‘slices of life’ if you will, that reveal something that might render a character more complete and authentic, or give context and background on why that individual behaves as he or she does.
Actually, while I am grateful that reader (claims to have) made it though both versions, I mostly wondered why he was sorry for not liking something he read rather than wrote. I should be sorry.
And I am.
What still kind of nags at me is the non-responses. Either the manuscript is non-readable or, maybe, silence is better than hurting my obviously-sensitive feelings. It isn’t. If I am sensitive, I’m way more determined. If, in order to have “Swamis” published by someone other than me, I must cut out more side stories than I already have, I will. I will, and I will (continue to) publish those little slices and chunks here.
So look for them, but bear in mind, I have faith in the underlying story AND I have other things in mind for “Swamis.”
Wait; do I sound angry? I am as angry as I am determined, but not angry with the messengers; they just tried to read stuff I’m trying to write. I’m going to Sequim tomorrow, maybe I’ll get a copy printed up of the latest manuscript, stick it in a box next to the ‘Unexpurgated Version.’
I’m thinking a little backstory on Rusty McAndrews might be the first of the second round of “Sideslipping.” In the future book, he might only be identified as “the kind of upperclassman bully every freshman in the locker room fears being noticed by.” In the outtake, he’s worse.
Wait, I just have to add this: I was describing “Swamis” to Rip Curl (real first name Chris, Curl might be spelled differently), from San Diego (Coronado, to be precise, but he now lives in, urg, Rancho Bernado), the father of one of several twenty-something surfer/farmers trying to make a go of either or both of these things in the Pacific Northwest. “Guy gets burned up against the wall of the Self Realization Fellowship. Another guy was ‘overrun’ in Vietnam… and survived. The main character is responsible for the death of his father.” “Sounds kind of dark.”
“Really? I mean, really, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of, um (I’m imagining Kafka, laughing as he writes), European.”
Real Surfers 