San Onofre Tales & Phillip Harper and the Sailfish

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San Onofre is surfing history.

Particularly for the early surfers who parked on the beach, camped out there, built a few palapas, rode the rollers. It seems, to those of us reading about it, checking a few photos, a friendly sort of place frequented by people who saw themselves as rebellious and wild, but, by today’s standards, quaintly so. 

Located (I know you know this) near the northwest point of the massive Camp Pendleton…wait. I should explain, just to be clear, that Camp Pendleton is roughly a triangle, with Oceanside at the lower point, San Clemente north, and, twenty miles inland (as the seagull flies) Fallbrook. That’s where I was raised, and, from my house, I always sort of believed, if I stood on the fence on the front edge of the property, and looked west, somewhere just over those coastal hills, that late afternoon glow was a reflection off the unseen water, just below our horizon, at San Onofre.

At some point the San Onofre Surf Club made a deal with the Marine Corps allowing club members access past the guard shack, down a winding little road along a riverbottom, and then past the railroad trestles (yeah, those Trestles), then near the Officers’ Club, the buildings a last remnant of a time when the entire area was part of a Spanish Land Grant. Nice location, in some trees in a usually sedate (wave-wise) cove right between Church and San Onofre.

Beach access was also given to Marines, and dependents. In Fallbrook, most of my friends’ dads, or moms, or both, worked on the base or were Marines. Kids of Marines came and went, on some three year cycle. My family was in Fallbrook because, once there, my mom didn’t want to move the increasingly large family elsewhere. Though my father remains a Marine (of the Corps, to the core), he went to work splicing telephone cables all over the base for the rest of his career.

Children of Civil Service workers didn’t have beach parking privileges, and any other surfers granted access on the base had to park in a lot* separated by those whispy trees particular to windy parts of California. I think, of all the times I went to San Onofre, mostly between 1966 and 1969, whoever I was with got to park on the beach.

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PHILLIP HARPER AND THE JUMPING SAILFISH- 1967

There were fishing boats offshore, seagulls circling them. The waves were glassing-off, decent sized, and it wasn’t even crowded for a Saturday afternoon. Phillip had talked my parents (my mom, mostly) into allowing me to go with him. My mom loved Phillip from all the times he went to the beach with her driving the big wagon, he almost like another one of her seven kids. She probably bought Phillip’s ‘otherwise I’ll have to surf alone’ argument.

“Just don’t go 101,” she, no doubt said. “Slaughter Alley? No, Mrs. Dence, we’ll go across the base.”

Phillip had a vehicle, probably the VW truck that he and I tried to sleep in on the cliff above Swamis. There’s a house there now, and, somewhere after midnight, we were rousted by the cops.

Wow; I got immediately off subject.

Okay, so we were 16. “We have our parents’ permission,” Phillip said, me backing him up with a “Yeah; we do.” “Well, kids; you don’t have ours.” “So, what do we do, Officers?”

We actually drove halfway home before Phillip pulled over, asked himself and me, “What would Bucky do?”**

“He wouldn’t go back home,” each of us said. “No way.”

Still, by the time we got back to Swamis, others were in the water. Three, five… others.

But, at San Onofre, that Saturday afternoon, between sets, a fish leapt out of the water. It was huge, with a spear-like nose, and mid-leap, mid arc, seemed frozen in the air. Both Phillip and I saw it, looked at each other. Maybe one or both of us screamed. Phillip broke (first) toward the beach. He paddled so fast he almost outran a wave, but didn’t (of course), and it broke right on his back and he had to swim.

I’d like to think I gave him a lift.

When Phillip and I got to the shallows we looked back out at the glassy afternoon waves, sparkles on the incoming lines, the fishing boats motoring back and forth offshore.

San Onofre, we told each other, and others (critics always mentioned ‘Old Man’s’), was a place where you could make the waves as difficult as you wanted. You could ride like an Old Man, or you could take off behind a peak. Indeed, there was at least one guy out, “Probably on the Hobie team” Phillip said, who was back-dooring the peaks, ripping across the faces.

“Why’d we paddle in?” One or both of us asked. I’m guessing we laughed, paddled back out, warily scanning the water around us, at least for a while.

*This will show up in a story of “Bill Birt, ‘Skip-rope,’ and the Stolen Racks.”

**Bucky Davis was a surfer, probably my second surfing hero, and dated Phillip’s sister Trish. He’ll show up again in a (not yet written) San Onofre story, “’Cowabunga!’ and ‘Everybody Must Get Stoned.’”

In fact, telling that story is the reason I started Real Surfers.

We’ll get there.

Thanks for coming along.

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Bill Birt and the San Onofre Octopi

Bill Birt and the San Onofre Octopi

Weekly (until I run out of them) Bill Birt Story
Before I posted it here I ran my story, “The Ghost of Bill Birt,” past the only friend from my Fallbrook surfing days I’m still in contact with, Ray Hicks, now living in Carlsbad, and still surfing.
“What a character,” Ray wrote, also mentioning in the e-mail the story he claims he’ll never forget; the one about Bill and the octopi at a minus tide 1967 San Onofre.*
With the rest of some subgroup of Fallbrook Sophomore surfers- Phillip Harper, Ray Hicks, probably Mark Metzger, Billy McLean, me, standing around a beach fire between sessions, standard practice in those days of short john wetsuits, Bill was down with the old beachcombers and the young kids examining the tide pools.
You should bear in mind that most of us were sixteen, Billy fourteen**, and we didn’t get all excited about sea urchins and starfish and the like. That is, we wouldn’t want someone else in our group to see us get excited about the perfect sand dollar. We were, no doubt, talking about whether we’d go out again, comparing rides; some talk, no doubt, about girls- so much more mysterious than waves.
So, here came Bill, glasses on but fogged by salty damp air, trudging up the fairly level beach- maybe more like marching- huge smile on his face, and, when he got close enough, we could see he had an octopus wrapped around one arm, another sort of cradled at stomach level.
There was a moment of…”Wait! What? Hey!”
Bill threw one of the live creatures onto into the fire. It just as well could have been a grenade. We all leapt backwards.
“Bill!”
There were, of course, other first verbal reactions, most one syllable; or an extended “Shhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiii…..” Someone may have shrieked.
No, not me.
And if I did; well; there was an octopus in the fire!
Bill looked at each of us, each of us equally horrified, and said, quite matter-of-factly, lifting the remaining octopus, obviously still alive, to eye level, moving it in a circle for each of us to appreciate. “This one’s smaller; we’ll eat it first.”***
*Because one story leads to another story, or even another group of stories, in writing this I discovered I have to tell more ‘San Onofre Tales.’ I’m working on it.
**Billy McLean is another character from my past. His slightly-crazed personality, his knack for getting otherwise-peaceful friends into trouble, no doubt aligns with some member of at least one subgroup of your own surfing contemporaries. I’m working on a few Billy McLean stories (physically wincing at the thought).
And, of course, I have a few more on Bill Birt.
***The second octopus went back in the tide pools, all of us marching down to make sure; someone apologizing to it for the murder of its friend.
No, not me. And if I did…

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Thanksgiving Sessions

Thanksgiving Sessions

My answer to any question about what my family did on Thanksgiving, or Easter, or even Christmas- any holiday, was, “once I started surfing; we first went surfing.”
New Year’s Day, several memorable early morning (while partiers are still partying or passed out) sessions at Swamis.
Super Bowl Sunday; great time for an afternoon surf session.
It’s Thanksgiving Day and I have to get some work done; and, besides, the surf is not cooperating on the Straits. If I’d gone down to my Dad’s, it might be great conditions for Seaside. No; it’s (at least partially) the work thing.
However, I have had several memorable T-Day sessions. Two years ago, the morning low tide and a properly aligned west northwest swell. The few surfers out left the water before I had to; headed back to Seattle. So, just me, not quite surfed-out; saving a little energy for helping Trish out with the setting-up. Last year it was the day after Thanksgiving Day, me and a few surfing power couples, some others who camped out or just took a long weekend.
So, hopefully you’re having (or had) a surf session to be thankful for.
Already having worked this morning on a future piece on San Onofre sessions, I have to go. Now.
Now, Monday, swell moves more northerly. Always thankful for lined-up waves, I’m always scheming, looking forward to the next opportunity.

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…

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…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.

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Northwest Spinner

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.

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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.

 

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Skip Frye slides from there to here

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.

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Empty Wave

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.