Tag Archives: Erwin Dence illustrations

Surfing Power Couples

Posted on by under northwest surfing, surf adventures, surf illustrations, surf sessions, surf stories, surfing art, surfing tales

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As Stephen Davis and I were hiking back to my car yesterday, exhausted from the two-and-a-half hour workout, the occasional thrashing (mostly inside the tube) and the occasional thrilling down the line drop-swoop-glide ride (always very close to or in the tube) the waves at a certain unnamed Rivermouth/Pointbreak offered us; surveying the half mile of curved beach, waves peeling in long sections, we both zoomed in as a longboarder paddled for, caught, then dropped, backside, into a dirty-but-glassy-black section. Instantly in the powerful heart, she grabbed a rail, seemed to extend her lead foot toward the nose.

As with almost all of the waves anywhere along this sweep, with unseen sections peeling and reeling around a succession of named spots, there was no real exit. No channel, no deeper water. Hang on, pull in as tight as possible, take the roll. No where better to get rolled than inside.

So, to complete the reveal and the connection to the alleged topic, the surfer was Lynn, the better half* of the Port Angeles surfing power couple of Gordon and Lynn.

“I waited a long time for that wave,” Lynn said on the lawn outside ______’s house**.

Indeed; I first ran into Gordon and Lynn at the NearStraits*** backup/backup spot seven or eight years ago, Gordon was thrashing around on the freshly-purchased, striped (and, I would guess, expensive) Robert August surfboard that had been standing a while at the North by Northwest (NXNW) Surf Shop.  They were both just getting into surfing as I was trying to get back into some sort of surfing shape, trying to get back anywhere close to some acceptable (as in not humiliating or highly embarrassing) level of surfing ability.

And they have improved greatly. I have more to say on the subject of power couples, but I have to go. Later. Okay. Teaser: “No, it’s your turn to watch the kids.” “Five waves. Five; that’s all I ask.”

*though it’s only polite to call a woman the better half; I do think Lynn is… no, you’re each as good a surfer as the other. **This was a clue for those who don’t really need a clue, but, after a phone call from a concerned surfer who thinks this is a secret, the name has now been dedacted/removed/deleted.  Okay, so now those of you who did read the name, pre-dedaction, please keep it to yourselves; just to keep the crowds down in the water.***NearStraits as opposed to more secret/more mysterious spots closer to the ocean.

Secret Surfer Saves the World

Posted on by under surf adventures, surf illustrations, surf stories, surfing art

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Maybe I had to draw this because I watched “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” the other evening. I have long been aware of the James Thurber short story with the perpetually daydreaming character; actually having been called out and compared to Walter (and even this was years ago) for having an imaginary life that far exceeded the accomplishments I’d achieved in my real life. Maybe it’s because we all have a running narrative that deletes the mundane and monotonous; maybe surfers imagine our surfing life as something more than the net (subtracting flubs and falls from awesome tubes and turns) of our actual wave statistics; maybe it’s because we think being a real surfer means something more, that we have a relationship outside of any others; secret, even magical.

Though I don’t like all of my drawings, I did, even before it was finished (if any ever are), like this one. Trish said, “It’s okay. He looks kind of dweebie.” Oh, yeah; that’s right. He does. That doesn’t explain that secret bit of self confidence that allows him to chop-hop over the mundane and monotonous, a surf tune playing in his head. Fourteen second intervals.

Illustration for Musical Event On Surf Route 101

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Here’s how this poster came about:

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I was asked by musician Franko Bertucci (who heads up his touring band, Locust Street Taxi, participates in other musical groupings including “The Village Idiots,” and with his wife, Arianna, doing most of the work, has a small farm)  to ‘draw up’ a t shirt design for the ninth annual “Shin-Dig,” a musical event in the town of Quilcene, Washington. If you’ve driven ‘the loop’ that US Highway 101 makes from down at the Columbia River, Chinook, the small town my Dad lives in, and go up the coast (sort of, more woods than waves), possibly making a detour to hit La Push, another turn at Sappho to check out Neah Bay, stay on 112 instead while heading toward Port Angeles, then head East and South; and you get to about mile marker 294, you’ll have passed my house and found yourself having to slow down once again for some small town before heading up and over Mount Walker and down the Hood Canal, the east side of the Olympic Mountains still on your right; well, that big curve is Quilcene, and exactly on the apex of that curve is where the Shin-Dig will be happening this coming Saturday.

So, since the event is held just outside what was once a theater, next to what was once a church, on that curve was once the center of what was once a thriving lumber town, with a railroad line that actually cut across what is now my property, and that former theater is now home to Waltz Lumber, a business that sells slabs of wood (for things like coffee tables) and other exotic wood products (like maple for guitars and such), I thought it might be good to have a drawing of a wood carving (this is just in case you don’t get it from the drawing), and, since my son Jaymz (formerly J.J., actually James) is a lead guitar player and professional musician, I thought a wood carving of… anyway, the whole thing ended up looking more like a poster than a t shirt design, so… I did the black and white, got some copies, added some color and… poster.

So, if you’re headed up or down Surf Route 101 on Saturday, this Labor Day weekend, and you just happen to get to Quilcene between noon and dark; stop in; it’s free, and, well; I have been threatening to participate, possibly to play harmonica and sing something like… “It’s a hard 1,200 miles; that old surf route 101; some are headed for the clouds, some are searching for the sun…”

 

Oceanside with Lightning, Ice Cream, and Melvin Glouser’s Farmers’ Toes

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So, when I get around to it (soon), I’ll put in the story. Or, you can check out the story in the next piece down. It took me wayyy too long to get the illustration from the new (son Sean’s old) printer to here, so, maybe I’ll (it’s technical speak I really don’t understand)… just stick the story in here and delete the previous piece.

I could explain the drawing and how I really wanted to make it trickier, maybe with the parking lot actually being the glassy waves and the Oceanside Pier, and the lightning, and the ice cream, and… and, and, we all want to just be better, don’t we?

Marshall Dillon and ‘Fish’ Share a San Onofre Fire

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 I WILL ALWAYS BELIEVE that James Arness seemed a little upset that I didn’t recognize him at the very moment that, looking way up, thinking about what deep wrinkles this man had, I did recognize him as Marshall Dillon, Mr. Gunsmoke.

Maybe it was because my expression changed from one of appreciation to one he recognized, one he came to San Onofre to get away from; the vapid fan-stare of image-induced bedazzlement.

“You can have the fire, kid,” he said, ducking to step into his 1967 model of a recreational vehicle; “hopefully your friends will be back soon.”

That’s the short version.

Yes, it’s another San Onofre story. But, first, I’d like to reiterate that I don’t believe my stories are better than yours. In fact, I think anyone who started surfing in his or her teens, begging someone for a ride to the beach; moving up to going with friends rather than parents, finding friends scatter after high school, finding new friends, surfing among strangers, all the while trying to figure out how to move from flailing to succeeding against and with waves, how to be a grownup. Sure, we all have stories.

These are just mine. You can’t help but compare them with yours.

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On this occasion I was riding with Mark Metzger and Billy McLean, younger brother to Don McLean, who is our age but didn’t stick with surfing for very long.  And Mark was trying to give me a new nickname. With a name like Erwin Dence, Jr., commonly called “Junior” at my house, it doesn’t take much. Erwinkle, Erweenie, Dense.

Oddly, none of my friends really had nicknames, not in the Windansea-gotta-have-one-to-be-cool sense.  We did call Ray Hicks ‘H-I-X’ for a while (another Mark Metzger idea), mostly because it bothered him, and Phillip Harper ‘Felipe,’ after noted big wave surfer Felipe Pomar, but, again, not for very long. Last names, as we were referred to by various high school coaches, that was about it.

There was older surfer Bucky Davis; I can’t be sure I ever heard his actual given name.

Still, Mark was determined that, since I seemed to stay in the water longer than anyone else, I should be renamed “Fish.” “No; don’t really like it.” “Fish doesn’t like his nickname, Billy. Too bad. Fish.”

I’m not sure I was actually asked if I wanted to get out of the water before my driver and shotgun rider took off onto Camp Pendleton proper, “The Base” in local offbase jargon. Billy and Don’s father was a civilian firefighter, a necessary workforce as brush fires have always been a sort of yearly event in the fall/Santana wind season.

Somewhere Fish got cold, hypothermic-short-john-wetsuit-in-winter-cold, and got out of the water. No friends, no car, no towel, no clothes.

I headed toward a small fire near the RV parked on the hard-packed dirt road.

Sharing of the beach fire was common. My sister Suellen was the firestarter/tender often in our Tamarack days, cold kids gathering there, talking surf and swearing occasionally, just learning to string several phrases together. Somewhat embarrassing to me, it was something Suellen seemed deaf to. Kids.

This fire seemed to be tended by a really big, really tall man. Not a talker, really; but I rattled off my situation. “Uh huh,” he said, moving things into his RV. And then he was gone, and I crouched down, shifting my focus between the fire, the waves, and the road.

Of course I acted as if I’d never been cold when Mark and Billy returned.

“Marshall f___ing Dillon of f____ing ‘Gunsmoke?’ Really, Fish?”

“Yeah; honest.”

About this time, my companions would have lit up, offered me a smoke. This was a common practice among any grouping of my surf friends; an offer I always declined until… okay, different story, though somewhat San Onofre-related; my first cigarette was, um, experienced in the backseat of a car headed up old 101 from an overnight stay on someone’s uncle’s boat in Oceanside Harbor (I think it was Dana Adler’s). Since I already had a splitting headache from the fumes (I had actually thought I would die in my sleep), a said, “Hell, yes.” “Really?”

Still, I couldn’t help but think my being offered a cigarette was yet another example of how sinners want to share in the sin. Thanks, buddies.

But, back at the beach on this trip, Mark couldn’t help but tell me how “You missed a great breakfast. Fish.” “And you missed Marshall f___ing Dillon, Metzger. Got a f____ing smoke?”

Oh, yeah; wild and sinful. “And don’t call me Fish; f___er.”

By this time I was warm enough to consider going back out.

  

“Awkward Guy” cover illustration? Progress

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So, I did some old school ‘cut and paste,’ hopefully not too evident.
Franco wanted a different lettering style for the title,
AND he wanted the subtitle and author acknowledgement to flow.
SO, now it’s, probably, at least maybe, a bit ‘busy.’
SOLUTION? More business, some subtle color.
This is a temporary posting. I’d also like to see it.
And then…? Then we’ll see.