I received this comment on my latest post, more from the serializing of my novel, “Swamis.”
Going through your posts is like Deja Vu. Graduated Vista High 67. Moved to Leucadia 69 on Phoebe street. Surfed Beacons daily. Surfed off and on until my early 60s. Dad we a Sheriff/Detective in Vista. Took me for first surf at Oceanside harbor and a baseball career went poof. Our group surfed Carlsbad north and south. Jeez, the stories. Love your Art and writing. Randy
My first response: Whaaat?
The narrator of “Swamis,” Joey, is the son of a detective stationed in Vista. So… What? Wow! Here is my somewhat calmer written response:
Randy,
Thanks for the comment. Very excited by your father having been a deputy/detective with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office AND (even more so) by your not saying I was way off in anything I’ve posted from “Swamis” so far. I want the story to seem authentic. My wife, Trish, worked as a records clerk for the Sheriff’s Office downtown, at the jail, starting out on graveyard shift in the mid-70s. When I began writing the novel, I thought the most obvious folks to put suspicion on for the (upcoming) deaths were detectives. Because she worked around some of the detectives there at the time (may have dealt with your dad at some point), Trish said, “No way,” and, perhaps, made me promise that none of the fictional detectives would be responsible in my (fictional) manuscript.
I’m sort of keeping my promise, bringing in the detective from Orange County and others as suspects.
I did have some interaction with the Sheriff’s Office in real life; got busted with some dickhead Fallbrook surf friends for heading over to South Carlsbad State Park to look for girls. Curfew violation, we were busted mostly because 15-year-old Billy McLean shot off his mouth. Five of us in the back of a CHP cruiser and taken to Vista. Also, because Trish wanted to move up, I took a couple of night classes in Police Science (mostly to protect my wife from other cops/students). From Police/Community Relations class I did discover some cops and cop wannabes had some issues.
My vision (fancy word for idea) of Joseph DeFreines is of someone dedicated to his job, old-school cop, who, like a lot of fathers from our dads’ generation, worked long hours to provide for his family. I included in earlier versions the stuff that once happened in Fallbrook on Halloween, kids gathered downtown and egging passing vehicles. I participated once, 1968; got busted with Bill Birt and his stash of rotten eggs by, if memory serves, a plainclothes cop and a deputy before we made it to Main Street. We got to break all the eggs and go our way, with a comment/warning by the detective that he knew both of our fathers. On my way to the school library, where I had told my parents I was going, two of my brothers jumped out and egged our family station wagon. I made them wash it the next day.
Hey, Randy, I was busy studying and surfing and having a girlfriend and working. Still, at probably one the most revolutionary times in surfing, I did know times were changing, rapidly, more like catching up with the North County. One of my brothers followed friends to Northern California for ‘farming,’ another eventually went to work for ICE. The other brother may have taken a few too many hits of something. Blissfully unaware, I worked and surfed and got married and had kids.
I will be posting more from “Swamis,” taking this opportunity to do a, hopefully, final polish on the manuscript.
It is very important to me that the characters and what they do seems real. If you read anything that just seems wrong, feel free to write. Or write anyway. Because I wasn’t planning on writing this extensively, and because, with an even more than usual lack of nearby surf, I am going to post this on my site. Again, thank you so much for the comment.
Oh, Wait! My next posting, Wednesday, will feature an incident at your spot, Beacons. Fiction, of course. Erwin
SURF RIG UPDATE- I am hoping that, with my stealth surf rig sporting its first new alternator since it was new, 1994, and three faulty rebuilds back at O’Reilly’s, and four new tires (went in for two- got too good a deal on a full set) to replace the Michelins that stayed too long under the car under a tree (sidewall blowouts are not fun), and a new fuel filter, and a repurposed, industrial strength rack on top, maybe the timing might just, just work out. Waves. Yes. Please.
I would include a photo, but I’m going to wait until I get a few sessions in.
MEANWHILE, I’m working on a flyer to go with the board now on display at the PORT TOWNSEND PUBLIC LIBRARY. The ‘plankholders’ are, left to right, Keith Darrock, Joel Carbon, me, and Adam James.
It is a one-of-a-kind. Guaranteed. The current thought is to sell it, with half of the proceeds going to the nonprofit FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY (and Libraries do need friends right now), and half going to the (also nonprofit) OLYMPIC MUSIC FESTIVAL (which, full disclosure, my daughter, Dru, works for).
I’m thinking $3,000.00. You are free to think whatever you want. Yes. But, if you want to make a sincere offer, contact the library. We’ll see. Raffle? Hmmm.
There was something almost comforting about the darkness, about not having a horizon to worry about. An oversized flashlight in my hand, the words on the pages of the palm-sized notepad, open and pushed up against the steering wheel; this was all I could really see. Notes, in cop shorthand, detective code. Still, I could hear the steady sound of waves, the rhythm occasionally changed with what had to be an outside set. I had felt, when I pulled into the lot and got out of the car, the push of night wind hit me, pass me, and get lost, dispersed in the vastness beyond the bluff. Offshore. Perfect.
I was in the driver’s seat of my car, mine, the hand-me-down Ford Falcon station wagon, new in 1964. The Falcon was parked in the optimum location in the Swamis parking lot, dead center, front row, facing the bluff. When it got light enough, I would be able to watch the waves wrap around the point. There would be a moment where I would know I would be dropping down the stairs and paddling out. If Swamis was at all decent, it would get crowded.
It was not nearly light enough. I closed the notepad, thumb holding my place, and tried to repeat what I had transposed from a days’ worth of my father’s notes. I opened the pad, reread the third of any pages that had real action, real adventure. A break-in, chase, and arrest. Vista, October 1967. I recited the words. I checked again, for accuracy. Close. Or closer.
I shined the flashlight on the seat beside me. A black metal file box with other note pads and a spare t shirt, for later, three scuffed and dirtied, formerly dirty-orange Pee-Chee binders, three college-ruled notebooks inside each one. I put the notepad into the pocket of the top binder, middle of three. I pulled out the bottom Pee-Chee, opened it, took out the middle notebook. Wire bound, with serrations, tear out pages. Not that I would. I pulled a ballpoint pen from the wire, left a space between the previous day’s notes, wrote, “Free. These are days where freedom and peace and war and revolution are often used in the same sentence.”
I repeated my words. “’Love.’ I should add ‘love,’” I told myself. “People say it, don’t mean it.” I didn’t. I added, “School day. Work day. Not for me. Free! And… it sounds like Swamis is actually breaking. Got my spot. Optimum location. No one else here. Yet.”
Putting the pen back into the binding, adding the notebook to the stack of Pee-Chee binders and notebooks, a waxed cardboard quart of chocolate milk trapped behind them, I reached into the small wooden box of eight track tapes on the driveline hump, fingered my way to the third one down, flipped it to the proper direction, and inserted it in the dash-mounted player.
Legal. At least this one looked legal. The player would work without the car running because the guy I bought it from, Mark, friend of a friend, hooked it up the way my father’s Sheriff’s Office radio had been wired.
Mark claimed if this tape deck was stolen, he hadn’t stolen it. My surf friends Gary and Roger, and several of their friends, claimed he did, and I should have known. “Just don’t let the cops fuck with this one,” Gary said. “Get some better tapes,” Roger added.
I pushed in “Aerial Ballet.”
I was listening, and then I wasn’t. Asleep, perhaps. I didn’t hear the two vehicles pull in, one on either side, didn’t hear the doors close, wasn’t aware two people had met at the front of the Falcon.
Wham!
The flashlight was up, instantly stuck between the spokes of the steering wheel and pointed at the man leaning toward me, straight across the hood, the flat palm of his right hand raised and ready for another slap. The light hit the curve of the fogged-up windshield, bounced back. I turned the flashlight off. I still hadn’t recognized the man.
“It’s still fuckin’ dark, man,” he said. I recognized the voice. Sid. I would have, should have recognized the sound of his van, seven out of eight pistons firing. I must have been asleep.
“Yeah. Dark.” I didn’t recognize that voice. “Okay, Sidney; five waves and I have to go.”
“No, man, I’m doing the delivery. It’s still my job. And… I have some… green stamps I need to… redeem.”
“No. Not today. Man. Five waves and…” I waited for a completion of the sentence. “And, you know what, you aren’t going.”
“No? Just you? Fuck it, then, man; five for you means ten for me.”
Wham! Flat palm on the hood. A different hand. Passenger side. “Break of dawn, DeFreines.” There was humming. Military cadence. “Jody’s got Sid’s surfboard, got his Daddy’s Falcon, too; no sense feelin’ lonely, no sense feelin’ blue.” The cadence continued the with a lighter tapping on the hood. One finger, maybe two.
I filled in the rest in my mind. Silently. “Sound off, one, two; sound off, three four…” I stopped myself. “Jody,” I thought, “He called me Jody.”
“Jody.” A face was at my side window, close to the glass. I was startled into an uncontrollable upper body twitch. Still, I didn’t turn to look until the man was a darker shadow in the dark. “Redemption day, Jody, and… and you’re going with me.” He hit the window with a flat palm. The shadow receded.
Junipero Serra Hayes. Jumper.
I didn’t get out of the car until two metal doors slammed on the vehicle to my right, until Sid’s vague shadow passed. Other cars, headlights on, were coming into the lot from 101.
It was a pickup truck to the left of the Falcon; step-side, late fifties, brownish red and rusty red. Farm truck. I brought up a mental image of where I had seen this truck. Grandview Street, off 101, right hand side. Farmhouse, barn, greenhouses, a little shop with “Flowers by Hayes” over the sliding glass door. Jumper. Junipero Hayes.
Everyone knew Jumper was back in the North County. No one had seen him in the water.
The mid-sixties Chevy van on my right, Sid’s, was a light gray. Factory color. It was jacked-up in the back, with overwide tires, accommodated by Sid having cut the wheel wells and glassed-on the red-primed, flared fenders. No windows. Surfboards Hawaii decal on the driver’s door. Sid. Team rider. Another asshole in the water. Of course, they were friends, Sid and Jumper. Locals.
I opened both driver side doors, tossed a damp beach towel over the back door, used the cover to strip out of my Levis jeans and into my driest trunks. I stuck my towel onto the roof, pulled my wallet out of the jeans, set it on the towel. I grabbed a pack of Marlboros and a Zippo lighter off the dashboard, placed them into the inside pocket of my windbreaker. I folded my boxers in with the Levis, set them on the floor in front of the driver’s seat. I set my shoes, socks already inside them, on top of my Levis. I pulled my latest board, formerly Sid’s board, out of the back of the Falcon, set it on the roof racks. I opened, locked, and closed all the doors, circled the Falcon again, making sure all the doors were locked. I wrapped my keys and wallet into the towel, clutched it to my chest with my left hand, slid the board off the racks with my right hand, stepped away and pivoted it, wax side out, into position under my arm.
I took three breaths and walked toward the stairs.
…
It was still dark enough that the water, other than a silver-green line at the horizon, was more black-and-white than any sort of discernible color. Carrying the surfboard that had, indeed, once belonged to Sid, I took two steps at a time down the top flight of the wooden stair system at Swamis. I stopped on the platform where the stairs made a ninety degree turn and dropped, parallel to the beach, the rest of the way down.
The platform was approximately six feet by eight feet and offered a perfect view of the lineup and the point. Because it was at a particularly steep portion of the bluff, probably sixty feet or more above the beach, galvanized chain link fencing, eight feet high, the metal posts attached to the wooden posts and railings, had been added to two sides of the landing.
The ocean, forty minutes before dawn, was horizontal streaks of grays. Still, Swamis was, obviously, lined up. Someone was getting a ride. New streaks, breaking the plane. Another surfer was on the next wave. My guess was that Jumper Hayes, on a longer board, drawing traditional lines, had been on the first wave. This was Sid. I knew Sid’s style: More turns, more aggressive turns. I could hear hoots between the only two surfers in the water, locals. Not would not have been acceptable behavior for Kooks and non-locals. Rules. Code. Etiquette. Rather rigid, strict; constantly broken, only occasionally enforced; as with all codes.
…
Running my hand along the horizontal railing on the downhill side of the platform, I felt the letters carved into the wood gone smooth with time and thousands of hands. I knew the words. “Old men stop here.” It was true. Not that a seventeen-year-old paid any attention to surfers over twenty-five, and definitely not to surfers over thirty. Old men.
There was movement on the upper stairs. Vibration, just short of rocking. Two more surfers were coming down. Both were laughing, bouncing, hurrying. I pushed closer to the corner, let them pass. I didn’t look at them, they didn’t acknowledge me.
Taking two stairs at a time, I almost caught up with those two surfers at the bottom deck. They were on the beach and running for the water as I got to the lower platform, running like extras in a “Beach Blanket” movie. Kook move. The foundations for the supports of the six step stairway were showing, the winter waves and tides having pushed the sand south. Summer swells would return it. I leapt off the bottom step. Silent hoot.
I stuck my towel in the tangle of roots and dead lower branches of some scrub, six feet or so above the beach and fifteen feet beyond the lifeguard tower. I took off my windbreaker and t shirt, draping the red jacket over the rest of my stuff. There was, I still believed, a code that kept surfers from stealing from other surfers. Still, I wanted my valuables somewhere it was obvious they were there on purpose, somewhere I could possibly see them.
In what had become my pre-surf ritual, I pulled a pack of Marlboros, box, not soft pack, from the windbreaker. I took out the Zippo lighter. Chrome. Freshly filled, new flint. Big flame. I lit up, clicked the lid shut. I ran two fingers over the lighter’s raised logo. “San Diego County Sheriff’s Office.” Gold on chrome.
I inhaled, popped the lid open by hitting a corner on my other hand, and looked at the flame. Smaller. In the brightness I saw, or imagined I saw, red lights, spinning, flashing in three second intervals, coming closer. I blinked, looked to my right. I saw a painted image of Jesus, the red lights distorting his calm countenance. I followed his arm to his fingers, pointing forward, into the lights, into the sun. Blinding. I turned through the brightness and to my left, the vehicle that was the source of the lights. A reflection-distorted image of my father was in the windshield, then the open window. He was very close, passing very slowly. I couldn’t quite focus on his expression. He turned his head away. Forward.
The flashing lights moved past me leaving only the brighter light. I blinked. I popped the lid on my father’s lighter shut. “Ten seconds,” I said. “Maybe eight. Concentrate. Can’t do this.”
My stuff was re-wrapped and re-positioned, my cigarette was still in my mouth, and I was into the ragged line left by the high tide when a surfer on a long board took off from the outside peak. Jumper Hayes. A bit slow on the takeoff and popup, jerky on the bottom turn, he cruised through the first wall and into the slow section. With a series of subtle stalls, he lined up the inside section, and, rather stiffly, shuffled toward the nose. He hung five, pearling and spinning into a Hawaiian pullout. His board skittered in a ways before it was released by the soup and popped up. It must have been Jumper’s fifth wave. He flipped his board over, skeg up. Pulling his board up by a rail, he trudged alongside it through the rocks and eel grass toward the beach, stepping carefully, ready for the holes in the rock ledges.
Yeah, it was Jumper. He was fifty feet or so up the point when a spent wave hit my shins. He pulled the board up under his right arm and stared at me. “You,” I imagined, was the word he almost whispered, I almost heard.
“You.” I looked away. The next wave came in without a rider. Sid, on the wave after that one, made three upper body movements before he hit the trough, cranked a turn that brought him to the top of the wave and five feet down the line. Unweight, half-slide, hit the middle of the wave, crouch, hand in the wave face. Stall, stall, let go and get a partial coverup. A lot of work. Sid. If Sid was showing off for Jumper, it was wasted. Jumper was still staring at me, still moving forward.
Thigh deep, I looked back as Sid, thrashing forward, caught up to Jumper in six inches of water. Sid reached for Jumper’s shoulder. I looked away. For a second. Sid must have said something. Maybe it was just, “Hey!”
I turned back. Sid was in the air, feet over his head. So quick. Down. Sid was on his back. Jumper’s board beside him. Jumper was holding Sid’s board, like a spear, at his friend’s chest. They seemed to be frozen in these positions.
It was a definite “Hey!” Sid was scrambling, crablike, up the curve of the beach. “It’s me! Jumper! Me!”
I froze, my back to the ocean. Though I could still see the two surfers, I replayed what I had just seen in my mind in a sort of double exposure. Reach. Touch. Reaction.
A wave hit me, only temporarily affecting my balance, but wiping the image away. I was back to real time. Jumper raised Sid’s board, twisted away, and threw the board toward the higher beach. The full length of the board landed on a rail, flipped onto the other rail, and landed skeg up. I replayed those movements as I watched the two surfers.
Sid was sitting just above the scalloped high tide line, the fragments of driftwood and seaweed. Jumper was crouching next to him. Jumper may have been crying. I couldn’t tell. I looked away when Jumper, and then Sid, looked in my direction. If I expected anger that I had been a witness, what I saw was more like embarrassment.
Maybe that was more imagined than real. I turned away, threw board and my body into an oncoming wave, and paddled out.
…
REMEMBER, “Swamis” is copyright protected, all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
INCIDENTALLY, I GOT THIS very interesting comment from JAMES IREDELL MOSS: “My grandma (Ida May Noonan) lived on Noonan Point till her house burned down in 1893. They did not rebuild. Eventually SRF (Self Realization Fellowship) bought the point and established the temple. Now it is called Swamis. I went to San DIeguito with Cheer Critchlow, that is what eventually led me to your site.”
Thanks, James. In researching, and, yes, I have researched, I got Swamis Point listed as NONAME POINT. That it is actually NOONAN POINT is so fantastic. It doesn’t mean I’m changing the title to “Noonan’s,” but I love inside scoop. If you were a classmate of Cheer Critchlow, you and I are contemporaries. I think I had to cut Cheer out of the main manuscript, but I did take a night SPEECH class he was also taking at Palomar. Main memory of that, other than he was way more confident at public speaking than I was: Cheer said he had tried to be a professional surfer, there just wasn’t enough money for such a career. 1969, no; nowadays he would be, as he was in the pretty insular North County surfworld, a star.
Also, the Sid name if not the character is loosely based on a Surfboards Hawaii team surfer whose last name I once knew. He was featured, hanging ten, in a small ad. I did, indeed, look at a board he had thrashed in with the other used boards. “He doesn’t really care where he surfs” was the actual comment. I didn’t buy the board. Fictional Joey does.
SO, OKAY, now that I am burning potential content, Sundays are for content, WEDNESDAYS ARE FOR “SWAMIS.”
This was the day a man first walked on the moon. I had surfed. Somewhere; maybe Stone Steps; trying to find a little peak in the peak of Summer; summer and all that meant in a Southern California beach town recently isolated by the completion of I-5.
NOTE- There was talk, at that time, of the North County beach towns (Leucadia, Encinitas, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Del Mar) suffering when 101 was no longer the main coastal north-south route. Whether they did or didn’t depends on your interpretation of ‘suffering.’
A Woman entered, looked at the handful of people scattered around the classroom, each with a stack of papers on individual desks that were exactly like the ones at Fallbrook High, and probably Vista, San Marcos, Escondido, Orange Glen, San Dieguito (those same beach towns); the districts that fed into the Palomar Junior College District. She looked at one of the papers in her left hand, erased “Biology 101” from the chalk board.
“Now,” she said, “now;” speaking louder when no one looked up after the first ‘now.’ “You people are right at the line; the cut off. Your choices… (louder) are limited. You may not get all the classes you want.”
Creative Writing; yes. And I wanted English 101. Yes, I had tested high enough to skip the remedial, non-credit English; I wanted… Art; yes, definitely. Basic Drawing. Two classes still open. Being under eighteen (it might have been twenty-one at that time), I was required to take a Physical Education class. Fall Sports was closed. Badmitton. Really? Closed. Shit. Weight Training. Still open. No. Fuck. Okay.
I was still writing, erasing, writing when Jumper Hayes entered the room, gave the Admissions Woman a big smile, which she seemed to appreciate, pointed at me with his stack of papers, and sat next to me. He scooted (noisily) his desk unit closer; like he wanted to cheat off me.
The Admissions Woman looked around at the noise, but, again, only returned what I had to believe was another reassuring smile from Jumper. I feel compelled to mention that the Admissions Woman was probably about twenty-something, something under 25, and was trying to seem a bit more professional, even stern, than she was able to. She was rather like a substitute teacher in a room of recent high school graduates, professional students, draft dodgers, returning veterans.
“Bagboy,” Jumper said; “I thought you were going to some big time University. Word is you’re a brain.”
“No.”
“Okay. Maybe not.”
“I was, but… Brain? Who would…?”
“One of those Avocado-lovin’, guacamole dip…dipshits; Bucky Davis, maybe; John Amsterdam; why would I remember? I’m not a brain… like you.”
The woman, taking a handful of papers from an older man; probably forty; scratched Philosophy II and Photography 101 from the chalkboard.
“Oh, and, incidentally, Amsterdam still hates you. Brand new Dewey Weber performer.” He shook his head, moved his hands to illustrate a board crashing on another board. “Got to hang on to your board, Bagger.” He paused. “You prefer Bagboy… or Bagger? Bagger sounds a little more…” He nodded, nearly winked. “Or Jody?”
“That was my dad’s joke.”
“Yeah; and Tony, at the market; he’s in on it.”
“They were both in the Corps. Not that they knew each other then, but…”
“As was I. As I was?” Jumper saluted; quickly, crisply; properly. He looked over at my papers. “You takin’ any English classes, um, neighbor?” When I looked back, he went back to nodding. “Wrong side of 101. You probably have to go five blocks to get across, but… well…”
When I determined nothing was following; I said, “Well… beats living in Frog-butt; huh?”
Jumper laughed, looked at the woman from admissions, gave her another, bigger smile, kept it when he looked back at me. “So, guess you don’t have the horse any more. Any longer? No longer have the horse?”
He didn’t drop the smile. I’d love to think I didn’t seem surprised. Or rattled. “No, we…” I restacked my papers, whispered, “Fuck you, Jumper;” scooted my desk away, a bit more noisily than I might have preferred. Jumper was still smiling.
Jumper stood up, his desk unit like a skirt, walked closer to me. He slid his preliminary class schedule in front of me, pointed to Criminal Justice; pointed to the same title on my schedule. “I am going on Uncle Sam, though; G.I. Bill. Semper Fi, (whispered) motherfucker. Full ride, man.”
“Easy A, Jody; and… (back to a whisper) it’s a family tradition. Isn’t it?”
I crumpled up my first and second versions of my schedule in my right hand, stuck my middle finger out and a little too close to Jumper’s face. Surprised at how instant my anger had been, how it was staying at that level, and that Jumper’s reaction continued to be a smile (“Insolence,” my father would have said); I pulled my hand back almost immediately, flattened-out what had been a fist, and slapped my hand on the papers to the desktop.
“If my father… I’m… everyone knows who my father was. If I…” I looked at my form. “I’m done, June, Juni, Junipero… Mr. Hayes. Fifteen units. Full load. Done.” I stood up, picked up and straightened the other pages. “I’m not interested in being a…” I lowered my voice, looked around the room. No one was looking up from their papers. “…Fucking cop.”
The Woman erased Psychology 101 from the board just before I got to her. I looked at my form, I looked at Jumper Hayes. He still had the same smile, mouthing, “Easy A;” stepped in front of me, very close to the Admissions Woman. “We’re both taking Criminal Justice, Miss… (looking at her name tag) Julianna Esposito (stretching out each syllable). I want to find out who killed Chulo Lopez; Joseph Discenzo… Junior, here…” Jumper handed Julianna my paper work. She looked at the name, looked at me. I looked at her. Confused smile. No, she probably hadn’t heard of my father. “…he wants to find out who killed his father.”
Real Surfers 