Tag Archives: surfing

John Amsterdam May Still Hate Me (Part Four)

Posted on by under Uncategorized

–Spring 1968- Another Saturday- Grandview-

The surf was small and choppy. The rights weren’t working at all. I was the only one out on the lefts when John Amsterdam waded halfway out, staring at me as I surfed.

Staring, judging for himself.

Donn Franzich, on the beach, had already told John that I, the entire unofficial surf team from Fallbrook Union High School, had won my first heat at what may have been the first annual (San Diego radio station) KGB/Windansea Surf Club San Diego County High School Surfing Contest.

Yeah, it was a Saturday, but nobody from my local church would have gone down to La Jolla Shores to watch such sinfulness. I had talked Donn into driving me. He was a Fallbrook resident because his father worked in the bigger (than San Diego) city, L.A., and believed his kids should be raised in the country; avocado trees and a horse or two on a mini-ranch. Donn’s, and some other Dads, were home on weekends.

Two girls rounded out our group: Bill Buell’s sister, Margaret Brown (maybe half-sister, technically) and this blonde Officer’s daughter (name long forgotten- sorry) had talked their way into going along; not really like dates, not really girlfriends, but, sure, girls.

My heat had started at the very moment the city and nearby homeowners had allowed the contest organizers to crank up the public address system. The contestants were listed, including: “The pride of Ocean Beach, and a member of the Windansea Surf Club…” And others. And then, “From Fallbrook… I didn’t know they had surf in Fallbrook.”

The actual fifteen minutes was a blur; paddling, surfing, caught inside. I had taken a couple of lefts, ended up out, I’d feared, of the contest zone. Fifteen minutes after the end of the heat my parents showed up, grownups, in shopping/sinning/going-to-a-grownup movie clothes, lumbering across the sand.

I say ‘lumbering’ because, at that moment, I was a little embarrassed by the inland parents of the inland cowboy surfer.

“I don’t know,” I told them, standing, my contemporaries still seated on towels; “one guy in my heat was…they said… probably not good.”

Ten seconds into my parents’ walk back to the car my heat’s results were announced. They both stopped, then turned toward me. “And, in first, from Fallbrook…” It was probably the only time I ever saw my mother leap into the air.

No, I was no longer embarrassed.  My parents, who had taken me on several ‘practice’ trips, who had sat in the car in the almost empty parking lot at 15th Street in Del Mar near dark, were there and the coolest parents on the beach.

What I had won was the opportunity to compete again the next day. My parents would let me borrow the good car.

But now, at Grandview, it was sunny and small, and with Donn and the Officer’s daughter making out against the bluff, Bill’s sister asleep and adding to her sunburn, John Amsterdam was judging me. Harshly. Again.

-August 1968, Lupe’s Left Loopers- Mazatlan, Mexico-

It was never my idea. I never would have thought of it.

Phillip must have heard some discussion of surfing summer waves in Mexico in conversations between his sister’s boyfriend, Bucky, and his friends, friends like John Amsterdam. I was fine with the North County’s beaches.

The increased crowds of summer weren’t such a bother. Oh, maybe kooks and those rich guys from Texas who rented places on 101 by the month, who thought four foot was kind of big, and who went after all the local girls with a certain gusto; and a high rate of success.

Phillip’s stepfather, Vince Ross, was for the plan all the way. “A real learning experience,” he said.  My parents and Ray Hick’s mom had to be talked into the plan. With Ray’s father in Vietnam, Phillip and I went over to try to convince his mother that her son wouldn’t be hauled off by bandits or Federalies. Somewhere after we had changed her mind, I was told (not too subtly) to shut up before I talked her into not even allowing him to hang out with us.

Phil’s younger brother, Max, would even out the crew. We’d be taking Vince’s fairly-new Mustang. Each of us sported fresh haircuts (so we wouldn’t be mistaken for hippies). We had visas granted us, with Vince’s help, on our second trip to San Diego to get them.

Evidently, the first time the people at the Mexican Consulate thought I had been, somehow, sarcastic or disrespectful (really, they were closing and said we’d have to come back and I said we live fifty miles away and, wow, I did enjoy that elevator ride, and…). This time I smiled politely and kept my mouth shut.

My portion of the expenses was (and I forgot this for years) contributed mostly (if not totally) from my sister Suellen’s baby sitting money, borrowed by my parents, probably never paid back (in kind).

My Dad, reluctantly, and at my Mother’s urging, when Phillip came over to convince my parents, gave us some ‘manly’ advice. In the backyard, away from my Mom and annoying siblings, he told Phillip and me that we should avoid any people trying to sell their daughters to us for, “you know… you know.”

Oh, yeah; we knew. We giggled anyway.

“Just wait until you meet a nice girl,” he said, “have sex with her.”

Shocking. Phillip and I would laugh about it later.

So, two and a half days and twelve hundred miles from Fallbrook, there we were, watching choppy six foot waves peel off a jetty. Mexicans on old surfboards Gringos had left behind or sold cheap were out.  One of them fell, got caught in the rip, swimming hard but not moving. Eventually, another surfer gave him a rest on his board, let him off in the surf zone. Seconds later, he was back in the rip.

“Did we come all this way to watch someone drown?” Ray asked. About the time the boardless surfer made it into the shorebreak and onto the beach, we applauding, I turned. Several other surfers were a ways down the little brick wall we were draped over.

John Amsterdam.

He didn’t look happy; even with Phillip. He and the two guys he was with got into their vehicle and moved on, maybe toward some newly discovered Mexican Malibu. Or maybe to discover one.

John Amsterdam May Still Hate Me (continued)

Posted on by under Uncategorized


-SOME TIME IN 1967, (THE ORIGINAL) GRANDVIEW, LEUCADIA-

Phillip and I were months ahead of our contemporaries in surfing experience when a revolving group of friends got into the sport, separately, at first, in the spring of 1966, and after. While many tried it a few times, a more hardcore-if-loosely connected group, some of them also friends of mine from Boy Scouts, was emerging.

Phillip and I had been surfing Grandview for a while. We had looked for the spot back in our freshman year, riding in the big wagon on an afternoon with the surf blown-out, impossible to see past the lines of breaking waves to open ocean.

“Grandview Street,” my Mom said, just coming into Leucadia on Highway 101; “you think it might be a clue?” The empty lot was just another viewpoint to unrideable chaos.

But now, some of our friends had drivers licenses, cars.  On this trip, hanging on the beach near a fire, Ray Hicks and maybe Mark Metzger added to our surf troop, we saw John Amsterdam coming down the water-and-feet-worn access between houses. This might have caused us to look down for a second, as if we had not earned the right- knowing, in John Amsterdam’s eyes, we hadn’t.

“New board,” someone in our group pointed out. “New board,” John Amsterdam told someone, close enough for us to hear. “Dewey Weber Performer. One hundred and seventy-five dollars.” “With the stripes.” “Yep.”

By this time I was riding a nine-nine Surfboards Hawaii noserider Wendy Brook’s father had found buried in the sand at Tamarack.  My neighbors, two doors down on Debby Street, had been there in the middle of the night for the running of the grunion. No one in their party evidently considered that someone was (stupidly) hiding it. Since no one claimed it before they left, Wendy’s Dad (Sergeant Brooks to me) strapped it onto their camper, figuring they could use it to float around over at the Salton Sea.

Wendy invited me over to check it out, she and her parents and her little sister all scattered around the back patio.

“Whoa! Surfboards Hawaii!” My covetousness of the coolest of the North County brands was quite obvious. “Salton Sea, huh?”  I purposefully tried to convince them using this valuable board for mere floating would be a shame.

No, not to them.

Some time later, Wendy’s Dad, a Marine ordinance man, came home from the hospital after an incident at Twenty-nine Palms, his arm sewn to his chest (so skin would grow back- or that’s what I was told). He was being retired and had decided to move back to wherever they had come from; maybe Texas (maybe worse). Sergeant Brooks offered me the board.

Wendy, remembering my assessment of its value, was not pleased.

I was. Phillip and I tried to disguise the board’s shady past by masking-off and applying a fancy pattern on the front fourth, officially designated as the nose, with *Slipcheck. Maybe we didn’t shake the can well enough or something; the result artistic but no-less-slippery.

THE LINEUP at Grandview must now be explained.

Even if there was an underlying rock reef, it remains my belief that the very gap between the houses that allowed access also allowed runoff, that helping to create a gap in the sandbars. If you took off on a right, you had varying length of shoulder before the inevitable closeout inside section. A not-as-good left lead into the same last section.

John Amsterdam took off on the first wave of a set. I took off on the second wave, probably made a few up-and-down moves, suddenly noticed someone swimming for his nearby brand new, pin-striped, one hundred and seventy-five dollar Dewey Weber Performer just inshore of the closeout section. I pushed hard to kickout, and, not have given the board quite enough push, left the board parallel to and hanging in the lip.

-THE NEXT SATURDAY- GRANDVIEW-

“Is that Erwin’s board?” John Amsterdam asked of Phillip and Ray.

Before either could explain that, yes, they had borrowed my board, undinged in the incident, and that I had to go to church on Saturdays and wasn’t, officially, supposed to engage in something as worldly and sensual as surfing, John asked, politely, if he could run over my Slip-checked Surfboards Hawaii noserider with his truck.

“Thanks for not letting him,” I said the next day, surfing somewhere else. “I tried to tell him I was sorry. I mean, I moved over to the lefts. What else could I do?”

*Aerosol invented by Morey-Pope.

Phillip and I Surf Grandview With Bucky Davis

Posted on by under Uncategorized

…”Grandview,” I said, as if it was a magic word.

-FIRST SESSION AT GRANDVIEW (1966) WITH BUCKY DAVIS-

We’ve arrived at a point in the John Amsterdam (may still hate me) story where it makes perfect sense to include a brief mention of the first time Phillip Harper and I got the opportunity to surf Grandview with my second surfing hero (after Hippie, overlord of Tamarack), Bucky Davis.

Phillip’s sister, Trish, a junior, was dating another upper classmen at Fallbrook Union High School; one who surfed. Because he surfed and was dating Phillip’s sister, Phillip and I begged him several times to take us surfing after school.

“There’s time,” I said. “It doesn’t get dark until six or so. We can have our boards at Phillip’s; it’s on the way, and, and we run out after class, jump in your…” By this point Bucky had walked away or Phillip, not wanting to make a scene, had pulled me away.

But, Trish was taking some after-school modeling classes in Encinitas. Yes, she was model pretty; tall, thin, blonde.  If she couldn’t be a model, Phillip told me, she could be an airline stewardess.

“Oh, sure,” I said; “that’d be something.”

It’s pretty apparent that Trish used her influence to allow Phillip and I to ride along in the VW station wagon, our boards on top, two freshmen in the back; me, at least, probably over-stoked and out of control.

I’m not apologizing.

If Phillip wanted to act cool, and if Bucky just was cool; my over-excitement was really the part that spilled out while trying to act as cool as I could.

So, Trish dropped off over by the A&W, Phillip moved up to shotgun, we arrived at the empty lot at the top of Grandview Street, the sandstone cliff eroded in the middle by water and beachgoers tromping up and back. We checked out the small and still-choppy afternoon surf, a few other surfers out.

“You going out, Bucky? Huh? Huh? I’m going out. Phil; you going out? Bucky? Oh; that wave… I’d be taking off; bottom turn; oh; I’d move up to the nose.” This is all illustrated with moves on the leading edge of the bluff, me walking, foot-over-foot, to the nose on some imaginary board.

When I looked around, several mind-surf rides later, Bucky is squatted down, looking over the edge into the access path, fully eight feet to the bottom. So Phillip squatted down, as if they would soon discuss some further secret of how to surf this heretofore mystical spot.

I squatted down. Bucky looked at Phillip, on one side, then back at me, on his other side.

I rolled when I hit the bottom, jumped to my feet, looked up at Phillip and Bucky.

Both were now standing, Bucky with a grip on my friend, Phillip pulling back. “I skateboard!” I yelled.

“Do you skateboard?” Bucky asked his girlfriend’s brother, releasing his grip.

Despite Bucky saying the waves weren’t good enough; as the afternoon glassoff continued, he did join us in the water.

Something about surfing with friends in fun waves brings out the competitive nature in many of us. And, as such, the perfect ‘watch this’ situation is when you’re taking off, your friend/competitor paddling out. If you can do a little head dip or jump up to the nose, anything special… even better.

Bucky couldn’t help but show up his lower classmen tagalongs. And he was, of course, better than we were; smoother, with better wave selection skills. He even, accidently, got excited, smiled, acted like a seventeen year old. “Yeah, watch this.”

 “How’d my brother do?”

It was fully dark when we picked up Trish. She took over driving. I observed the couple, looking for any overshow of affection. Maybe they touched hands when they passed in front of the car. Maybe there was a look.

“Oh, he did okay; but I was running up to the nose, think I even hung five on one…”

Bucky pushed me back into the seat. Phillip put an arm across me to keep me there.

“Phil did… good. Erwin (looking to Phillip for confirmation)… he kind of ‘jumped’ up to the nose. A real surfer goes foot-over-foot.”

After we got back to Phillip and Trisha’s place, Bucky had to give me a ride the rest of the way to my house. One might imagine he’d loosened up, acted a little friendlier. Not really. “This your house?” “Yeah. Debby Street. I skateboard down the driveways, do a few turns down here.”

“Uh huh,” he said. I took my board off his racks, restrapped his board.

We weren’t friends. I was his girlfriend’s brother’s friend. What he did say is that I should try not to brag it up at school that he’d taken us to Grandview. “I mean, like, my friends wouldn’t…”

“No, no; I get it. I’m cool.”

“Yeah, sure. Foot-over foot; huh?” I did a little on my board as he started up his engine, backed away.

Cool? No; never was. Still, when you’re around someone who is so caught up in being cool, so, in some ways, trapped in the coolness; there’s something about seeing that person forget his self image and other people’s perceptions for a moment, smile his ass off dropping into a glassy peak near dark.

Still, and again, for my lack of coolness; I’m not apologizing.

John Amsterdam May Still Hate Me (part two)

Posted on by under Uncategorized

-SEPTEMBER, 1965, FALLBROOK UNION HIGH SCHOOL-

I didn’t know exactly why I felt so alienated. Part of it was connected to my neighbor, Bobby Turner, moving away. I had become, since meeting him when we were both four years old, playing army and the occasional fist fight, his sidekick. Bobby seemed to need a sidekick more than I needed a leader, and on some level, if we hadn’t been neighbors, we probably wouldn’t have been friends.

Now I was my own man, but in a much bigger pond. At that time, the geographical area that fed into the high school district spread east to the base of Palomar Mountain; north to Rainbow and Temecula, south to Bonsall, and included many of the housing areas on the sprawling triangle-shaped mass of Camp Pendleton.

“The Base” was eighteen miles, straight across, to San Onofre, eighteen miles, by road, to Oceanside.

I was now, in my mind, a surfer.

All summer I’d borrowed the nine-four stock Hobie my sister Suellen had purchased from John Amsterdam for so long that, when I got out of the water, it was frequently time to go home.

But I had improved. Older surfers had stopped telling me to surf somewhere else. I could knee paddle. I swore I had the beginnings of surf bumps.

Then, maybe barely-fourteen year olds are just supposed to feel alienated.

During non-class time I hung out on one of the big cement planters adjacent to the Senior Area, near the trailers where they sold cold lunches and snacks. This would be my spot for the next four years, checking things out on campus.

SOMEWHERE IN MY FIRST FRESHMAN DAYS I met up with Phillip Harper, new, from Orange County. Phillip started going surfing on Sundays with my family; just another kid with seven of us Dence kids, all in the 1959 Chevy station wagon, winged back fenders, boards on top, Hawaiian print curtains all around (made by my sister, Suellen, me helping secure the wires) and a gigantic “Surfer Magazine” Murphy decal on the driver’s side back window.

Surf wagon, almost always with a board or more on top.

Phillip never seemed to be embarrassed by being part of this swarm; my Mom barely in control at best. We always seemed to stop off on the way home at Masters Automotive, right on Highway 101, in Oceanside, my Dad’s second job. My Mom would hit up Dad for some cash. Dad would do a loop around the wagon, check out his passed-out or whiny kids, take a breath, be gone for a while, hitting-up Mac for another advance.

On one trip, waiting in the car, Phillip and I comparing notes on rides and turns and kickouts in the far-back seat, my sister Suellen spotted Sonny and Cher in the alley, furry vests and all. They were obviously waiting for some quick repair to their car. It was Suellen, of course, who recognized them, jumped out to go bug them. If my siblings pressed against the glass, Phillip and I were (hopefully) slightly less obvious.

SURFING ONCE A WEEK JUST WASN’T ENOUGH. There were older surfers in the school, with cars, and Phillip’s sister, Trish, was dating one of them; Bucky Davis. Bucky was friends with John Amsterdam. Though John Amsterdam could easily believe Phillip was becoming a surfer, he couldn’t seem to fathom that I, one of two freshmen (Wendy Wetzel the other) allowed to take Biology, a guy who sat in the front row and paid attention while he and his junior class jock cronies lounged in the back, chuckling off the seriousness of it all; no, I couldn’t really be a surfer.

Even if I now wore a cheaper version of the surfer uniform, the prescribed (by the one-day Dr. Harper) outfit of Levis, J.C. Penny’s t-shirt, colorful windbreaker (Phillip’s, he being incredibly skinny, was fleece-lined. Mine, me being not skinny and this being Southern California, unlined), several choices of footwear, I could not pass muster with John Amsterdam. Because his judgment seemed the harshest, and he therefore, the coolest, his opinion mattered. No amount of talking, begging, or cajoling, even with Phillip doing the talking/begging/cajoling, would convince any of the older surfers to let us ride with them to the beach after school.

And besides, I had to talk. I was way too chatty, too excited when talking about surfing Swamis or waves down by the new State Park, too animated in defending Tamarack as a surf spot. “Tamarack?” “Oh, then where do you surf?” No answer.

“Grandview,” Phillip whispered, after they walked away, another secret revealed.

“Grandview,” I said, as if it was a magic word.

John Amsterdam May Still Hate Me- PART I

Posted on by under Uncategorized

   JOHN AMSTERDAM MAY STILL HATE ME

            The ADD version of this story is that John Amsterdam seemed to hate me even before I dinged his brand new, hundred and seventy-five dollar Dewey Weber Performer.

-JUNE, 1965- DUKE SNIDER (FAMOUS BASEBALL PLAYER) LANES, FALLBROOK, CALIFORNIA

It was the night of the party for graduation from Potter Junior High School. I was standing in a long and squirmy line outside the bowling alley (Duke Snider’s daughter, Pam, was in my class) with some of my friends, most also friends from Boy Scouts. A line of cars slowly passed to our immediate left; anxious and excited parents dropping off their little darlings, each darling instantly changing from someone’s child to someone acting as if this wasn’t the most Hollywood thing that had happened to any of us.

Those of us already on the concrete carpet hid our embarrassment for the kids whose parents dallied, visibly fussed, took pictures, said things like, “Oh, you’re all so grown up;” and, “Oh, look at YOU.”

That is, we hid our embarrassment by laughing and pointing, whispering little immaturities to each other. “Boobs. Did you know?” “Oh, yeah.” And now we all knew.

I was in my new still-room-for-growing “Church Coat” from Montgomery Ward, and my almost-a-match permanent press pants, the pockets of which were considerably shallower than jeans. It wouldn’t be a huge admission to reveal that I seemed to have spent much of eighth grade with hands in my pockets. Not for fun; camouflage was often necessary.

This seemingly growing lack of control was bad enough at school, but, on this night, the girls, many of whom I’d known since kindergarten, were dressed in what amounted to evening wear for 13-14 year old girls, designed and selected because these dresses featured those changes in my school mates we’d already noticed.

I might have preferred a little longer coat, too.

Bill Birt, tallest guy in our class, hair on his chest since sixth grade, a bit of spittle always on one or both corners of his mouth, not always because of the braces, turned, said, “I’m gonna dance. You gonna dance?”

“Don’t know how. You know, my religion, I don’t think we’re supposed to.”

“Well, then; do you know how to bowl? No? Well, I’m gonna bowl, too. And dance.”

Ray Hicks stuck his head in, “Can’t dance; might as well sing.”

“What? There’s singing?”

“Well, I’m gonna slow dance,” Bill Birt said, quieter, a bit too close to my face. “You just, um, move your feet a little. You rub against them; whatever they put your way.” At that point, me considering what, exactly I might be rubbing against, Bill broke into his standard sort of ‘ha ha yack ha’ laugh.

“Do you have a sister named Suellen?”

“What?”

It was Joanne Amsterdam, quite a cute girl, fairly new in Fallbrook. She had spun around, breaking from her little group of girls, and was now, in the moving line, quite close enough that she and I could be dancing. “Sue-Ellen? I only ask because I think she bought a surfboard from my brother, John, today. She and your Dad… do you… surf?”

“Surfmat.” I was nodding, like a fool, three or four other boys with heads tipped at this or another odd angle, leaning around and toward us, Joanne and me, my feet shuffling left, then right. Then left.

Kind of like dancing.

 -Next Friday, Part II- board surfing

Bill Irwin Called-Out Butch Van Artsdalen

Posted on by under Uncategorized

                        Bill Irwin, Butch Van Artsdalen, and the ‘Call-Out’

“It was at practice. I was a defensive lineman; Butch came running at me. I didn’t really know how to tackle. I just picked him up and dropped him on his head. He didn’t like it much. Later, he said something to that effect in the locker room. I said, ‘You want to take it outside?’ He said, ‘sure;’ but then, I guess he thought the better of it. I was way bigger than him.”

Bill Irwin was a sophomore at La Jolla High School; Charles M. “Butch” Van Artsdalen was a senior. Butch, who would soon be dubbed the first “Mr. Pipeline,” already had a reputation as a talented surfer. Any description on his surfing included his willingness to get into a few more than his share of physical confrontations.

This isn’t about Butch. A surfer who could ride waves of consequence switchfoot, who could prevail in the lineups at Windansea or Pipeline, Van Artsdalen died of alcohol-related issues before he reached forty years old.

Bill was more interested in chasing girls, diving for lobster and abalone, and body surfing La Jolla spots like Boomer than board surfing. When I told Bill that, in early Bruce Brown movies, even surfers who had lasting reputations (my example- Dewey Weber) just didn’t surf all that well if compared to today’s longboarders.

“Maybe he just didn’t shoot them in good waves.” I added, not to seem too harsh.

“Well,” Bill, who admits to having owned a ‘really long’ board said, “Back then we weren’t so much surfing as plowing.”

Bill went on to play college football, to work various jobs, from drywall hanger to flower salesman; to crew on other people’s sailboats, to co-write two movie scripts that sold but were never produced (“We made money,” he told me, “that was the point.”). He lived in the San Francisco Bay area as the counter-culture was evolving, eventually moving to the Pacific Northwest, settling into a career designing and building custom homes.

I say settled. A General Contractor, by definition, is the person who makes sure the materials and, more importantly, the subcontractors, are on the job when scheduled. This requires that even the nicest General sometimes has to be, well, tough.

And I am one of those independent subcontractors with a schedule of my own. Though we could discuss surfing at length, Bill has no time to hear excuses. Bill has a sort of Honor-among-Tradesmen code. A person must abide by his word.

Now, this honor thing really only works with people who are also bound by some similar sense of ethics, those of us who feel compelled to respond to “You said you’d be here tomorrow” with “Okay, then I will.”

“SURF THE COYLE!”

One of my first jobs for Bill was a new house at the very end of the Coyle Peninsula, twenty miles into the Hood Canal. There was no running water available, and my brushes and rollers were all soaking in brownish water after hurrying from my last job. I thought it was perfectly appropriate to clean out the wienie roller I’d be using to pre-stain some boards by dipping it in the new finish, rolling the increasingly-correct color on some freshly-hung Tyvek (brand name) house-wrapping.

The Tyvek would all be covered by siding, so, in keeping with a surfing theme, and because I had a sign painting background…in a perfectly-professional one stroke lettering style… “Surf the Coyle.”

“Unprofessional,” Bill said, quite displeased. “Who’s going to see it?” I asked. “I saw it. And it’s tough, because I actually kind of like you.”  “Well, you don’t have to like me, Bill.” “Oh, yes, I do; otherwise I won’t hire you.” “Oh.”

“YOU‘D BE AMAZED.”

I didn’t meet Bill until after he had a debilitating stroke, fifteen years ago. “Just bad luck,” he says.

His left leg remains stiff. Accounts vary as to whether he was more volatile before or after. He did have a reputation for being a very hard worker, very productive, and he was always nice to clients. Always. Almost always.

I wasn’t a client. Still, Bill has a certain formality, and really, the worst he really ever said to me is, a few descriptives deleted, is “I’m very disappointed.”

It was once Bill’s desire to retire to Hawaii. He spends a certain amount of time there each spring. Several of his employees (carpenters, not subcontractors) went with him and his wife, Mary, to Maui a few years ago.

This is almost an aside. Mary, Bill’s second wife, is another La Jollan, one of the girls he chased in high school. Unlike Bill, Mary did ride a flexi-flyer inside the storm drain, deposited on the sand at Windansea. He introduced me to her as, “Erwin, he came from Fallbrook.” “Oh,” she said, appearing properly snooty for more than just a few seconds.

“How does Bill do, you know, in the water?” I asked his lead carpenter, Jessie Justis.

“You’d be amazed. He does really well.”

No, I probably wouldn’t be amazed, even surprised. Bill’s a fighter. Or, sometimes, he doesn’t have to.

Hippie, Blueballs, Glueballs, and Me (AKA- Asshole)

Posted on by under Uncategorized

  HIPPIE, BLUEBALLS, GLUEBALLS, AND ME (AKA- ASSHOLE)

The first person I identified as being the dominant surfer at a particular spot was nicknamed “Hippie.” This was before Hippie Hippies. The story was he got the name early because of the relative size of his butt.  I did once know his real name. What I knew was he wasn’t someone to take off in front of. Undoubtedly influenced by the wave positioning and smooth transitions between a regular (pivot foot back) to a parallel stance of surfers like Phil Edwards and Miki Dora, Hippie would takeoff on an angle, use an in-line bottom turn to move high on the wave and forward of the middle of the board. His right hand acted as a baton as he rhythmically dropped and moved higher across a wave face, smoothly backpedalling to pullout on the shoulder.

Tamarack was a perfect spot for Hippie’s style of surfing. There was, back in 1965 (and I assume is), a peak that forms straight out from the bathrooms on the bluff. The left varies in shape and makeability, but the right, though not offering a long ride, is almost always makeable; even bigger waves have an out.

The problem with this is there’s really a small takeoff zone, and it can seem crowded without much of a crowd.  Still, when I was learning, I headed for the main peak, and, head down, blind to the wave behind me, stroked like I meant it.

We hung out at Tamarack enough to start getting familiar with some of the others who surfed there on this or other Sundays. Suellen would make a fire while I was using her board. Cold surfers, strangers or not, would stand around it.

There was the guy with striped blue and white trunks who someone called, my sister thought, “Glueballs,” though it may have been “Blueballs.” So we called him that. Not to his face. Others were identified by their boards, “Yellow Nose,” “Popout,” or whatever vehicle they arrived in. If I said, “Woody,” you’d know I’m making some of these up. I am, though Glueballs is real.

Because I abused the borrowing of my sister’s board, and seemed so serious about being a surfer, my parents, without my being there, or my input, visited the old Hanson Surf Shop across the street from Cardiff Reef. I’m sure budget was a factor, but I would never have approved the board they bought for me.

But, there I was, paddling out to the main peak on a Velzy/Jacobs balsa surfboard from, probably, 1957- too narrow, no real rocker. I did know enough to be embarrassed. Since I had been making advances in my knee paddling on Suellen’s 9’4” Hobie, I tried it on this board. Quite shaky. Fall. Try again.

Now, there was another guy who always seemed to be out when we were there. I never really got a name to go with him, but his nickname for me seemed to be “Asshole,” such as, “Hey, Asshole; my wave!”  This time it was, “Hey, look; asshole got himself a really screwed up old balsa board. Where’d you find that, Asshole?”

Actually, the main peak at Tamarack might have been a friendlier place for groms and kooks if real surfers just surfed somewhere else. We groms and kooks would actually hoot each other into waves, watch, root for other groms and kooks. “Haul A!” I remember one kid saying as we all watched as the kid hauled A into the shorebreak.

This was not my tormentor’s method. “Hey, Asshole; maybe you should practice knee paddling over in the slough, come back when you know how,” he’d say, perfectly balanced on his knees and motionless. Then I’d fall. Then I’d get back on the board, back on my knees, shakily.

Maybe to practice, I paddled farther out, taking a break from the peak and the ridicule. Of course an outside peak formed. I spun around, head down, paddling; moved to my knees, stroke. The entire rest of the group was inside, eyes on me, each surfer scratching to get over the wave I was about to… stroke… I felt the lift, I was on it, dropping, straight… straight down. My Velzy/Jacobs pearled, totally, I went ‘over the handlebars.’ Everyone paddling out turned-turtle or bailed. The balsa wood weapon popped straight back up, tail first.

No one had to call me Asshole. I paddled in, prone, banished to the crappy waves in front of the lower parking lot.

A year or so later, I was now riding a popout my Dad had purchased ‘on base’ from an auction of boards taken by Marine Military Police from surfers attempting to surf Trestles. One attempting such a beach assault would not take his best board. This particular bargain popout also featured a huge delaminated spot on the nose.

Okay, I’d fix that. Phillip and I made a cut, ripped off the de-lam and some surrounding glass, reglassed it. Then, coming in from surfing Swamis, waiting for my turn to stack my board on the roof of the car, I dropped it mere inches onto the grass. Snap!

Okay, so now we got some dowels, stuck it back together, put a fiberglass bandage around it. As a bonus, it now it had even more kick up, more rocker.

This was the board I was riding, my surf bumps now visible (even to others), on one after school afternoon at Tamarack; an afternoon a little crowded with kooks and grems and groms and Hippie. It was, perhaps, out of frustration that I did not give way, paddled stroke for stroke, took off even with but in front of Hippie. I gave him room, drove across the peak, kicked my board out hard.

My board was spinning, straight up, next to me. Beside and just behind it was Hippie’s board, twins in the spinning.

“I’m sorry” I said, the first words I’d ever spoken to Hippie.

“No you’re not,” he said; both of us climbing onto our boards.

“Okay then, I’m not.”

Perhaps I saw this as a rite of passage. Perhaps it was. No, still not sorry.

 

Corky Carroll, Billy Hamilton, & a Rising Swell

Posted on by under Uncategorized

CORKY CARROLL, BILLY HAMILTON, AND A RISING SWELL

“There was nothing showing at Trestles; Oceanside was flat, but now, look at this.” Corky Carroll to someone else, while perched on a railing at the top of the stairs at Swamis, 1969.

Though the comment was not meant for me, I did look around. The surf at my favorite point break was- reaching back for the proper phrasing from the time- ‘classic,’ ‘epic,’ just about as good as it gets- four to five foot, glassy, sunny skies putting sparkle on the breaking lips, proper shadowing on the faces.

I’d say it was ‘perfect,’ ‘magical,’ other than the now-growing crowd of locals, semi-locals, and the Orange/L.A. County surfers (we) North County surfers always complained about the most (maybe other than the Texans in the summer).

They came, car-pooling, drifting south like the smog that usually, but not always, stopped somewhere south of San Onofre. They drove away from their crowds, added to ours.

Ours. Not that I wasn’t still an inland cowboy, still living in Fallbrook. But now I was working in Oceanside. This meant something. Maybe not to a true local.

In fact, one of the first surfing-related near-fistfight I ever witnessed was at Swamis, 1966. The older surfer was almost pleading with the guy who’d snaked him, taken off fin-first in front of him on the inside peak.

“I’ve been surfing here for over fifteen years,” the Snake-ie said. “Well,” the member of the Northern Horde said, grinning toward his fellow riders (or raiders, perhaps), “you should have learned to surf it better.”

Paused at the top of the Swamis stairs, I must have had that can’t-wipe-it-off expression of satisfaction, mixed with a sort of righteous exhaustion. The surf hadn’t started this good. When I paddled out, three hours earlier, it was small, the high tide dropping just enough to allow the waves to break outside of the bigger rocks, just far enough out for two or three others and me to get some in-and-out quickies.

As the tide dropped, the swell increased. An hour into it, I was back-dooring the peak, sliding the wall, and, with maybe just a couple of aggressive looks, maybe (I’d prefer to think not- but probably) a couple of whistles or that one syllable war whoop, guaranteeing each wave was just mine.

“Mine.”

Oh, I was dominating; for a while. Now, however, with more surfers, the two peaks working, the group at the top of the stairs, Corky and his crew, and I watched someone smoothly, seamlessly take off, bottom turn, top turn, rise and drop across the wall, and then pull the first one-eighty-plus cutback into a high-and-off-the-curl top-turn into another bottom turn. I’d ever seen. If not the first, definitely the best. I almost dropped my board.

The surfer had the solid, split-leg stance that, if you made a surfer action figure; this all-purpose, any-board, all-wave-size stance would be the one you’d build into the mold. Classic.

“Billy… Hamilton,” one of Corky’s cohorts said. Corky and another Northerner, having already identified the surfer, shook their heads. “We goin’ out?”

I’m sure I gave Corky the same questioning look his car-pool-buddies did. I’d seen Corky in the magazines. I’d seen him on “Wide World of Sports.” He was one of the first world champions. He was competitive; and this was another arena. Now he was perched on the railing, the highest available throne, surveying the surf.

He looked at me, still in awe at the Billy Hamilton move, still anticipating his answer. He looked at his crew, back at me, gave me a ‘keep moving, kid; you bother me’ look.

“Oh, yeah.”

If I chose one session to mark the peak of my own surfing abilities; this would be it. The backside of the peak of wave knowledge/fitness/practice, practice practic- features a slow downhill with some just-as-memorable sessions. For this I’m grateful.

Still, watching the water as I walked to my car, I knew I was no Billy Hamilton. I knew I might never have the audacity to purposefully bounce off an oncoming curl. I also knew I would try.

But, on this day, I had other places to go, and I’d already seen what remains the most memorable single ride I have ever witnessed in person. I didn’t stay to watch Corky and his cohorts. No offense.

Guest Writer Stephen Davis on ‘Nose,’ Talking Story

Posted on by under Uncategorized

            GUEST WRITER STEPHEN DAVIS ON ‘NOSE,’ TALKING STORY   

 “The restaurant smelled like vomit and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.” I was telling the story to our accountant Dolph, short for Adolph.  “You could smell it in the kitchen, the dish pit, and the twelve-top in the bar next to the wait station could more than likely smell it too”.  

Katrina, my stepdaughter, initially said she couldn’t smell anything.  Five minutes later she said that someone had, indeed, thrown up in the ladies’ room and that I must have a good sense of smell.

Having a discerning ‘nose’ is something I must have developed over a lifetime of cooking food and working in kitchens.  I never really thought about it consciously until now, but you can tell a lot about things just from smell.

 Once I was at a friend’s house when the retired fire chief, who was a neighbor, knocked on the door. He said my buddy’s chimney was on fire. After a career of fire fighting, he had a nose for chimney fires.  Both of us ignorant of the blaze, we were stoked the chief caught it.

“I think it might be a good idea to replace the fan in the ladies’ room one of these days,” I insisted. The fan had burned out two years ago and I had pulled it to get the part number. We never bought a new one because cash had been tight until the thought had dropped off everyone’s radar. 

“Having a strange hole in the ceiling of the ladies’ room for two years is just a buzz kill too,” I said.  No one is super comfortable using public restrooms and one having a strange, pervert hole in the ceiling just makes it more awkward.

The truth is, we’re a good team; Dolph and I.  We opened our restaurant in Port Townsend, Washington just before the banking meltdown and, somehow, we were able to skate through the recession, the Hood Canal Bridge closure, and another ferry crisis.  We pulled it, but it was tight, and the women’s room fan was a luxury no one considered until the smell brought our attention back to it. 

The reason I was involved in the restaurant business at all was because of my love of surfing, not food. I started working in kitchens to get through college by working nights.  As it turns out, working in the evening is great for surfing too, and, being an art major, I  just stuck with it after college. 

What gets confusing is that people think I must love food because I’m a chef.  Recently, reality cooking shows seem to be everyone’s window into the professional kitchen. Food becomes pornographic.  We now watch people eat for entertainment, like drooling dogs begging at the dinner table. 

That’s great, but waves are my true passion, and cooking has allowed me to ride a lot of them.  Having my weekdays free allowed me to surf every day waves were breaking; and I often surfed good spots alone.  I could go on long surf trips during the off season and not worry about losing a good paying job.

Like I had a good paying job.

College was amazing, but I didn’t see how it would help me surf more, so I bailed. That’s how I found myself owning my own place and talking to Dolph about foul smells in the ladies’ room. 

Foodies would often call me on my surf-over-work ways. When I asked a previous employer for a raise, he declined saying I didn’t “put enough love in the food“. 

“Whatever,” I thought,  “he should try putting love into two hundred-plus dinners a night.

 Assembly line workers don’t always put love into the torque wrench either. Maybe they‘re doing their best to make a buck for the fam and do some bowling at the end of it.  My boss had obviously never seen me praying for surf to a barrel-shaped tortilla chip on the dash while driving to the beach. 

People are extraordinarily fortunate when they get to do what they love for a living.  I do enjoy cooking for folks, but surfing is my love. 

I wandered out of the office and down the stairs to get back to work. A few minutes later Dolph comes down and says, “You really know how to tell a story,   your stories are always WAY beyond everyone else’s ”.  

“Oh,” I say, “It’s cause I’m a surfer. Talkin’ story is important to us!”