Tag Archives: surfing

Surfing With Donald Takayama

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                        Surfing ‘With’ Donald Takayama

“I try to meet up with Donald every time I go to California.”

This remark came from a guy who worked for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). I was doing some painting for the property management company overseeing the house he and his wife were renting in Port Townsend, a house with several Donald Takayama surfboards in the garage.

The surfer/renter/NOAA guy’s remark was in response to my, checking out his enviable stash, and having said, “Oh, I surfed with Donald Takayama once; Seaside Reef, back in, probably, 1969.”

So, now I felt I had to explain what I meant by ‘surfing with.’

“I meant we were out at the same time; not like we, like, went there together.”

Too late; I’d already sinned. I was just making it worse.

My girlfriend, Trish, was supposed to go on this trip, on a Sunday afternoon, to her brother’s house in Solana Beach. Jim Scott, recently out of the Marine Corps as a Captain, having only-recently returned from a tour of Vietnam as a Second Lieutenant, number one target. His tour had also aligned with the Tet Offensive of January 1968. Tough time, life-changing; Jim resigned from a definitely-promising military career

Jim and his first wife, Chris, had a house with a sweeping view of that curve of coast from Seaside Reef to Cardiff Reef and beyond.

Meanwhile, Trisha’s father, Major W.M. Scott, U.S.M.C., was in Vietnam.

Trish punked-out at some point after my surf racks had been transferred to her mother’s Corvair, my board secured. “It’s not weird,” she said, “she’ll just drop you off; pick you up when she’s done visiting.”

“That’s weird,” Trish said as I asked her for a few details while writing this.

Weird or not, Maureen and I were off.

I never called her Maureen, or her husband Wilkens, or Bill, or Dad; always Irene and George- Maureen’s nickname for herself, Trisha’s nickname for her father- or, later Grandmother and Grandfather- formal.

Knowing Irene (from the old song, “Good Night Irene,” one she would quote to stop Trish and I from making out, and/or to send me home) really didn’t consider me a great candidate, or even on the high end of acceptable, for someone dating her daughter, and a bit intimidated by my driver, I tried to make some conversation. “Yeah, Seventh Day Adventist.” “No, not a cult.” “Yeah, I guess; poor man’s Jew.” “Yeah, three brothers, three sisters.” “Yes, my Dad was a Marine; World War II and Korea.” “Sure; they probably ran into each other somewhere. Guadacanal?”

Somewhere before we got to the coast, my future mother-in-law, grandmother to three children her daughter had with me, two Jim had with his second wife, Greer, said, concerning one of the women she’d worked with at one of several jobs she’d had before meeting W.M. Scott; “She was so dumb she didn’t know the difference between Kleenex and Kotex.”

Then she went quiet for a while; maybe a little check in the rear view mirror to catch my reaction without actually looking over.

The waves just weren’t working at the spots we passed. Seaside Reef was the last chance. It was mid-afternoon, lined-up but pre-glassoff lefts breaking out from one of the last remaining trailer parks on the North County coast. There was one other surfer out. We didn’t actually speak much, but we did trade off empty waves for a while. I gave him at least a nod or two; had to. Donald Takayama, wunderkind surfer, had been known in the surfing world since appearing in a Bruce Brown film as a Hawaiian teenager pre-“Endless Summer,” pre-1960, surfing at Velzyland, named after board maker Dale Velzy, for whom Mr. Takayama would shape balsa, and later foam boards.  

This, 1969, was the era, pre-jail time, pre-restoration as a preeminent shaper and builder of long boards, Donald remembered most fondly when featured in “The Surfers’ Journal” sometime before he died in 2012.

I, of course, tried very hard, too hard, to impress him. He just seemed to be enjoying surfing decent lefts with only some random kid out; a kid constantly scanning the parking area for an ugly Corvair with racks on it; someone who looked like he wanted to say something; just didn’t know what.

This was also the only time I ever surfed Seaside Reef or with Donald Takayama. By the time those who waited for the afternoon glassoff arrived, we were both gone.   

 

Who Told You I Was Naked?

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                        Who Told You I Was Naked?

 “And God said, “Who told you that you were naked?’” Genesis, Chapter 3, verse 11

 We’re all pretty sure God’s voice sounds like, and this is a little dependent on our age relative to Creation, John Huston (“Adam, where are you?”- acting as if he didn’t know), or James Earl Jones (“Luke, I am your fa-thuh.”), or maybe like an amplified voice of a deep-voiced policeman.

 I kind of believe God’s voice, this being pre-English, and, really, pre-language, probably sounded more like the language of dolphins, or whales. It’s not like I’ve heard God, but I have heard the recorded voices of John Huston, James Earl Jones, and an amplified deep-voiced policeman or two. “Do not get out of the vehicle.”

 That is not really relevant to this story. Really.

 And so it was, on a sunny-but-cold day, in an otherwise deserted parking area many yards from where I had been surfing, I was sort of half-leaning on the driver’s side of my mini-van, the vehicle pulled forward and tight against the shrubbery-covered rise.

 I was at that most vulnerable part of the wetsuit-stripping process, getting the legs over and off the feet, the rest of the suit inside-out on the pavement. Because I was alone I was not wrapped in the iffy-at-best towel. It has been my experience that towels, held by body pressure against a fragile tuck, are prone to falling, fully, to the ground, at pretty much this exact moment, and, because underwear is (are?) just one more thing to try to get dry in the northwest cold/damp, I was naked.

 Spiritually, technically, legally; my condition of undress was the very definition of ‘naked’ at the exact moment that the yellow school bus appeared. It had taken the two mile trip from the main road, obviously on a mission, had come down the last hill, and was just rounding the last curve onto the entrance/exit end of the flat, barely-wider-than-one-lane-dead-end-road/parking area.

 I did say I was on the farther side of the van, right? Still, I was scrambling- pull, step, pull, my clothes on the driver’s seat. By this time the bus, still 75 yards away, was parking, parallel to the bank, and was unloading. “Towel, towel, where’s my towel?”

 Now, I do believe I had a wool cap on.

 What to do? Do I jump inside, most of my black non-superhero surf suit caught in the door, pulling my clothes over me, wait until the group passes?

 No, in desperation I moved faster; bent down, yanked the now-knotted legs, one at a time, off. Now, it would be amusing if, at that moment, someone walking several dogs appeared from the beach side. Nope, not this time. Pullllll, pull, kick, get those now-bunched, now-clinging undies onnnnn!

 Yeah, I was fine as the group approached; shirtless, maybe; embarrassing enough; rude, but not, technically, illegal. Did I mention I had a cap on? And, thankfully, the school bus had been filled with adults.

 “Surfing, huh?” “Uh huh.” “You must wear a wetsuit.”  I pointed to the dirtied, black pile. No more than one passing adult appeared shocked. Maybe two. The others, well, they were going on a field trip to observe beach wildlife.

 An improvement in wetsuit removal I just learned, and not a second too soon, involves pulling the bottom of the legs tight, then slightly over the heels. The step-pull-step-pull method becomes so much easier, even with the tucked towel barely holding.

 I did once have a terry cloth robe I could wear during beachside/roadside wetsuit removal. But, hanging it in a dampish garage to dry, it, instead, got sort of mildew-y. Besides, it kind of made me look like a pervert.

 Thanks for reading.

Tom Decker and Jeff Parrish

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                        TOM DECKER AND JEFF PARRISH

“You almost killed your buddy. You’re a kook and you shouldn’t be surfing here.”

Jeff Parrish is married to Ruth (formerly Hodgson) a schoolmate of my daughter, Dru, so, yeah, I’m about Jeff’s father’s age.

Jeff and I had a few (each memorable) sessions on the Straits, he coming from Seattle, a ferry and thirty miles before I had to leave home to rendezvous at Discorery Bay. Or, several times, usually around Christmas, he would be at his in-laws’ house.

Frustrated with trying to ride a thruster in typically small conditions, he purchased a long board on Craigslist. This day was probably his second or third time on that board.

Jeff was, he said, so desperate for surf that, when we met at McCleary, he agreed to do the driving. He wanted to try Point Grenville, one of the first places surfed in Washington, a place off limits to non-natives for years.

Because my son Sean had worked on his Masters in Public Administration degree at the Evergreen State College in Olympia along with those in a concurrent Tribal Program, I had checked out Point Grenville. Since nobody told me I couldn’t, while Sean was busy, I walked out onto the beach. I could see how it might be good, imagine hippie/surfers camping on the bluff.  

After Jeff and I made the hour drive from Aberdeen, we saw as much as we could from the bluff, then went to town to get a one day pass or something. With most of the folks on the Reservation busy with a funeral, the person on the other side of the glass at the police station said, “Just go. Just today, though. Huh?”

We drove across a couple of little creeks to the far end, a little hook of a bay. We could paddle across to a point with what looked like four footers breaking with some shape. I was for it. Instead, we drove an hour back to Aberdeen, twenty miles farther to Westport.

Days at Westhaven State Park can be divided into two categories: Days you can paddle out through the waves, and days when you must either paddle out along ‘the wall’ or jump off the jetty. This was a ‘wall’ day, six feet plus, with, maybe, five guys out. One of those guys, we would soon discover, was Tom Decker, long known as one of several local enforcers.

Another surfer was making the long walk from bluff to water at about the same time as Jeff and I. He was telling me about how he’d just ripped it up at the Groins on his new board; but now the tide was too high, and, oh, hadn’t he seen me before at Twin Rivers? Probably.

Paddling next to the jetty isn’t exactly easy, either. There’s still a version of the extra-deep Westport impact zone, bouncy chop, waves to duck under or crash through. Partway out I heard the unmistakable sound of a surfboard smacking full-on into a rock. The owner of the board was swimming. “My son’s out there. Tell him I’m going in.”

“Okay.” I never saw his son. Once I thought I’d made it out I was instantly confronted with an outside wave. I turned turtle, and, I swear, instead of being pushed back but clearing the wave, my big board me hanging onto the rails, was lifted, straight up, just like a submarine broaching way too fast. Or, think whale rider, upside down.

The waves offered two options: A quick left toward the jetty, or a longer right, followed by trying to fight back out. The longer the ride, the worse your chances. So, catch the soup in, battle the wall back out. And, seconds after getting back out again, there’s another outside wave. This is another Westport feature; a wave six inches higher can break fifty yards farther out.

On one particular outsider, the only other surfer who wasn’t Tom Decker, Jeff, the guy who ripped the Groins, or me, decides he should make a bottom turn as close to me as he can get without actually touching. And I get thrashed by the wave.

Three or four waves into the session, my ears already plugging up, I notice Jeff is hugging the jetty, the peak at least fifty yards away. I also notice Tom is sitting inside of me, I’m getting cleaned up, and he isn’t. I also notice Tom and the Groin Ripper are now engaged in some verbal fisticuffs.

Tom Decker was the first surfer I saw ripping across six foot lefts at Port Angeles Point, on the Lower Elwha Reservation. This was early 1979, before access there became restricted. Tom lived as close to the waves as he could, surfed as often as it broke. I borrowed a wetsuit from him a couple of times, negotiated for its purchase, didn’t end up buying it.

When I surfed in my second of the Ricky Young-run longboard contests in the late 80s, early 90’s, seeing Tom was to be in my heat, I told a local I’d heard Tom had moved to Bellingham or something, tried his hand at video production. “Maybe, but he’s been living here awhile.” Yeah, he won that heat, but didn’t win the next.

Still, it’s not like Tom would recognize me. I saw Tom on one of the trips I’d made to Westport with Sean while he was still attending Evergreen.  Each trip featured a late session, a stay at one of the several No-tell Motels, an early session the next morning, sand left in the shower. Mr. Decker was in a car at the pot-hole scarred parking lot overlooking Halfmoon Bay, inside the harbor. He had a dog and a short board inside.

One observation that is almost always true about a guy over fifty who rides a very short board is this: He knows how to surf.

I asked the guy if he knew Tom Decker. He looked me over for a moment before saying, “Yeah, I know him. (another moment) He’s an asshole.”

Back to the jetty session. Evidently the Groin Ripper had irritated Tom by trying for several waves and not catching them. Criminal. I told Jeff I was getting out. I could barely hear, and getting constantly caught inside was really pissing me off.

Jeff and I both went for the same peak, side by side. Jeff started to pearl, bailed to one side, his board jumping, sideways, toward me.

When I came up I was shouting. “Damn it! You do something like that in Hawaii, they’ll kill you.”

That’s what I’d heard, anyway. I caught the next wave. I beat the first section and was going so fast, busting over little choppy sections, farther and farther from the jetty. For some reason I was almost laughing. I caught some soup, proned into a reform, did a few turns. When I got to the beach, Groin Ripper was waiting, ready to report on the unwarranted verbal abuse an the walk back. “Who is that asshole, any way?” Well.

On the next wave, Jeff came in, practically sprinting past us.

By the time The Ripper and got to the bluff, Jeff was down the path and Tom Decker was the only guy out. I guess that would have made him happy.

Sometime after we’d changed out, loaded up, headed back, towards McCleary, after I apologized for snapping, Jeff asked if he’d almost killed me.

“No, not really.”

“Well, that’s what that guy said.”

“Oh.” It’s rude to take a nap if there are only two of you in a car. Somehow, and I’m pretty sure I told Jeff this, I felt kind of good. Tom Decker had pretty much called everyone around a kook. But, not me. Trying to clear my ears, I guess that made me kind of, I don’t know, happy.    

Raphael Reda

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                                                RAPHAEL REDA

            “You have to meet this guy. He’s a surfer. Like you. He’s a real goofball. Like you.” George Hoppe, in reference to Raphael Reda.

It seems I should write these things in reverse order; starting with the most recent event. Then, as they’re posted, a reader could come forward in time.

Actually, one story, even in the planning/remembering phase, leads to another. Once I had written that I’d visited Al Perlee’s surf shop more than twenty years ago, I now feel compelled to mention the circumstances and who I was with when we were told that we could not enter The Surf Shop in Westport in our wetsuits. No way.

It was 1988. Raphael Reda actually put up an argument. “It’s a surf shop.” He looked around as if suggesting the building was not all that fancy. “And we’re surfers.”

“Yeah. So?”

“And we’re planning on going back out again.”

The shop, two disheveled surfers at the door, looked, and looks, kind of like it was a converted garage, with another converted garage added on, not necessarily built by professionals. Still, it was filled with boards and wetsuits and magazines and stuff surfers find fascinating. Mostly it offered the chance, out of a parking lot, to lean on a counter and regale whoever’s there with stories; hopefully enlighten and entertain someone who hears surf stories pretty much non-stop during business hours. “Epic! All time! Classic!”

            But we were outside.

            “We tried the jetty; now we’re going to try the groins.”

“Well, then (nodding as if the groins might be a better choice); come back after that. (appropriate pause) Dressed.”

Raphael and I were in Westport to practice- not just to surf- we were practicing for the upcoming Westport Longboard Contest. The annual event had been started several years earlier by Ricky Young. A former top rated competitive surfer, he sold surfboards in Bellevue, a city across Lake Washington from Seattle, commonly called the “Eastside.” Still, Ricky was able to line up sponsors, organize volunteers, line up surfers and judges. 

At this time, I was still working as a sign painter at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. While the real work was on ships, I worked mostly in a shop, making me a “Shop Pogue.” I don’t think Pogue is a term of endearment. 

My friend George Hoppe had also moved from the discomfort of the ships to the relative grandeur of operating a spray booth in a large building. He, evidently, had paid enough shipboard dues to not suffer ridicule for his plusher surroundings free of bilges and tanks and endless wireways and pipes.

Besides, George was not a person to be messed with. He was confrontational, a master of blue collar repartee, a sort of Don Rickles of the paint shop, with, merely as an example, a creative list of responses to ‘fuck you.’ George and I got along, perhaps, because I laughed at any putdowns directed towards me, and I could talk way faster than he could, and, well, I could keep up in the repartee department.

George, frequently would get me started on a subject, then stand back, say, “He’s on a roll now.”

Raphael was a carpenter, and, since I didn’t go over to the Shop 64 building to meet him, George brought Raph over to my desk/drawing table.

With George observing, Raphael and I did the “Surfer Sizeup.”

This process begins with an exchange of experience; where and when and how one ended up at this location. “South Bay.” “North County.” “Dewey Weber.” “Surfboards Hawaii.” “Malibu, a few times.” “Swamis, all around; Doheny, before the breakwater.” “Had to get away. Didn’t’ want to raise kids there.” “Yeah, same thing.”

Soon enough, with George having gathered a couple of other non-surfers to witness, Raphael and I got appropriately goofy. “Epic!” “All time!” “Classic!”

“Next,” George said, “They’ll be doing the surfing poses.”

 I don’t recall seeing Raphael when he wasn’t enthusiastic, supportive. Somewhere after I left the shipyard, he (or his wife, Grace, not actually clear on this) inherited a large sum of money, moved to the canyons of Topanga, near Malibu. What George (or I) would say is that he had so much money he had to get divorced. Through another shipyard/surfer, Jim Kennedy, someone I run into every now and again, out at Westport, up on the Straits, Ralph (Jim’s version of Raphael) bought land (new land from lava) on the Big Island. 

It was either that or his land was covered by lava. The last time I heard from Raphael, he, knowing I’d written several screenplays, sent me his. It had a good story, mostly bad dialogue. One line was excellent- I stole it for one of my probably-never-to-be-sold scripts. Then he sent me a link to a YouTube video of him, captain of his own tour sailboat, crashing through several waves closing out the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor.

I wrote back asking if he was the Captain, at the wheel, or the guy hanging on to something at the bow; and if it was a “three hour tour; a three hour tour.”

“The Captain, of course. You know, Hoppe always said you were goofy.”

AL PERLEE

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AL PERLEE

“You’re too old, too fat, and you don’t surf enough.”

This is one of several quotes directed to me from Al Perlee owner of “The Surf Shop” in Westport, Washington. I’ll provide the context. I was looking for a new board, and said I was considering something shorter.

The occasion was some time in 2009. I’d been back, as heavily as I could manage, into surfing, riding a chunky and well made nine foot four inch surfboard over pretty much every rock I could find on the Straits of Juan de Fuca, plus a few on the coast.

When I say the board was well made, that would be the glassing.  And it had come, originally, with a pretty translucent red fin that I weakened striking the already-mentioned rocks. It snapped off at its base while surfing at Short Sands in Oregon, replaced by a cheaper, non-translucent black one.

Yes, I did claim the snap was due to the intensity of my bottom turns. Every one I asked agreed the board’s shape was just wrong; chunky hips, roundy rails. It could have used a little more kick, maybe a concave nose. What it did was float. And I appreciated that.

By the time I went to “The Surf Shop” in search of a new one, my board was yellowed, most of the big dings patched. I had a sort of pride that I’d put every one of those dings in the board riding whatever waves I could find. This one at the Elwha rivermouth, that one at North Beach on a day with a vicious chop and…

I purchased the board at “Far North Surf Shop,” since then a recession casualty, in Sequim, pretty much halfway between Quilcene and the spots I regularly surfed on the Straits. It had been built by a guy up in Sequim whose name I don’t remember. Nothing personal. I’m thinking it was somewhere under the tenth surfboard the man ever built. There was another one in the shop, its shape even more ridiculous-ly wrong.

The price was decent for a new and pure white long board.

Since I’d blown out both knees, one at a time, and was doing way more longboard kneeboarding than riding standing up, and since I wanted to either advance my skills or switch to something I could kneeboard without using swimfins, and with slightly less personal embarrassment, looking for a smaller board seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

In reference to the knee/standing issue: When telling of my latest sessions to one of several ex-surfer-contractors I worked for, Bill Irwin would always ask if I rode “erect.” Jason Queen told me it takes three knee rides to equal one standing up.

Counting waves per session now included stand up rides/total waves ridden; a good day with half ridden erect. I always try for a twenty wave minimum. Sometimes thirty waves would factor down, using the Queen method, to twelve point something.

There I was, in Al’s shop, checking it out. And Al was actually there, holding court. Let me now mention that Al is probably about my age, no thinner than I am.

That being said, the first thing to note here is that, if a kid works in a surf shop, he or she is automatically cool and assumed to be a good surfer. If someone owns a successful surf shop, especially one in such a harsh location, that person is automatically super cool, that coolness magnified over time. Al is a legend.

Further, every customer must provide evidence that he or she is a real surfer. Otherwise, kook. And I, old, fat, and, based on the times he had ever seen me in his shop, despite my telling him I’d spoken to him several times, the first twenty years earlier, and had made significant purchases in his shop, I qualified. As a kook.

The cruel quote was preceded by, “You won’t be happy. You probably really need something longer.”

Al gave me a great deal on a 5’10” Bic “Peter Pan” fish, a lightly-used rental board. I’ve ridden it twice, loaned it out for extended periods. I did get a smaller board, custom, its shape (concave nose, down rails, professional outlines) widely admired by those I’ve shown it to. I love the board, use it when the waves are bigger, faster, more powerful. Mostly it rides on top of the big ass SUP.

I’m not saying Al was right; I do say I don’t seem to be getting any younger. And, though I surf as often as I can, I don’t seem to be much skinnier, either.