1965 - 2584
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The morning fog was a cold spit in the air. Our heads were bowed not wanting to meet the spray straight on. We knew the winter water waited to bite us. I cursed aloud as I took off my shirt and wrapped the clammy rubber jacket around my shoulders. The wetsuit jacket had been left outside all night and it was filled with shivers. My trunks were worse because they were my trunks. We talked and shuddered to keep our minds off our misery. You couldn't pay me to get up at 6:00 in the goddamn morning and endure such agony. But as long as there were waves I'd chip in gas money for the privilege.
The cold kept anyone with brains away so the four of us had the ocean to ourselves. Damon and I doubled up carrying our boards to ease the burden. I had the nose of his board under one arm and the tail of my board under the other. Damon mirrored the configuration. We carefully passed our boards down the rocks.
I kept my head up and out of the white foam trying to keep the cold water from trickling down my back. We came to rest beyond the breakers in the grey mist. The fog moved in from offshore and framed our field. I suppose to one foreign to the environment it could be a terrifying place: all sight of land obscured, the steady beat of the sea pulsing below us and the waves looming out of the greyness with threat spread across their face. But this was our refuge. Everything that was unfair, taxing, and authoritarian stayed on shore. We were in our own, with our own, stepping lightly across the ceaseless movement of the ocean in an existence without space or time.
It was as real as anything before or since. Don't tell me we could have seen what was coming if we used the Sunday paper for more than tidal information and the comic supplement. Or that if we had spent time listening in class instead of reading our surf mags, we would have somehow been able to sort out the right paths among the labyrinth that was about to confront us. All we would have heard was more of what we had already heard - the official story. And the official story was as fogged in as any day in June. Andy Griffith, Robert Young, Ozzie Nelson, and of course John Wayne, that was the official version and it echoed in every classroom and newspaper. When we head out into a new surfing spot, we know enough to look below the surface for the rocks and the shifting sand bars. If our perceptive skills ventured further than that knowledge, we wouldn't be dumb surfers. That summer when Watts burned only a few offramps away, few of us checked the bottom. There is a river of sand that runs down the riverbeds and along the continental shelf. You can cut out harbors to house the yachts and fill in the beach with concrete to support a fancy house or a freeway but that river's gonna push its way down the coast and pop up somewhere. A current finds its way.
The best way to be first on the waves is to be first at the beach and the best way to be first at the beach is to never leave. We sometimes stayed all night on the sand. Technically, it's illegal on most beaches but I've never heard of anyone arrested. However, it is not without its peril.
I'm a very good sleeper. Somewhere along my development, I realized that being a good sleeper was a facility worthy of attainment and I went at it with great resolve. Unfortunately, when the tractors dragged the beach at night, my proficiency at sleep was not that admirable a quality. The engine could be heard and the headlights seen bouncing along the sand and one of the group would have to stand there under fire with his gear in hand and shouting and kicking and trying to knock the sleep out of me while the others were scrambling and usually giggling in their stupor at the predicament.
In California, everyone is all smiles in surf up to ten feet, but any bigger, and it takes an extremely powerful swell to pump the surf up past ten feet, the mood is much more anxious. Most of us aren't big wave riders. There's not more drownings during periods of high surf because it takes a certain amount of strength, determination, and experience just to get out to the place where you can get really pounded. Paddling against the sheer volume of water pushing back towards the shore is like trying to push your car uphill; you ease up to catch your breath and it drags you back to where you began. If you manage to pull your leaden arms out to the surf line, then each set carries its own terror. As the waves roll in there's a scramble to get over the top.
If you choose to dig in and turn your board around and catch the wave and ride, then you can't be tentative. Like a mad dash across a freeway, you have to get up and go. If your knees go to jelly or you hang back thinking maybe this ain't the time, then you'll pay dearly. You won't drive toward the shoulder, you'll hang at the top of the crest until the wave makes its move on you and then like a Mac truck it will throw you down and grind you beneath its wheels.
When the boards were bigger, heavier, and without leashes getting out and staying in position was a skill all its own. Clean-up sets got the nomenclature because the surfline was cleaned out by the big waves separating boards from weary arms. Sometimes the whitewater was lined with empty surfboards and if you were unlucky enough to be caught inside you had one more factor to contend with.
My memory is imprinted with the lessons that it's not always fun and games out in the water. I recall when I was still a kid, stroking towards getting over a looming wall of water when it slammed down on me. The wave tried to drive me to the bottom as the buoyancy of the board delivered a punch to my gut and knocked the air out of my lungs. Forget about holding onto the damn board, the only thing I wanted to grab was a lungful of air. I came to the surface gasping and scared pissless.
Then there were the days I launched myself towards the waves only to have the board stripped from me and I'd have to swim back, retrieve it, climb up and try again. Two or three drubbings like that and the day was over.
Deadly days may include long durations of flatness. I've sat through lulls of thirty minutes or more, an interminably long time in which nothing rideable comes through. Sometimes it happens you paddle out during a lull and then you wish you hadn't made it. You're overmatched, out beyond your skill and experience, whimpering as the awesome grey shadow of water bears down on you, wishing you were anywhere but out in the middle of the ocean. Like a rich kid living on daddy's money, the lull let you skate past the shorebreak without having to scrap and claw through the white water. Once in the predicament you're caught paddling further out to get over the larger sets which takes you in the opposite direction from where you want to be and from where you should be. If you're fortunate, you catch another lull and paddle with all you've got left back into safety. If you're not fortunate, you take a pummeling, roll up to shore and pull your withered carcass back into the car. You keep your head down and sneak home. You try to sleep even though every time you close your eyes you see the white and green fist rising up to beat you down.
The next time surfing you may sit out half way to Hawaii. You've still got your eye out for a killer set. You stay wary because it's out there waiting for you to relax. You sit out beyond the point where observation says a wave can be caught. I've done it myself, sat waiting too far out to catch anything. Sometimes I just have a feeling something's out there. Other times I believe that I'm somehow entitled, as if I'd just bought a movie ticket and I'm waiting for the show to begin. Meanwhile, everyone else sitting inside is in the performance, taking off and riding. There's no starting line for waves. Delusion sits just beyond the take off point or stands on the shore. Seldom does it catch waves.
Big pounding surf gives a big heart-pounding thrill and many guys will say the bigger the better but I'd much rather ride clean 8 to 10 foot faces, thrilling but not terrifying, and a 3 to 5 foot sizzling little wave can make me scream all the way to the beach. Of course everything is relative and people have a way of adjusting. Those things in Hawaii wouldn't be recognized as surfable in California. They call them waves in Hawaii but water 30 feet high to me is a cosmic disaster. Someone pulled the plug. Check the communities downstream, evacuate the women and children because the damn has broken.
But when things are cooking and there's no one else out and the wave comes in like a big straight sheen of glass and you take off and pressure your foot hard to swing the board against the wall and your breath is held and your heart is pumping and you find the trim, then you hang on and wail.
We hauled our shivering flesh up onto the shore. Only Snake spoke, "Too bad no one's around to witness our demonstration."
Damon and I caught each other's eye. "Yeh, too bad scores of bikinis aren't here to meet you coming out of the water," moving into a falsetto voice, "Oh, Snake, honey, you are such a good surfer."
Keeping the falsetto voice, "And you have the longest board," I said.
Rallio was a surfer, it emanated from every pore and movement of his being; Damon and I had to surf, nothing could keep us from the ocean; and Snake liked being known as a surfer. We'd see him driving around town with his board racked to his car and we knew he hadn't been to the beach, it'd be past dark or raining. If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought his board was cemented to the top of his car. He played it to the hilt. He wore surfer shirts and surfer shoes and combed his hair like the Beach Boys with the wave coming down over his forehead. It was why he was so territorial in the water, why he was always ready to jump on anyone who dropped in on him. He needed it. He wasn't a good student, not on a sports team, surfing was the only place that he belonged.
Back when Damon and I were still afoot, we chanced to find Snake's auto parked outside a fast-food place and managed to snatch his board from the roof of his car. Before we could make it home, Snake pulled up behind us and banged out of the driver's side. Beyond the initial thievery, I don't think either of us had conceived much of a plan for our ill-gotten board. I know my mind was stagnant.
"Hey Snake, how you like my new board? Some kid gave me it to me for practically nothing."
I was constantly amazed at Damon's resourcefulness in the face of adversity or even in the face of Snake. Dumb as dirt in school, you'd think his head was filled with styrofoam, but always quick-witted when it mattered.
Snake was on us and had both hands reaching towards an embrace of his lost possession. "What are you two creeps doing with my board?"
"What do you mean your board? We told you we bought it off some kid." I spoke up.
"Well then you got taken 'cause it already belongs to me. Doesn't it look familiar?"
"Not to me," I said.
"It's the same color as yours, so what? Must be hundreds of boards that color," Da man said with the right touch of anger and sarcasm.
"Thousands," I harmonized.
"Well, this one's mine." By this time he had his arm securely wrapped around it and we put up just enough resistance to add credence to our lie.
"You could at least pay us what we paid for it."
"Fat chance and who was it that took it? Was it Rossby or one of his rabble? Tall, skinny kid with black hair?"
I went inert again when he asked for specifics.
"No, he wasn't that skinny. I've never seen him before and I don't know where to find him to get our money back."
"Tough." He was putting it back on his car. "I'd say you two creeps got taken."
I was willing to stop there satisfied with the panic we had aroused. But not Damon.
"Jokes on you. The guy said it was such a crappy board he gave it to us for free," he called to Snake who was busy strapping the board to his car.
"Yeh, I bet."
"Gave us the board and a buck apiece to take it off his hands," I called at Snake.
He left us yelling after him upping the ante at each iteration. He never did know why the two of us who had supposedly lost money were rolling on the ground laughing at him as he drove off.
Snake always had the latest and greatest. He'd scan the shops and magazines for the newest shapes, the scooped out noses for hanging ten, the treatment of the rails for speed, the shape of the tail and placement of the fin box for maneuvering. You never knew what new board he'd show up with.
He was a believer. He was smitten by his new board. The new innovation was the sweetest and most important development in the history of surfing. If you were riding with him to the beach, he'd be explaining why his board was so hot. It was one of the few times he was patient with us, fielding our questions and instructing us on theories of water dynamics.
I'm not proud of it, but I couldn't resist taking advantage of his ardor. As I unstrapped my board I frowned pensively and said, "So the V-shaped tail cuts through the water and accelerates your turn. Snake, I think you've got something there." By this time I had my board in my arm and was well on my way towards the surf.
"You think so, too. I may let you ride it," his voice still drunk with enthusiasm.
"Yeh, but it doesn't take into account the one overriding flaw in the designer's calculations."
"What's that?" He stopped in his tracks sober in his concern.
"He sold it to you."
"Screw you," Damon stepped off the car's doorjamb trying to catch air as he bent over laughing. "Both of you. You two are as useful as foreskin, you little turds."
Damon was running after me and I slowed thinking he had congratulations to hand out. "You royally pissed him off. He dumped our shit on the ground and left."
I guess I hurt his feelings pretty bad because he wouldn't even give us a ride back from the beach and I had to call my mom and make up some lame excuse for her to tie down our boards in her trunk and take us home.
Snake wasn't a bad surfer but I'm not sure it was because of his equipment. He was so aggressive that he got more than his share of waves. While most of the guys would be sitting, waiting for the swell to find them, Snake would be paddling around looking for the peak, trying to find the point from where he was going to take off.
There was a time we had safaried to a spot that wasn't our own. (The four of us didn't always surf together but it seemed that way. More than once Rallio languidly stepped outside into the morning to find Damon and I sitting in the backseat of his car, our boards strapped on and ready to go. You could tell by the look on his face he wasn't overwhelmingly pleased. His expression might quiet us till we got near the beach but then we'd be even goofier than normal just in case our presence was forgotten.) So we had safaried to a spot that was new to us. Snake was whistled off his first two waves by a local that had grabbed the break closer to the initial peak. I don't know if it was the shrill piping or the way the guy gave him a good tail of spray but Snake took offense. This wasn't our spot and we all knew it, even Snake, so he stayed restrained.
I was near when I heard Snake complain to Rallio. "The guy's a turkey, did you see his board? It's got a big piece missing out of the nose and it looks like he keeps it outside, it's all faded and uriney looking. He's lucky the damn thing doesn't sink. I don't get how he catches anything."
Rallio was grabbing his own little peak and as he took off he threw back over his shoulder, "Snake, he's not surfing the board, he's surfing the wave."