1965 - SUMMER
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"I could do it."
We all looked expectantly at him.
He wasn't much older than us but it seemed as though he was. Maybe it was because he had his own business, though none of us thought of it as a business, more like a public service, the way a church is not a business but a benefit to the community.
A surfboard is a thing of beauty. From the kick of the nose to the rock of the rails, from the pinch of the tail and the curve of the fin to the buffed sheen of the glass, a surfboard is a simply stated product of craft. It is designed to float lightly over the surface of the ocean and yet can be so strong and durable that a car can be driven over it with only minor damage. Moving the hand over an unwaxed board is like the touch of a girl's stomach, smooth and flat and round at the same time. I remember my first board with the same fondness as only a handful of other "firsts". The board was nine and a half feet of blue on the bottom wrapping over the rails and then white taking over and extending across the deck, a wood stringer for strength, and a logo consisting of crossed palms sitting on an island paradise. It was big and clumsy and I had a terrible time carrying it but there was no denying its beauty. Purposeful in its utility, even at rest a surfboard seems to carve through space.
The thing to remember about a surfboard is that it's handmade. Not that handmade is always genuine. In tourist places, people crank out handmade articles and the soul of the artifact is so diluted that little of it remains. A surfboard is somewhat like that. An amount of craft and devotion must go into the board or it ends up nothing more than a piece of flotsam.
However, and it's a big however, I've seen guys surf well on boards that look and float like cement pillars, boards so lacking in lift that their take-off is dead center in the curl. Because they believe the damn thing floats, the damn thing does float.
So Damon and I and practically every other kid in surf trunks, liked to visit the surfshops. We'd lift and squeeze and otherwise manhandle the merchandise trying to visualize ownership. Most of the time only surfers were present, but it happened we were in the shop when a man in corporate duds came to visit.
The man broke a proposition across the counter. "Your name will be prominently displayed in all our advertisements and to all our distributors. Everyone knows you're one of the heavies in the surfing world. I wanted you to get first crack at our offer because of that reputation. We want to go with the best." The suit was trying to look the shaper in the eye which was rather awkward because the shopowner had his eyes pointed at the floor. "Understand, my people are very anxious to get underway and if they have to go to one of your competitors, they'll do it and they won't look back."
The threat was genuine. An American corporation has the means to create a market, fill it with product, systematically eliminate the small competitors while existing in a kind of cease-fire with large competitors, reap big rewards, and then take that money and do it again. We had learned from the surfboard shaper that the suit's "people" were the American Bowling Supply Company. Even the otherwise somber shopowner couldn't help almost splitting a gut at the prospect of a partnership with pinsetters. But it was no laughing matter to the bowlers. They were looking for a youthful product and a youthful market.
Once upon a time, surfshops catered only to a singular clientele. A shop didn't sell T-shirts or shorts. Clothes would not even be considered legitimate merchandise by any self-respecting surfshop owner. You look at surfers and they look like they wear one pair of jeans until the threads become so bare that the wearer is threatened with arrest for indecent exposure. That was the problem with surfshops from a business point of view, surfers were their customers. It must have been someone in Kansas that remedied the situation. Someone who didn't know any better and opened surfshops to non-surfers, to people who had money.
Rows of boards were racked up and standing on end lining the walls. Besides the boards, fins, and other surfing necessities like wax, that was it. And the deal with this particular shopowner, as it was with many others, was that each surfboard was unique. Even the ones exactly the same size, shape, and width, were made with a slight variance. A dash of color. A different fin. Rails up or turned down. A v-tail. Something was always different. And that was what the eventual owner paddled proudly into the water knowing.
Oh, and the shop carried surfing magazines. You could sit and look at pictures of waves for hours. We were looking at the waves from Hawaii. They gave me the chills they were so big and hairy so I turned to a magazine not devoted to surfing.
The pictures from Hawaii were tame by comparison to the pictures in "LIFE".
I showed the photo to Damon, "Wouldn't you be moving or flinching or something?"
"Man, if my pants were on fire I'd be running down the street screaming so loud I'd be drowning out the fire engines."
"But you can see the guy's just sitting there. Spooky, if you ask me."
"Would you two please hold it down? We're doing business here." The man was young but he wore a tie and that put him out of place in the surfshop the way formal clothes are so incongruous standing on the sand. Damon and I deferred anyway, we closed the magazine and intently focused on the speaker but not to his pleasure.
"Hey, how's the surf? Bitchin' I bet. Why aren't you two gremmies out there?" He wanted us to know that despite his suit and tie, he was really a groovy guy.
"Yeh, tubular and glassy, man, 3 to 5, breakin' left to right, toes on the nose and shoot the pier." I gave him a regular surf report. "Cowabunga, man."
The tie decided ignoring us was a better tactic and he turned back to business. "I can vouch for this company. They're like us. They're tired of getting their hands dirty. I never thought I'd have a chance to wear a suit and tie to work."
No one was panting in anticipation of donning the apparel. Don't get me wrong, we were like every red-blooded American male. We wanted medals worse than a fanatic wants to die for his shot at the heaven of his choice, we just didn't want to wear a uniform. It seemed the shinier the buttons the less chance you had of seeing your own face in the reflection. Of course without the uniform, medals are simply shiny bits of trinkets.
He continued his recruitment, "The job is not without its responsibilities."
"Do you have to tie your own tie," I couldn't resist being a smart-ass. Damon appreciated it but the shopowner shot me a dirty look. However, he didn't ask us to leave. I got the impression that he didn't want to be alone with the suit. Somehow we were giving him a kind of support.
The commitment was for 300 boards with options for more. That's cranking out a lot of boards in a year. A foam slab is just that, a slab, a rectangular block of styrofoam. To shape, glass, sand, and buff can take someone who knows what he's doing a full day. Three hundred full days of doing nothing but smelling resin could make a guy forget his own name.
"This is real money I represent. We've prepared a contract that will guarantee your income for the next year. You're free to surf all day, work nights, or work hard and fill our orders then take off the rest of the year. It's up to you. All we want are our boards manufactured like they were made by a machine, each one exactly the same. That sound good to you?"
The shopowner had his eye fixed on his wall lined with boards carrying his trademark signature. Maybe he was thinking that he would no longer have to deal with little twerps like us but maybe he was also thinking that even if he wanted to deal with little twerps like us, he couldn't.
"Let's get the pens out."
"Thousands of more people in the water, wow, just what we need," I whispered to Damon.
Learning to surf is a most humiliating exercise. If a person doesn't take up the sport as a youngster, it's a good bet he won't submit himself to it when he's older. The individual physical skills are elemental. If you can stand, you've mastered the basic rules. What makes the activity problematic is the introduction of the moving water. Like on a unicycle, you can pitch and fall in any direction. And like on a bicycle, balance is only attainable when moving. To catch a wave, a person has to maintain balance while gathering enough thrust forward to find just the right place in the moving water so that the cresting wave picks him up in its momentum. It is not an innate ability.
Damon and I began to compare our surf knots.
A good knot on your knee could be the size of a baseball. A big red baseball cut in half and each half glued right below the kneecap. The condition can look so hideous that a doctor not familiar with surfing might assign an otherwise healthy kid a 4-F. Of course by 1965 you had to go to Casper, Wyoming to find a physician not familiar with the condition. Every doctor in California knew they were only calcium deposits formed by knee paddling and the knots shrink after the idiot ceases surfing.
The guy in the tie was leaning into his spiel. Someone's always trying to sell you something. It's more fundamental than the most Bible-thumping fundamentalist's belief, more American than the stars and stripes, more honored than the Bill of Rights. Let's face it, selling is our first and foremost right. Wrap yourself in the flag and sell religion or wrap yourself in religion and sell the flag. What's the difference? Same product. They're selling you status. You buy it and they maintain their status. And this guy was going to sell surfboards to people in Oklahoma. You had to admire the moxy.
It's always difficult to tell how much a salesman believes in what he's saying. The truth of what he says can be calculated and weighed after the fact but his sincerity is another matter. And once in the argument, how much he says to save the sale and how much he says because he's interested in you apart from the sale is likewise in question. The clowns wearing the yellow coats and glowing ties who gladhand you and press their product on you telling you everyone in their family is using it and showing you how it's helped them don't annoy me. They've got a garage full of the stuff and they've mortgaged their homes and their kid's college education because they believe. It's the S.O.B.'s trying to make the big time. Making the big score and not believing one damn word they're saying to you. You're just one more schmuck buying in.
Those are the business school grads, the M.B.A.'s, the organization men. They're outside the tunnel. Standing there, map and calculator in hand punching in numbers to explain how you can make it through without being hit by the oncoming. "When you see the light, make a dash for it," and they push you into the darkness. You grope along the walls looking for the pinhole burst up ahead. But you don't see the light. You shuffle forward until you're locked in the darkness, no visible signs behind you, nothing ahead. Then vertigo sets in and you don't know which way is forward or which way is back. You don't know from which direction you'll be struck only that it's sure to come. The calculations were a crock. The timetable was non-existent. That was their job; to man the entrance and send forward the troops over all objections. And they took the job.
"Think again. Guaranteed business. Spend your mornings surfing. Don't work till noon. Your boards are in sporting goods shops throughout the state. People you don't even know riding your surfboards at beaches all over California, all over the United States, maybe all over the world."
A guy could earn a bundle of gas money alright with this arrangement. However, the tie had failed to notice the posted shop hours. He failed to notice them because they didn't exist, which was the point of not posting them.
"I see this as the beginning. If these boards move, and they will quickly, you'll be hiring others to sand and fiberglass and whatever else you do." That was probably fairly appealing. Sanding and glassing are messy businesses. Sticky and sweaty. "Who knows what the next year will bring? Double or triple the orders. You know how these things snowball. It's a big market out there and one that keeps coming of age. New buyers constantly."
At some point, sales, like every other venture, becomes a question of saving face. The proverbial sucker's bet. You chase the money. The mere act of investment means that your honor is on the line and to show your seriousness you have to go all the way with the deal even if the outcome is detrimental to you in the short run. It's incumbent on you to demonstrate your credibility by doing something incredulous like risking for little gain. In the perverted world of those who don't ride waves but try to create their own, this makes you a player. It happens in relationships, in business deals, in domestic politics, and even in foreign affairs. Risk the children to show you're not someone to be taken lightly, to buoy up your credibility, to demonstrate your honor.
"Your name will be like Voit or Spaulding. The most famous and respected name in surfing. You'll be giving back to the surfing community."
The shopowner was keeping his own council.
"Look, I don't see the problem. Is it that you couldn't make that many boards in a year? I know you're a hard worker. I know you're experienced at what you do. So you can't tell me you can't do it." The tie was pressing for an answer.
"I could do it."
We all looked expectantly at him.
"But I won't."
The man from the bowling company folded his notebook, took one more disparaging look at Damon and I, and walked out the door. Thus began the assault on our shopowner. The bowlers could have bought none of his boards and left it at that, or some of his boards and left it at that, or all of the boards the shopowner would sell them and left it at that, but the bowlers didn't like the way our surfshop owner did business.
The shaper wasn't the only game in town. Another shop with surfboards was on the south end of town. We weren't on very good terms with the proprietor but that didn't stop us from dropping in to say hi from time to time.
"You got any old magazines?"
"No."
"How about free wax?"
"Get lost, you two rats. You're scaring away the paying customers."
"Be that way. We'll take our business somewhere else. Somewheres where they can appreciate freeloading."
On the way out we bumped into the man in the blazer with the bowling logo pasted to his forehead. "Hey, not so fast. How would you two like to earn a couple of extra dollars?" He obviously didn't recognize us.
"Just two?"
"I'll give you $10 dollars apiece to hand out these flyers."
The proprietor was coming into the negotiations. "Wait a minute, how do we know they're not going to go around the corner and dump the flyers in the trashcan?"
The blazer had a condescension about him that I remembered being distasteful when we had first encountered him. He had not changed. "These two boys aren't going to do that, now, are you boys? I'll give you $5 now and the rest when you get back."
"How do we know you'll really pay us?"
He disregarded the question and handed us the flyers. "It should only take you a couple of hours. Come back here for the rest of your money when you've finished."
As soon as we were out the door I looked for the nearest trash receptacle and headed for it.
"What do you think you're doing? We took the guy's money." Just like Damon not to see the justice in taking the $5 and splitting.
"So, I'll toss the flyers and give him back his money. I'm not handing out flyers for this crappy store. Listen to this garbage: 'Lowest prices, finest merchandise. Everything on sale.'"
"If we take the money we have to hand out the flyers, that's the deal. And I can use the money. I'm thirsty."
Great time for Damon to become principled, I thought. Great time to become thirsty for that matter. "Here. Then you hand them out." I moved to give him my share but he brushed me aside.
"Let me think on it."
"While you're at it, think how you're going to get the rest of our money out of that geek." I was not helping and Damon let me know it.
I don't remember how it evolved but pretty soon we had developed a course of action that enabled us to fulfill our obligation and keep our loyalties intact. It necessitated a little walking since we were without a vehicle. We stopped and spent some of the $5 at the Dairy Queen and walked the several blocks to the mobile home community. Mobile home complexes often exist in beach communities and like the one we were in, they are often senior citizen parks. We distributed the handouts but found we still had a sizable portion remaining.
"Let's go back and do them all again."
Damon didn't reply to my suggestion. "Who else is least likely to ever go into a surfshop?" he queried.
About that time some old guy came out and started yelling at us for being too young to be in the park and illegally sticking flyers on his door and being alive in his vicinity. We told him to call the number on the flyer and we explained to him that we were indentured servants and the shop owned us and if we didn't do our job, we'd be whipped and to make sure he called that number and maybe even a police report might be in order.
When we'd gone a safe distance, Damon asked his question again, "Who else is least likely to ever go into a surfshop?"
My eyes lit up, my heart soared, my spirit lifted, and most importantly my dick gave a throb. "Catholic high school girls should be just about getting out of summer school."
In those days, you rarely saw a girl surfing so it was a prudent assumption our flyers would fall into safe hands. Off we went to stand outside the only Catholic school around and full of high school girls in plaid skirts and white blouses. We made sure each girl had a flyer and we handed out a couple of extra ones for the nuns. We didn't strike up any lasting friendships but it was engaging nevertheless.
Off we went to collect the green spots owed us. "You didn't dump them in the trash and go away for a couple hours, did you?" was the first question asked of us.
"You might find most of them in the trash but it won't be because we put them there. It will only be a reflection of the quality of your merchandise."
"We did our job, now you do yours and pay up."
"If I find you did a good job for me, there'll be others. If I find you cheated me, I'll remember it," threatened the bowler.
As we counted our bills outside the shop, Damon remarked, "Everyone's got to be the tough guy, what's the deal?"
"It's the proliferation of caper movies. What can I say, the country's going to hell. It's gotten so you don't know who you can safely cheat." We pocketed our loot and headed for home.
Sometime after that I was riding in my mother's car. She was driving. Over the speakers came the radio spot. She couldn't appreciate my excitement so I couldn't wait to tell Damon. And then Damon and I couldn't wait to tell our friend, the shaper.
We burst into his shop. "The bowlers have an ad on the radio trying to sell surfboards from the shop on the south side."
He eyed us warily but was taken in by our obvious agitation. "So what. How'd it sound? I've never heard an ad for surfboards on the radio."
"Well in case you haven't noticed, surfers listen to the radio. The bowlers are bombing the airwaves with ads for their boards."
"What station was it?"
"I don't know." The irrelevancy of his question told me he wasn't comprehending the importance of the development. "I was in my mom's car."
"You were in your mother's car. Was she driving?"
I began to realize these were not idle questions. There's a big discrepancy between the music of our parents with it's painful crooning and lack of a strong beat and our woofer-pulsing rock 'n roll. And as drivers they controlled the radio.
Damon was first to voice it. "They put the ad on a station no one is going to listen to. No one's going to hear it except guys driving with their moms. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you, but you really should get a car."
As silly as it was, it was embarrassing to me to be dependent on my mother at my age and I spoke to divert the point, "That should end it. They blew it."
We looked at the shaper. For all his standing in the surf community as a highly regarded member, he was a surprisingly thoughtful man. "That just upped the ante. Wisely or unwisely, they've spent money. They've been drawn into it now and they'll have a tough time not chasing their money. An accomplished and confident man who sets out on foot without knowing exactly where he's headed will walk past the point he should turn back."
And he was right. American replaced their partner in the surfshop industry with one of their own, a bowling man. And they began to spend money. They spent money on fixing up the shop so that your old Aunt Mabel would feel welcome in it. Driving with your mother was bad enough, no one would actually bring their Aunt Mabel to a surfshop. They spent more money on advertising, although they never did zero in on the target market. They spent money on landscaping, planting trees and shrubs and putting in a fence, although the vegetation all died because they weren't the correct foliage for a coastal climate and the fence rusted because the salt ate the unprotected metal. They ingratiated themselves into the business community, although, again, they failed to understand that surfers didn't care much for what the Chamber of Commerce thought. While the Rotary Club President might wander into their shop, most surfers did not, preferring to pledge allegiance with one of their own.
Damon and I were in the shop controlled by the bowlers when we heard their strategy. The old pitchman had been replaced by another suit and the new owner of the shop had yet to develop the skill of recognizing paying customers so the two of us were milling around looking for free stuff. "Maybe we can't destroy the competition entirely but we can fix it so he thinks he's beat. It'll seem like your boards are the only ones around."
"Didn't you try this before with less than stellar results?"
"Yeh, but this is different." The tie pressed forward. "We're the experts here. Take it from us. We're here to advise you and this is our advice. Bomb the market. We'll lower the price on all items and take to the airwaves again. So it doesn't help, it can't hurt you, can it? And it will hurt him." The new owner consented by his silence as Damon and I slipped out the opened door.
Surfing may be a trifling activity but it is nothing to trifle with. We were solemn. More would follow.
We could no longer park in front of our favorite surfshop. Well, it wasn't that we couldn't park, it was that we wouldn't. One day the shopowner stepped outside his front door to find his curb had been metered. For a while, the meters mysteriously failed to work but after a time they became a fixture.
In those days there weren't really strong environmental controls on chemicals. You could pretty much store nuclear waste in your backyard - as long as no one complained. The bowlers found a complainer. They embroiled the shopowner in a fight with a neighbor who complained to the city concerning the smell and disposition of his manufacturing ingredients.
None of this brought decreased business for the shaper from the locals mainly because the presence of the American Bowling Company discredited the shop in the south. Finally, during the end of a fiscal year the head of the American Bowling Company Board of Directors said, "Get rid of that tar-baby." And that was it, the war was over.
They weren't really bad guys and if you didn't count the surfshop owner who lost his business and the shaper who had to market his boards at cost and was financially ruined and the surfers who became embroiled in partisan battles defending their purchase choices, their presence wasn't that detrimental to the community.
They weren't really bad guys, it was just that they ended up doing bad things that affected people in adverse ways.