The Waterman

I've gotten used to "The Look".

I always get it when I speak of surfing.  Well, no, not always.  I get it in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio.  Yes, and upstate New York, too.  "The Look" is part smirk, part bemusement, part surprise, and part alarm.  Since most people associate surfing with thin, blond, young, perpetually stoned Californians who grok and groove to the Beach Boys, and not to upper-middle aged, stocky, bespectacled preacher/schoolmasters from the Midwest who are fond of Wagnerian opera, they can't help but react.

The two places where I don't receive The Look are, firstly, California, where surfers are of all ages, body types, and backgrounds [I've shared the waves with a Marine Corps general and a sitting U.S. congressman, for example, and they were real shredders], and, secondly, the location that serves as the primordial source of all East Coast surfing: Ocean City, New Jersey, which has also been through the years my occasional second home.  So much so, that my burial instructions include having my ashes scattered off of OC's southernmost beach.

Since my family has been going to the shore since before my birth, and since I spent a portion of my very first summer of life eating the sand of the OC beach, I have many happy associations with the place.  It was here that I learned to sail, snorkel, operate a powerboat, reef and jibe, and catch offshore kings and blues.  I also learned how to ride waves in Ocean City. It was here that I first heard the term "waterman" and decided that, whatever course my life took, I would do all I could to attain that title.

Waterman is not a gender specific term.  A waterman is a person who can surf, swim, fish, dive, handle a tiller and a sheet-line, and, essentially, be proficient at any of the sports and activities that involve the sea.  While I knew proficient surfers, had a buddy whose dad owned a boat, and came from a family of anglers, I didn't know anyone who fit the total definition, least of all me.

Well, except for The Waterman.

The thing is, I didn't really know The Waterman.  I was thirteen when my buddies and I first noticed him and would have guessed he was somewhere between 25 and 40.  In other words, according to my early adolescent sensibility, he was old.  We didn't know his last name, whether or not he had a job and, if so, what it might be. We didn't even know where he was from.

We did, however, know where The Waterman lived.  That was in the water.  

Along with the rest of the east coast of the USA, I discovered surfing the summer before when I saw the documentary Endless Summer at a boardwalk theater on a rainy afternoon.  By the next year, for better or for worse, my shore friends and I were using rented boards on, and mostly under, the waves.

The Waterman was always there.  He was in the water in the morning and still there at sundown.  On the nights with a full moon, he was on the waves in the lunar light.  We would observe him in awe, as many of our contemporaries would do if in the company of Tom Seaver or Roman Gabriel.  Speaking directly to him would have been impossible to consider.  It would have been like a common Greek swineherd trying strike up a casual conversation with Poseidon.  

So we watched him on the waves and, when possible, while on the same wave.  We watched his style, his paddle out, his turns, his timing as to when to stand, his use of rip tides to carry him back to the surf with dispatch and efficiency.  We learned more from watching The Waterman than we did from the chubby guy who ran the surf school on the boardwalk.

One day we saw him on a beach further south, armed with a surfcasting rod, reeling in a fat and feisty kingfish.  Another time he was at a bayside marina renting a small sailboat which he piloted with dispatch from the east side of the Great Egg to the west and back again.  He would always end his surf sessions by swimming from one side of the beach to the other, using long, reaching strokes.  Needless to say, we tried to copy him in everything that he did, usually to worse effect.

But there was one time I remember particularly well.  We were on the beach on a day that was not particularly inviting, as we were the only people there, when The Waterman walked by us, nodded, and said, “Mornin’, watermen”.  Thus, even though it was not yet a deserved title, the holy and singular status was laid on us.  I think our collective response was one of stunned silence.  When such an event happens at an impressionable age, it lingers.

[Many, many years later I was working with a collection of wounded veterans, the eldest of whom was twenty-five years my junior.  As they were leaving the meeting, and I was holding the door for one of them, he said “Thank you, Marine”.  I hadn't been called that in thirty-five years and it gave me a moment’s pause and a similar impulse of pride.]

When I think of The Waterman and how we respected his technique on the waves and his obvious love of the water, I think of others whom I've known who have indirectly taught me, merely through my simple observation of them working their craft, how to do things with greater ability and, sometimes, sheer joy. 

There was Barbara, who showed me how to preach by owning the pulpit and one’s own story; Daniel, who served the sacrament with grace and style.  There was Donald, a bishop who displayed serenity in the face of unearned anger; Alva, who managed a classroom so that all of the students learned something regardless of their aptitude or interest; Richard, who saw literature not as a liberal arts subject but as an appreciation of the soul in all of its weakness and glory; Lew, who could shape wood as if it were an extension of himself; Harry, who challenged all previous philosophical notions, especially those that were calcified in curricula; Rod, who could re-build a V8 while blindfolded, and James, who had made his life into an art form; or, perhaps, his art into a life.

That list goes on and on, of course, as I hope it would for any normal person.  I think of them in the stimulating moments standing before a congregation, the quiet moments in a workshop shaping a guitar body, and those serene moments when the wave has been timed just right and the rider, the rhythm of the surf, and the pull of the tides all combine in a God-given one-ness.

If the abiding essence of watermen, in or out of the water, is to manifest so complete a love for something that the enthusiasm, the passion, and the care in accomplishment becomes accessible and compelling to others, then in their own fields they were watermen all.

Surfboard Tales: I’ve Always Wanted To Try That [1993]

The first time I ever saw Rut, it was on the long entrance drive to the private school where I had just started working. I was driving a typical teacher car, a compact station wagon, and he was headed directly towards me on a skateboard. I was going about 15 miles an hour; he was travelling about 20. Instead of giving me a panicked look, as one would expect from someone who was about to die on the hood of a Ford, he smiled, waved, and then ran off the road and into a drainage ditch. Great, my first day at a new school and I just killed someone. I hadn’t even gotten the keys to my office yet.

It turned out that he was okay.  Rut looked at me from the ditch, smiled from under a grossly askew helmet and, indicating the skateboard, said, “I’ve always wanted to try that.” As I was to discover, he was used to falling, as he owned a variety of sporting equipment that, from time to time, ensured it. I also discovered that, not just for his frequent tests of gravity, Rut was a bit of an anomaly in the school community. A private secondary school is, after all, a place organized for and dependent upon the pursuits of youth. But Rut was not a youth; he was not a student or even a young teacher freshly graduated from college.  Rut was well into his sixties. He was a Army veteran who had been a motorcycle dispatch rider, ski instructor, rock climber, had hiked the Appalachian Trail in its entirety, worked a variety of jobs, and, while a graduate student at Boston University, had lived across the hall from Martin Luther King, Jr., to whom he would refer, and not ironically, as “my buddy, Marty”. Now in his seventh decade, he was a history teacher and “outdoor skills” coach at a second-rate prep school. “Rut” was the nickname assigned to him by the students because that's often where he would be found while skateboarding.  It rather fit and he liked it.

I learned of his history in five minute installments, chatting from our adjacent classroom doors during the daily change in classes. One day, Rut told me that he had bought a mountain bike and was looking forward to trying it out later in the afternoon. “I’ve always wanted to try that,” he said. The next day he was on crutches, telling me of the deceptively steep trail that he’d discovered. Later that year, at a faculty meeting, he arrived sporting a new cast on his arm. We exchanged looks and he just said, “Inline skates”. He’d always wanted to try that, too, you see. Because of events like these, behind his back some the students and twenty-something faculty called him Rut the Nut.

I could see why.  According to the hobbled world view of the students and younger faculty, Rut was too old for skateboards and mountain bikes, too old to be a teacher [he was at least twenty years older than any of the other faculty members], and would talk about things that were, well, just plain old. After all, as a young faculty member once asked me, who is this “Marty” guy?  Despite the pretense of uniqueness and originality, ably reinforced by the professional marketing community, teenagers are remarkably uniform in their tastes, style, and world view. Like artists, they think of themselves as edgy and progressive and, like too many artists, seal themselves off in an attitudinal bubble that ensures that they will be anything but. 

Which was why, of course, Rut did new things. As there will always be those who seek the safe cocoon of homogeneity, their counterparts will be challenging any notion that limits human activity and endeavor by prejudices about age, culture, gender, ideology, and spirituality. I recognized that kind of defiance immediately as it was and is a strong part of surfing, an activity that, in those days, was beginning to reclaim my attention and activity. This recognition was ratified one morning when, for reasons that are clouded now by time and distance, I had used a surfboard to teach a lesson to my philosophy class. After carrying a Hanson board, bright in the colors and pattern of the flag of Finland, across the campus quad from my classroom to the administration building, I found Rut in my office eager to talk of surfing, surfboards, and what one has to do to get started in the sport.

“You know, I was stationed in Hawaii when I was in the Army and used to watch those local boys on those enormous boards out on those waves. Man, it looked like fun. We wanted to do it, too, but we weren’t allowed to mix with the locals in those days. This doesn’t look as heavy as those boards did, though. You know, I’ve always wanted to try that.”

Before I could explain that surfboards were no longer made out of koa wood, Rut grabbed the Hanson, ran outside and placed it between two picnic tables by the dining hall. He then sprung, with considerable vigor, onto the board and began to mimic the motions of a surfer on a wave. At first, I was worried that he would snap the board in two; then I was worried that he’d fall and have another visit with his close friends at the local emergency room. But after a minute of surf pantomime, he nodded, brought the board back to the office, placed it carefully against a bookcase, and asked, “Where can I buy one?”

As the closest surf shop was clean on the other side of the state, I suggested that he try to order one through the sports equipment provider who was contracted to the school. To this day, I wish I had been privy to his conversation with the salesman. It arrived shortly before graduation.  Rut showed it to me while loading up his car the day after the last day of the school year and told me he was going to try it out on the particularly bone crushing waves on Cape Cod. I more or less expected that this meant I would see him modeling some form of orthopedic gear upon our return in September but, as I knew from my own experience, with some things you just have to get out there and do it. It’s the only way. I don’t think that process ever had to be explained to Rut.

I saw him next at the new term’s opening faculty meeting, nearly a year to the day I had almost killed him.  Rut sat next to me and, while our new headmaster droned on about the difference between culture and character or something like that, I heard the familiar tales of a neophyte’s first surfboard summer. He could have been 12 and it wouldn’t have sounded much different.

“It was momentous. I just spent all day at the beach. I felt like Hemingway.” He paused to explain to one of the twenty-something English teachers who Hemingway was. “Nothing but sun and water. Some shellfish, maybe.” He leaned forward and said conspiratorially, “A little rum.” He responded to one of our many faculty health scolds with, “At my age, you don’t worry about skin cancer. By the time you get it, you won’t live long enough to die from it,” and employed all of the appropriate terminology of surf life such as “pearled”, “puka”, and “stoked”. Yeah, he was stoked alright.

That year, our classrooms weren’t next to one another and, owing to a promotion that meant I had to spend more time with administrators and less with faculty, I didn’t have a chance to speak with Rut on a daily basis. Sometimes, whole weeks would go by when I would only see him across the quad, or nod to him across the dining hall. One day, in the midst of a particularly miserable winter, when all of us were spending too much time indoors, he came to my office. At first, I thought it was just to visit, but he seemed to have something specific on his mind.

“Do you still have a church somewhere?”
“No, I just sub for other clergy on Sundays.”
“Oh. Uh-huh.”
“Why? You looking for one?”
“Went a couple of times when I was a kid. Before the war. Indoors in a dark place never attracted me.”
“Well, some of them have electricity now.”
“But I was thinking that I’m not getting any younger and I should expand my horizons some. You know a good place?”
“My wife’s church. Not far from here.” I gave him the location.
“Yeah, I know it. The pretty one with the glass. Okay. Sunday mornings, right?”
“Usually. You can go on Wednesday mornings, too.”
“No. I want the Sunday experience. Might as well do it right. Organ music, right?”

Boarding schools maintain brutal schedules for their faculties, with only Sunday mornings free of scheduled activities. That, coupled with the late 20th/early 21st century need for the college-educated to present themselves as worldly and intellectual by disdaining religious practice, meant that church attendance was as rare and worthy of comment as was a 65-year-old on a skateboard. I knew that Rut was joining in corporate worship and religious inquest for the same reason that he skated, biked, and surfed: To push the limits placed on us, not by time or age or undeniable natural force, but by the conventional thinking that the mediocre use as a complacent cage.

So, with the same defiance that marked his physical endeavors, Rut found his church, attended regularly and, one evening, even saw to the organization of a parish’s pancake dinner. When other faculty would comment on his devotion, he would shrug, smile, and explain his burgeoning spirituality by saying, “I’ve always wanted to try that.”

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]

Surfboard Tales: Memoriam (1993)

It was a sad thing, and not what I had ordered. I had ordered something green and blue and alive. What I got was a ring of brown, dried flowers. So much for using an 800 number to order a floral arrangement. The florist had been defensive when I looked at it. She informed me, in response to my puzzled expression, “It’s what everyone’s ordering this season.” I said I found it a macabre offering for a dead friend. “But, they’re dead flowers, you see?” she continued. Yeah, I saw; I just didn’t feel like arguing the point about how funerals are celebrations of life and resurrection with someone whose primary concern was with “what everyone’s ordering this season”.

I had parked in the common lot that was shared by a number of shops and tossed the dried flower ring into the back of the pickup.

“Whatcha got there?” asked Dylan, who worked at the surf shop next door, and who was enjoying a Marlboro on the back steps amid a confusion of cracked surfboards, shredded wetsuits that could no longer be rented, and other detritus of the trade.

“It was meant to be a something for a friend. I found out yesterday that he had died. Not really sure what I can use it for.”

“Old friend?”

“Yeah. Over ten years, anyway. He even came to the shore for a week or so once. We took him out [surfing]. He liked it. I don’t know if he ever went again, but he liked it when he was here.”

“A lot to like when you’re here. Sun, beer, girls, waves, easy job. Mostly waves. Even guys your age seem to like it.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“You going out today? It’s kinda junky.”

“I don’t know. I was going to leave this at the memorial garden over at Holy Trinity, say a prayer or two; but it seems weird to leave dead flowers.”

“Do they float?”

“Um, maybe.”

“Bring it down to the 7th Street beach after I get out of work. Around 4:30. Bring your board. We can do something with it. You said he rode once upon a time, right?”

“Yeah. Awhile ago.”

“Doesn’t matter how long, right?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Rich and I had worked side by side in a downtown office for a cantankerous collection of buyers for a department store chain. As we were the same age, 25, and the only members of the office under the age of 40, we became good friends. I left after a year; he stayed until he had enough saved to start his own business. I was ordained, had my first and subsequent parishes and chaplaincies, and he built his business, until the day when he learned that the rare form of cancer that had killed his father was genetic. He died at the age of 36, six months after the diagnosis.

Rich was the first close friend I lost and I grieved for him. I didn’t mention to Dylan that, in addition to losing a friend, I was beginning to have intimations of my own mortality. This was exacerbated by the fact that I was alone at the shore, with my wife caught up in work back in Massachusetts and all the kids doing their own thing that summer. It bothered me that the death of a friend was causing me to think mostly about myself, even as I know from professional experience that it happens. As I had received notice of his death too late to get back to Ohio for the actual funeral, leaving a wreath at the local parish’s memorial garden seemed the least I could do.

At 4:30, I went down to 7th Street. There weren’t too many people in the water, as it was unusually cold for August and the waves were almost too choppy to ride. Dylan was there, though, with three others. Two were a brother and sister from a local family that owned one of the amusement piers. The sister I recognized from a recent newspaper article, as she was an accomplished surfer and had just won some serious competition that summer. The third friend of Dylan’s was Stash, one of the buskers who used to live play guitar along the boardwalk at night, until the town made it illegal for musicians to do so without a license. [As the license cost more than what was dropped into an open guitar case during the length of the summer, it was no longer a cost-effective means of earning extra money. That was exactly what the town wanted, of course, so they could fill the boardwalk with semi-professional barbershop quartets and ersatz jazz groups; types of music deemed more “family-friendly”.]

At Dylan’s urging, Stash took charge of the flower ring.

“I’ve seen them do this thing in Hawaii and it’s cool. It’s called a ‘paddle out’. Although they don’t use dried up flowers”, he said, looking at the florist’s absurd product. “Still,” he brightened, “I even have some words.”

Outside of those with whom I’ve worked professionally, I generally don’t share my occupation with people, nor do I shove earnest amateurs out of the way when they wish to take a lead in informal ceremonies. Despite polls that often show the United States to be a “religious” nation; most people know little of what religion is about, outside of the misshapen forms presented by bilious politicians and brain-addled Hollywood royalty. When they discover that they’re speaking to a priest, they get uncomfortable, make strained attempts at humor, are perpetually worried that they’ll say something offensive, or feel the urgent need to present their own personal spiritual view, adamantly and at length. My reticence is occasionally criticized by colleagues, as they think that it’s an exercise in evangelism to reveal their occupation loudly and proudly to anyone who’ll listen, but I’ve found that evangelism doesn’t work too well when people are uncomfortable, defensive, strident, or nearly hysterical. Sometimes it’s simpler and truer to just be one of the gang on the beach and to let the “amateurs” be the spiritual guides.

At Stash’s direction, we paddled out to a calm area beyond the breakers, formed a rough circle, and placed the wreath in the center. It floated. Then Stash launched into the greatest oration I’ve ever heard while seated on a surfboard. After evoking the importance of life in the midst of the raw nature of the ocean, he continued,

“The waves are like life, man. And I don’t mean that like in those books about surfing. Waves aren’t about metaphysics or Eastern religion or Californicated gibberish. Everyone tries to apply some deep meaning to life, too. They create massive organizations to define it. Folks have tried throughout history to apply meaning to it, and life resists it. Life is just life. That’s why it’s like the waves. All of that verbiage, all of those words to try to turn a wave into something mystical, and the wave just is. You can tell me about energy and gravity and moon phases and [stuff], but I don’t care. I know it’s just a wave. You just ride it. Like, it’s just life, we just live it. And even when we think it’s over, we still ride it.”

With that, we watched the tide slowly take the wreath in the general direction of Ireland. I said something from the Book of Common Prayer about the departure of the soul, something I’ve said a dozen dozen times professionally; that I would have said with Rich if I had been there for his final moment. Stash turned to me, said “That was beautiful, man. Did you make it up? C’mon, let’s ride some waves”. Off we went, even in the junky, unpredictable surf, over and over again; trying every which way we could to wring energy out of the waves, to stay balanced when they were at their trickiest, and reach that shore, tired yet accomplished, and ever ready to try it again. Yeah, the waves are like life.

In a quiet moment, after the others wandered off, and while the wreath was just barely visible on the far horizon, I was able to whisper, “So long, old friend. You just got the best funeral homily I ever heard.”

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]

Surfboard Tales: Tripping Over Jerusalem [1992]

Because of the full moon, I was able to see that I had just tripped over Jerusalem.  A portion of my face had just landed on Gilgal, too.

“I meant to tell you about that,” whispered Cokes.  “This guy is some sort of Jesus freak.  He’s got like a map of Bible stuff in his yard.  Try to hold down the noise, willya?”

As I hadn’t yet recovered my breath, which had been knocked out when my solar plexus made contact with Jericho, I wasn’t ready to debate with Cokes the definition of “Jesus freak”.  In walking over what I thought was a small hill just off of the super-secret, privately-owned entrance to a fabled surf break, I had managed to place myself in the middle of a geographic replica of the Holy Land, complete with the Biblical cities carved in stone, including name plates, placed in scale relationship to one another. 

“Yeah, the first time I came here I thought it was a miniature golf course,” Cokes continued.  “Which would be kind of neat, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe it’s that, too,” I said with my first complete breath.

“Hey, that would be the gnarls.  Come golfing at Jesusville!  Sin-free until 7!”

With that he started to giggle, then cackle, then laugh so loudly that I expected lights to come on at the mansion house, illuminating me like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.

“I thought I was supposed to hold it down.”

“Ah, never mind.  Who could hear us over the surf, anyway?”

Which was true.  The beach to which we were sneaking had once been the proving ground for many of the early surfing champions and their boards.  It was here that skills were refined and informal experiments in board technology were carried out, leading to the advances in fin arrangement and board length and shape that marked the genesis of surfing as a mainstream activity, rather than the curious pursuit of some mildly shell-shocked World War II veterans.

Times had changed in this area since the 1950’s, however.  What had once been a beach that was publicly accessible had become private property.  For a couple of decades, the owner had placed a gate across the only entrance, which was a footpath, but generally left it unlocked.  After a burst of thefts in the increasingly high-priced area, he locked the gate but let some of the area surfers have keys to it.  Not that it made much difference, as by the early 1980’s the keys and their copies had made the rounds of the serious surf community from one coast to the other and back again.

By the 1990’s, though, the new owners decided they didn’t want scruffy surfers walking on their beach and using their ocean, so the footpath was landscaped over with rocks and new plantings, including some surprisingly mature trees, and every portion of the property surrounded by either brick, stone, or security fencing.  Well, all portions except for one small opening in the ramparts where the brick and metal fencing did not quite mesh.  This hole in the wall was a secret closely guarded by only about 100,000 surfers in the contiguous United States.

Still, because of the proximity of the house to the beach, and the new owner’s rumored affection for firearms and pit bulls, the only time that anyone could get to the surf was during the middle of the night, and then only when the moon was full so that one could see the way and the water.  The fact that this was the primo feeding time for the more aggressive sharks was usually not mentioned.

Cokes, whose nickname was earned not because of any drug use, but because he was all but blind without glasses that were pop-bottle bottom thick, had offered to be my guide because, as he had noted earlier that day, “It’s a place of history, man.”  So, with a cassette of “Surfin’s Safari” set on perpetual loop, we took his venerable Toyota pickup at 1 in the morning to the hole in the wall, squeezed through its opening with a couple of nine-and-a-half foot boards, and navigated our way over the Jesusville golf course to the place of legend; a legend well-earned.  When I entered the water I had that same feeling I had when I first saw the Liberty Bell, or the time I shook John Glenn’s hand.

Surf beaches can change over time, either due to natural disaster, erosion of the bottom, or changes in current patterns wrought by those who claim to have the science to address such things.  Some of the famous beaches, especially those in family-friendly areas, are no longer able to provide any experience of interest to the obsessed surf community, as they have been “improved” with jetties and other artificial construction so that maladroit, video-addicted children won’t hurt themselves in 12 inches of water.  This beach, however, kept for nearly half a century in a state of suspended animation, still had the rhythm and power that made it a Mecca in the early days of our very odd avocation, and every ride put one in touch with the guys of equal legend who carried nicknames like Midget, Canoe, and Da Cat.

After a few hours riding the evening glass, with dawn getting nearer, and with it the reality of guard dogs, handguns, and hypothermia beginning to claim our attention, we reluctantly left the beach, now almost too tired to lug the boards, not to mention play commando just to get back to the Toyota. 

With “Surfin’ Safari” once again playing on the pickup’s tinny radio, I thanked Cokes for this memorable participation in natural and living history.  “Sometimes it’s worth tripping over Jerusalem, I guess,” said Cokes.  Sometimes, indeed.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]

Surfboard Tales: Pure Yucatan [1987]

The monkey had seized his Pepsi, an act that left Estefan somewhat agitated.  He had never liked Mexican spider monkeys ever since he had seen one snap his brother’s index finger like a twig back when they were boys.  Twenty years later, the sight of one would reduce him to a state of medieval terror.  The fact that the monkey was now sitting next to him on the tailgate of one of the pickup trucks belonging to the university’s archaeology department, with its legs crossed like his, helping itself to his bottle of Pepsi and behaving like any of the other diggers under the shade of some mangroves, had left him in a state of descolada.

Of course, Estefan also disliked thunderstorms, mud, bus drivers, Coca-Cola, and norteño music; the latter being something on which the two of us often agreed.  This was not lost on Heraclio, another digger at the archaeological site and our truck driver, who would gleefully read the weather report to Estefan whenever it included a prediction of rain, deliberately drive closely behind buses on the winding, narrow roads of the central portion of Quintana Roo, and turn up the volume whenever Los Tigres del Norte were playing on the radio.  In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Heraclio had trained the monkey to steal Estefan’s Pepsi.

The relationship between the two diggers, who were also cousins, would have made for an execrable journey had it not been for the fact that they were taking me to what they described as “a beautiful cenote [or sinkhole]” so that I could experience Yucatan-style surfing.  As we were about twenty-five miles from the coastline, my curiosity was piqued some by a surfing opportunity in the middle of the dry llano.  That and I had never seen a sinkhole that could be described as beautiful.

So, as we drove through towns named after either Christian saints or monstrous Mayan royalty, as Estefan and Heraclio bickered about technique, I heard about the main feature of the Yucatan method.

“We do not use surfboards, doctore,” said Estefan.  “We use rododendro.  You will see; it is pura Yucatán”  Heraclio just laughed and nodded like a bobble-head doll.

My Spanish has always been horrible.  In fact, the university staff would label what I spoke “kitchen Mexican”, so I didn’t think it odd that Estefan had just said that they surfed using houseplants.  I just assumed that I hadn’t understood him over the roar of the loose muffler and the top 40 norteño hits that Heraclio had blaring from the truck’s radio.  That is, until we got to the cenote.

Truly, if a sinkhole could be beautiful, this was the one.  It was introduced by a stark opening at ground level of approximately seventy-five feet in diameter.  Crude stairs that looked rather ancient had been cut in the limestone walls in a rough spiral from the opening to the small patch of earth and sand about three stories below that served as a type of beach at the bottom.  The remainder of the sinkhole’s base was liquid.  Aided by the minerals in the earth and vegetation that grew within and around the opening and down its dark shaft, the water at the bottom of the cenote was made azure; capturing and magnifying the available sunlight but retaining a refreshing coolness.

Second only to the water in vividity was the verdant vegetation that clung to the sides of the shaft and dropped their roots from the sun-soaked surface thirty feet down to the water, lacing into strong knots of vines that formed basketball-sized root balls just below the water’s surface.  It wasn’t until I saw the cousins grab these vines and begin to swing themselves from the spiral steps to just above the water level that I realized the plants were, in fact, tropical rhododendrons.  Remarkably, I had heard correctly; they did use rhodadendro instead of surfboards.

The sport, as I came to learn it, in sinkhole surfing is bending both vine and body so that the soles of one’s feet, at the right moment of the parabola, make contact with the water and, if timed right, enable the “surfer” to release his grip upon the vine and glide across the water’s surface on a buffer of surface tension.  It wasn’t a long ride, and the cousins would loudly celebrate even a five foot glide, but it also wasn’t easy.  In fact, learning the nuance in a Hawaiian short board was probably simpler.  For over an hour, once I was assured that the vines would hold my weight, I repeatedly sent myself inauspiciously into the water with a sizable splash.  However, in the second hour, I was beginning to get the hang of it.

It was a hot, humid day and a dusty ride after a long week of fruitless digging among the remnant stones of a pitiable Mayan archaeological site, and, when Estefan suddenly remembered that on his last trip to the cenote he had hidden a number of bottles of Noche Buena in the cool deepness, it turned into one of the best and most memorable days spent in any kind of water.  Our fatigue from work, and Estefan’s descolada, were cured.

In fact, to this day, after a particularly good session of conventional surfing, if asked how was the water, I sometimes respond that it was “pura Yucatán”.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]

Surfboard Tales: Of the august August in August [2006]

No one could get anything to eat because the Australians were there. They were blond, blue-eyed, and thought to be wealthy as they were sponsored by one of the major surfboard manufacturers. All of the waitresses were hovering around them at the small combination sandwich shop/bar/surf wax dispensary hoping to catch their eye; making sure they had refills of their iced tea, that their tofu burgers were to their liking, and, in one case, making sure that they didn’t have to cut their own food.  The waitresses were dreaming of being swept away to some Aussie future in exotic places like Bondi Beach, the Gold Coast, or Surfer’s Paradise, of course.

We had gotten to the shop before the Australians, but were still waiting for our “fish taco supremes” forty-five minutes into what had now become a spontaneous autograph party organized by the wait staff.  Since I had been in the water for nine or so hours and had eaten nothing all day other than a Pop Tart, my blood sugar was around .0001 and I was genuinely considering mayhem. Dangerously, I was hearing the voice of my former drill instructor echoing in my head with his litany of the seven quickest unarmed methods to take out an enemy.

My companions saw that I had almost reached the point of no return and made a helpful suggestion.  "Why don't you take a walk? Charlie Manson used to play guitar at the place on the corner.  Check it out.  You'll fit right in."

It was a weeknight in the late summer, which meant the streets in the main commercial section were crowded with shoppers, tourists and partiers.  I wandered a little bit past the restaurants and sidewalk cafes, tempted to snag someone’s half eaten meal.  I stopped at the place that had once hosted Charlie Manson as its folk music artist; now it had a different name and much, much different clientele.  I walked along the sidewalk decorated with the names of those who had been inducted into the Surfing Hall of Fame, nodded to the statue of Duke Kahanamoku, the father of surfing, and steadily moved east, getting a little turned around on some of the side streets, where I found myself in the middle of a crowd of motionless young men and women who were silently, and rather eerily, staring off into the distance like seagulls pointing into the wind. 

I joined them, looking into the distance, not wanting to ask any questions to disturb what I thought might be some form of southern Californian spiritual experience.  As it turned out, I wasn’t far off.  They were watching a figure across the street, covered in stray bits of the Styrofoam-like material found in the center of surfboards, quietly working a sander as he patiently, quarter inch by quarter inch, shaped a new board before it was to be covered with fiberglass.  He was tall and well-muscled; somewhere between 40 and 50-years-old and completely absorbed in his work. 

One of the young men turned to me and said, “This is really something.  I never thought I’d ever….”  His observation was interrupted when the surfboard shaper, this obscure figure of adoration, noticed his audience, smiled and waved to them, and then turned off the lights to his workshop and closed the garage door.  The idolaters were ecstatic, saying the only thing to do now was to get back in the water and surf some evening glass.  I agreed, although to what I still wasn’t sure.

When I returned to the café, and blissfully to my fish taco supreme, I related the story to my companions, one of whom was a local.

“You know who that was, don’t you?  That was Robert August.”

“No.”

“Yep.  His shop is just down the street.  He still shapes his own boards.  The kids like to gather there; they think it’s lucky to be seen by him.  That it means good surf.”

I should have recognized him, of course.  The whole reason I was in Surf City was because of him; because of a generation-old documentary film that followed August and his surfing companion around the world looking for the perfect wave; the film that I saw with my dad, on a rainy day in Ocean City, in the summer of 1966. 

My fish taco was gone in two minutes.

“I’ve got to get going.  I think I need to surf some evening glass.”  And, sure and behold, after such a “blessing”, the moonlight surf was terribly good.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]

Surfboard Tales: Dingo [2005]

It was called Dingo’s Beach Club and it wasn’t on any of the tourist maps. Actually, it wasn’t on any map at all as it existed mostly in the mind of a fourteen-year-old Mexican entrepreneur [empresario], with the help of what appeared to be a battalion of his siblings. Dingo, whose Christian name was Domingo, had claimed by right of imagination a portion of beachfront on the Costa Maya near the border with Belize where there was nothing except the ruins of what was once going to be a 3000 room hotel. As could often happen south of the border, the financial backing for the hotel evaporated, leaving a partially poured foundation that featured a phalanx of rusted rebar jutting from concrete that was cracking in the sun. When Dingo arrived on the scene, it served mostly as a home to iguana.

So, like any enterprising young person, Dingo found some discarded beach chairs and torn umbrellas [well, some may have been “found” at the hotel beaches in Playa del Carmen], arranged them in a pleasant crescent on the beach, “bought” a cooler, ice, sodas and baked goods from the local Bimbo [that’s a bakery and market chain in Mexico, just so you know], and painted a driftwood sign that simply said “Dingo’s”, with an arrow pointing towards the beach. To help generate traffic, Dingo also offered the driver of the local pollo bus a piece of the action if he would stop at the entrance to the property to “check the bus’s radiator”. “But only if he carries turistas”, Dingo explained to me.

No one came, of course, because Dingo’s had to compete with luxury hotels and well-maintained beaches from Cancun to Tulum; until the day when a couple of surfers realized that Dingo’s Beach Club was the site of one of the best surf breaks on the eastern coast of Mexico.

“Senior Whiskers [pronounced whee-skers], that was the day when my thoughts became eléctrico. That is the day when this became Dingo’s Beach and Surfing Club”, he explained to me.

Not having the backing, however transient, of a bank or brace of investors, Dingo harvested discarded portions of fiberglass hulls from boats in a repair yard in nearby Puerto Aventuras, cut them with an old hacksaw into the rough shape of a commercial bodyboard, sanded down the edges, and offered them for rent for a mere 10 pesos a day. Plus gratuity. The day after his first rentals, he had his sister sew pieces of old wetsuits into bands that could be worn around the hands of the bodyboarders, since Dingo’s sanding of the ragged fiberglass edges would not have satisfied any heath and safety inspection. Plus, having renters cut open their palms tended to reduce the attractiveness of renting.

“It is my own line of boards. Is it not eléctrico?” I had to agree that it was.

It was a pleasant place to surf, although one could not let go of one’s board, as it would suddenly become group property. Even if the price of lukewarm Bimbo soda was a little steep [“Twenty pesos, but tax free.”], Dingo was a good host and a number of gringo surfers would stop by, admire his organizational skills, stay away from the deadly Dingo bodyboards, surf that funky break all day long, get their pictures taken with Dingo [tax free], and enjoy some time at what was one of the last undeveloped beaches in Mexico.

Everything has a lifespan, of course. I had hoped to return to the Costa Maya the next winter, but work got in the way. The year after that, Hurricane Wilma hung around the coastline for four days and stripped the landscape of trees, the homes and hotels of their roofs, and, as I discovered, altered the sea bottom so that the wonderful surf break disappeared. By the time I returned, nearly four years later, Dingo’s Beach Club, and Dingo, had disappeared and some Mexican surfers had started to put up a small village of bungalows by the beach. They were half-built and abandoned, of course.

No one I spoke with knew of what happened to Dingo and his siblings, but I figured wherever he was, it was going to be eléctrico.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]

Surfboard Tales: Resurrection [2001]

It was late in the year, but with surfing that’s not such a bad thing. The water may be cold, sometimes brutally so, but the waves are usually stronger and October days can be beautiful. Also, you can go to the beach around noon and there isn’t a crowd in the water. In fact, on this day, there were only eight or so people on the beach; one sweeping the sand with a metal detector, a couple of joggers, a woman madly knitting from her beach chair, the others reading or just sitting in the sun.

We were in the water riding whatever it would offer. There were some good waves, but most were small and a little weak at this point, but the wind was shifting and the tide was coming in. Not that it mattered. As a clerk in a Huntington Beach surfshop had said to us, “It’s okay. Just get in the water. The waves will come.”

I was surfing with Terry, my oldest surf buddy. We had met in seminary, and had once served together as hospital chaplains. He had been a talented priest, but had left ordained ministry to work on Wall Street some years before. We had planned a brief surf trip for earlier in the year, but I was delayed by a death in the family, and Terry had…well, he had just been through some things, too.

Terry: What was the flight like?
Me: There were only five people on the whole plane.
Terry: Weird.
Me: And the stewardesses…
Terry: Flight attendants.
Me: …flight attendants were kind of odd. They watched us like we were going to do something.
Terry: Yeah, I think I know that look. Everyone on the street seems to have it now. In the office, the employees stop talking when a plane flies overhead. Doesn’t matter if they’re talking to someone in front of them or a customer on the phone, the whole place goes silent.
Me: How’s that going?
Terry: We lost a lot of computer files…well, all of the files, paper and electronic. I mean, we lost the whole building. But we’re going to have the temporary office in Long Island for awhile. Maybe forever. I can’t take the subway to work anymore, but I drive in with the surfboard on top of the car. I can get in the water at the end of the day. At least for another few weeks. Then, who knows...? Here comes a set.

It was a good set of waves, too. Terry always takes the first one and I take the second one. There is no reason for it other than he thinks the first one is better and I think it’s the second. For the rest of the day, we didn’t speak as the waves came in as they always do, one after the other, and we concentrated on getting the best rides we could.

Finally, when the water temperature was beginning to make our feet and legs too numb to stand, we sat on the sand and talked about how, once we could move, we should get a couple of cups of hot chocolate from a street vendor who knew just what to sell to hypothermic surfers. Maybe a few cups.

Terry: You know what I found in my sock drawer?
Me: Socks?
Terry: Yeah, and my collar.
Me: Your clergy collar? Plastic or linen?
Terry: It was that nasty starched linen we had to wear back then. I got asked to help out at [a parish near Wall Street]. They’re still doing burials.
Me: I heard. How long’s it been since…?
Terry: Since I wore a collar, or since I ran a liturgy?
Me: Both.
Terry: Awhile. Seems like a time to get back into it.
Me: The Church or the water?
Terry: The Church. Then the water. God help me, but after dealing with The Church again, I’ll really need the water.

And thus, a small private prayer of mine was answered.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved © 2011]

Surfboard Tales: Extra Seat [1995]

The best conversation I ever had about the surf was also the shortest. And the quietest.

There are sounds common to every hospital, from Manila to New York City. Besides the murmur of voices and the occasional rasp from the intercom, there is the beeping associated with the various telemetry and servo-mechanisms, sometimes with the bellows rhythm of a respirator or the gurgle of a pleur-evac. I don’t know what it’s like for the patient; I don’t know if they stop hearing all of it or whether, since it’s the only distraction permitted when one can’t read, speak, or see, these sounds become comforting in their constancy.

Sitting in an ICU bay for more than a day, I know I stopped hearing them, permitting me a quiet vigil. Except for the forty-five minute ambulance ride and the six hours during which she was in neuro-surgery, I had been at my wife’s side for over thirty hours, still wearing the clergy collar and tweed suit from Sunday morning. As the ER physician had told me she wasn’t going to make it, I had given her “last rites” at noon the day before [since most people know what that term means I’ll use it; I’ll leave it to pedantic bishops to point out that “last rites” is not technically correct]. At 6pm, now at a second hospital, I had anointed her with the oil of unction, as I had been told that she might make it, but there would be lingering disability. With therapy and care she might be able to speak or even walk again. “After a fashion”, said the neuro-surgeon.

It was now 6pm the next day; two days before Ash Wednesday. I sat in the chair next to her bed, holding her hand in the noisy silence, waiting to see what the free-ranging pocket of blood still left in her brain sac would do if it came into contact with healthy tissue. If it did, it would further disable her or kill her. Then again, according to the surgeon, it could just dissipate with no further damage. If she were able to speak sometime in the next day, it would be a sign that the blood was dissipating.

I spoke to her for hours, without response, about family, pets, the daunting labor of filling our college aid applications. When those topics were exhausted, I spoke of our vacations to the various beaches we had enjoyed during our six years of marriage; about sailing the Lesser Antilles the year before, about the vacation we would take once she had recovered, maybe to Aruba or Barbados; about waves and surf and swimming and diving. I had just finished describing in lush detail a trip we could take one day to Kona when her hand, limp for a day and a half, suddenly squeezed mine. Then, through dried lips and a throat parched by the previous day’s intubation, she said, “We’ll have to buy an extra ticket for the surfboard.”

I knew that there had been more poignant words spoken in human history, but I really couldn't think of any. She could speak, and would in the months to come converse normally, regain her balance, walk, and return to work without any lingering effects from the sub-arachnoid aneurysm; and we would, after she was cleared by her physicians, begin to visit the beaches and coral reefs about which I’d spoken during those terrible hours of one-sided conversation.

And once, on a flight to the Palancar Reef, when we noticed that our row contained a vacant seat, we exchanged a deep and silent smile.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]

Surfboard Tales: Green [2011]

There is that one day, usually in the second half of August, when you know that fall is coming. The overnight temperature begins to drop below sixty, in the evenings it is no longer uncomfortable to wear long pants or even a sweatshirt, you begin to wear a wetsuit in the morning surf again, and the shape of the waves begins to change. This latter event is open to considerable speculation; it is considered a myth by those of a scientific mind and even by some surfers. But watermen know that something different begins to occur with the delivery of energy through water, and they adjust their sails, the trim tabs on their hulls, the nuance and knots of their surfcasting tackle, and their technique accordingly.

Metaphorically, this is especially noted by the early morning surfers, all of whom are over the age 45. The younger set doesn’t go to bed until 3 or 4 in the morning; they don’t wake until noon or so. Those of us who are parents and grandparents are up and in the water in time to see the sun rise from a gray/mauve/red horizon [well, at least on the eastern seaboard] and all of us know the familiar challenges of being middle-aged and older.

After a week of so or mornings such as this, I’m feeling a little weakness in my right knee. My shoulder has been making a popping sound whenever I reach behind me, and I have to warm up a little before I can turn my head all the way to the left. Although we don’t catalog our signs of maturity with one another, the “dawn patrol” knows from its mild grimaces of discomfort or slight limps that we are feeling the effects of having graced creation for a half century or more. Sometimes the simple chore of putting on a wetsuit seems a reenactment of Leighton’s “Hercules Wrestling with Death”.

On this particular morning, the waves, even with their altered shape, are not quite ready for us. They are low, slow, and weak. When younger, we would sit on the beach and wait it out or, more likely, enter the water and wait and wait. We had all day, after all. However the cold water and the colder air are a little uncomfortable in our maturity, so we do the better thing and walk about the beach collecting the detritus left from the day before. To paraphrase William Carlos Williams, we pick up the pure products of America Go Sloppy.

“My grandkids learn about the environment in school,” says an older waterman with whom I am picking up an assortment of soda cups, cheese steak wrappers, and, interestingly, a stained “Obama ‘08” t-shirt. “When they visit me, they turn off my lights, unplug my coffee maker and toaster, and generally hector me about being a better re-cycler. Then they come to the beach and forget all that. It was never this messy back in the day.”

“You know what I find weird?", he continued. "Back then there were hardly any trash cans on the beach, yet people took their refuse with them at the end of the day. Now we’ve got cans for trash, cans for bottles, cans for newspapers or [stuff], cans for I don’t know what. They’re all over the beach; like every 25 feet or so. Yet, look at all the [stuff] people leave.”

“They don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t care, I guess. As long as they use the right words their actions don’t have to match. They must of have learned that from celebrities. Maybe politicians.”

Another dawn patroller arrives, looks at the sad state of the surf, smiles at us and speaks the cliché that has been ironic since the 1960’s: “You should have been here yesterday.” We laugh, but my elder companion looks at the surf, then the trash, then the surf again. “I think I’m going to start saying, ‘You should be here tomorrow.’”

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]

Surfboard Tales: Logo [2011]

I can’t help but notice the remarkable obsession with money and showy material goods that is now a normal part of common life, and a normal part of surfing, too. When I was a teenager, none of my peer group owned his or her own board; everyone rented the same make and model of surfboard from the same place. Of course, none of us was wealthy and that vacation to the Jersey shore, as tatty as that sounds to many of my neighbors in Litchfield County, was the biggest luxury of our young lives. The idea of actually buying a surfboard, which in 1969 or so would have cost approximately $65, was laughably fantastic. It didn’t matter to us of course, as surfboards are merely tools. They were something we used to participate in a great natural and spiritual experience. Or just to have some thrills. After all, one can build a house with a $10 hammer as well as with a $100 one.

Apparently, I’m not the only one to notice this new reality. One morning, while patiently waiting with about a dozen others for what we hoped would be a set of really stunning waves, I had some observations on technique shared with me by a guy known as “Hoodoo Bob.”

Hoodoo Bob: “You know that guy right?”
Me: “Yeah, I see him most mornings.”
Hoodoo Bob: “I think he can catch any wave; even the garbage.”
Me: “That’s talent.”
Hoodoo Bob: “You bet. And this guy, the longboarder? Only guy I know who can walk the nose on the East Coast.”
Me: “No kidding.”
Hoodoo Bob: “Really. See this guy?” He indicated a young man walking down the beach with a surfboard marked with the logo of a European fashion house. “He’s the best surfer on the beach.”
Me: “Is that right? I’ve never seen him surf.”
Hoodoo Bob: “Me, neither.”
Me: “What? Then why…?”
Hoodoo Bob: “Got to figure, doesn’t it? He’s got to be the best. He has a $3000 board.”

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved © 2011]

Surfboard Tales: Boonie [2006]

As in any sport or activity, there is a certain amount of superstition in surfing. Surfboards, which are nothing more than foam and fibreglass, can be imbued by their owners with mythic qualities rivaling that of fabled Mjolnir. Similarly, a particular pair of boardshorts or a wetsuit may become an item of totemic power.

My surf buddy, Terry, had a hat that apparently served that purpose for him. Originally, I didn’t know the hat’s provenance; it seemed to me just to be an olive “boonie” hat that could be found at any army surplus store. I know he wore it both as sun protection and to keep his head warm in the water. Other than the practical, there seemed to be no other reason for its ubiquity.

One particularly wild day in Newport Beach, California, Terry lost the hat in a vicious wipe-out that, in his words, should have “busted my fool neck”. Despite a thorough search, we could not find the hat in the water anywhere. I suggested that, given the current was rather strong that day, it had probably already traveled to Huntington Beach, five or six miles up the coast. He grunted and revealed, “I had that hat on the first day I was able to stand up on a board; and every day since. That hat has power. It should be in a museum.” He was a little grumpy for the next couple of days. Given the fact that he’s eternally affable, this was a little worrying.

A few days after we returned from the West Coast, I got an excited phone call from him. “Check out the O.C. Register [the daily paper in Orange County, CA]” he said, sending me a link via e-mail. It was an article about a Huntington Beach surfing competition that started the weekend we returned. “Look at the photo.”

It was a picture of one of the winners. He was a typical looking young man for his sport: longish blond hair, well-tanned with 0% body fat, holding aloft some obtuse trophy. However, the one thing that stood out, perched on the back of his head, was an olive boonie hat.

“You see it?” asked Terry, “I told you that hat had power. He must have picked it up in the waves, put it on, and it let him win that contest. Don’t ever doubt the power of that hat. I feel better now. Balance has been returned to the world!” Should I mention that this is someone who works on Wall Street?

I am far too wise in the mysteries of the world and the surf to ever disagree with Terry about the hat and its power. In fact, the next summer in south Jersey, all of us bought our own boonie hats, in a variety of colors, to wear in the water during the season. It was one of the best seasons we'd ever experienced.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved© 2011]

Surfboard Tales: Baby [1969]

It isn't permitted in Ocean City anymore, but when I was about 13 or 14 we could still go down the boardwalk steps to the beach at night. A lot of the high school and college kids did so and built fires and brought guitars, smoked cigarettes and sometimes pulled from a bagged bottle of Miller High Life. I was a straight-arrow kind of kid who didn’t smoke or drink, and I was conspicuously younger than most of them, but they let me enjoy the music, company and laughter, as long as I kept an appropriate distance. One evening a collection of Hare Krishna members, complete in saffron robes and with shaved heads, joined the evening beach set with their drums and other percussion instruments, handing out some delicious vegetarian dish that my friend, Jerry, refused to eat because he was afraid that it might have LSD in it. It was all a rather typical scene in the late 1960’s. The particular thing that united us was that we were beach people, with the royalty of the set being the surfers.

One of the surfers was a young man in his early 20’s who had recently returned from Vietnam. These days we would say that he had post-traumatic stress disorder; in 1969 it was still called “battle fatigue” or “shell shock”. It was not something that was treated in any real manner back then. He was pale and gaunt, despite spending most of his days on the 7th Street beach, the one that was marked for surfing only, and most of that time in the water. He was never in the center of any activity; he hovered in the outer orbit of the people around the beach fire, slightly visible in the orange glow. Mostly, he would stare at the waves and the phosphorescent lines that they made at night. He looked like he had gazed into some terrible abyss, had seen some ghastly truth, and was still trying to figure it out while knowing that he never could or would. He was known only by his ironic nickname, which was “Baby”.

One night Baby started a conversation with me. I don’t know why, except that I tended to the outside orbit of the beach fire, too. He just started talking, without looking at me, about how much he enjoyed the music, how much he had missed it over the past two years. That, and the caramel corn on the boardwalk and the cheeseburgers from a shack that stayed open late into the night. Baby then told me some lurid tales of Vietnam; so lurid that I wasn’t sure if they were true and wondered if he did so just to see my reaction.

He then asked me if I had seen that morning’s newspaper. It had been filled with stories about the horrific murder of a houseful of celebrities in Los Angeles. My mundane response was something like, “Yeah. Pretty bad.” Then he looked right at me; it was so startling that I think I stopped breathing for a moment. He said, “That’s why I ride the waves. They’re wild and they’re mad. If I can master a wave I can master the madness.” He was silent for awhile afterwards; then he walked off into the darkness. I didn't move until my friend Jerry came over to ask me if I thought Baby was on LSD.

I never saw Baby again at night, and only occasionally in the daylight, on his board out on the waves of 7th Street, waiting for the best one, the largest and the maddest; waiting for just the right wave to master.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved© 2011]

Surfboard Tales: Lingo [2005]

Like any avocation, surfing has developed its own slang over time. Some of it is venerable and well-planted in the American idiom. Terms like “wahine”, “kahuna”, and “wipe-out” have been heard and, at least partially, understood by many. However, there are more examples that are either specific to a particular surf beach or are so transient that they don’t survive for more than a season. The last time I was on the West Coast, I was speaking to a surfer who was bringing me up to date on the local patois.

Surfer: See that?

Me: What?

Surfer: That move the dude just did.

Me: No. What was it?

Surfer: It was like a 360, but with a flair. It was a roundabout fandoozie.

Me: A…what?

Surfer: Now check that. That’s an acetone shorts.

Me: It’s an acetone…?

Surfer: Shorts. ‘Cause he went so fast, see?

Me: No, I don’t think I….

Surfer: Now check the cavefish over there. He’s about to porpoise.

Me: Wait, I know what it is to "porpoise". He’s riding up the wave instead of down, right?

Surfer: Right. Watch him launch.

Me: But, what’s a cavefish?

Surfer: He is, ‘cause he’s so white. See, he’s a fishbelly.

Me: Okay.

Surfer: Man, I did this porpoise once. I just blasted off like a space shuttle. I called it a “moon porpoise”.

Me: “Moon”? Because you were heading for the moon?

Surfer: Nah, I lost my board shorts about half way up the wave.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved© 2011]

Surfboard Tales: Flotsam [1996]

After a storm, a great deal of flotsam is kicked up by the agitation, including various forms of algae and kelp not ordinarily seen on more peaceful days. Much of it is unattractive and some of it is a little on the slimy side. It is not unusual after riding a wave to find a draping of brown grape kelp on one's shoulder or a doily of green, plasticine algae on top of one's head.

I was talking about how much was in the water one morning with a young surfer who was typical of his generation, as he was educated in the academic concerns of the environment but a little less enthused about the real thing. He offered this observation, while picking an accumulation of algae and other ocean offal from his wetsuit with great care and an expression of disgust on his face: 

“I like the waves. It’s the ocean I can’t stand.”

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved © 2011]

Surfboard Tales: Mangoes [2004]

Surfer: Got my mangoes stolen yesterday.

Me: Pardon?

Surfer: My mangoes. On the beach. Stolen.

Me: Oh, yeah. I lost a backpack last season. While I was in the water.

Surfer: Know who did it?

Me: No, although nowadays I have a GPS transponder in my bag so I can chase down whoever takes it.

Surfer: I should have done that with my mangoes. They were in a plastic bag that I stuffed under the bench in the lifeguard station. I like mangoes; gets the saltwater taste out of my mouth. I wasn’t in the water five minutes and they were gone. The bag they were in was just blowing down the beach. Five minutes, and I didn’t see anyone else on the beach. It’s like a cat burglar.

Me: Or a bird burglar.

Surfer: Huh?

Me: Look. [I pointed at some seagulls who were rummaging through another surfer’s breakfast bag. One was flying away with a Pop Tart in its bill.]

Surfer: [Highly Creative Expletive] Oh, man. I think I filed a false police report.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved© 2011]

Surfboard Tales: Jack Kirby Shoulders [2011]

Another surfer and I are sitting in the slow rolling waves, waiting for the next set. He's young and enormous, with shoulders about as wide as a Jack Kirby-drawn superhero [see Captain America above] and muscles so sculpted its as if he has no flesh. I think he could bust the surfboard in two with his bare hands. He's been in the water for seven hours without a break and shows no signs of fatigue at all. He may be able to bust the ocean in two with his bare hands, I don't know.

He and I have just noticed the local beach joggers on an outing from the Surf Health Club; middle-aged folks kind of wiggling down the beach wearing flamboyantly bilious running gear. A true child of the surf, the Jack Kirby Superhero looks off into the distance and says,

"I wonder what it's like to jog. Or go to a gym."

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved© 2011]

Surfboard Tales: Malibu [2006]

But one of the things I thought would be fun is to record some of the conversations I've had with fellow surfers and bodyboarders while waiting for the next set of waves to come through. They can be amazing in their Zen-like density or wonderful goofiness. My guarantee is that all conversations and comments are verbatim and accurate.

#1:
[The following was at the end of the conversation about why rappers and hip-hop artists change their names to something exotic and fake.]

Surfer: "I thought about changing my name once."

Me: "Oh?"

Surfer: "Yeah. I wanted to change it to Malibu."

Me: "Mal-"

Surfer: "Yeah. Malibu. 'Here comes Malibu' or "Malibu just pearled'. 'Malibu, dude, good to see you.'"

Me: "As a first name or last name? Or, as one name? You know, like Liberace."

Surfer: "Who?"

Me: "I mean like Cher."

Surfer: "?"

Me: "Madonna? Never mind."

Surfer: "Not as a last name. Only if my first name were 'Johnny' or 'Ricky' or something."

Me: "What's your first name?"

Surfer: "Ken. See, that's the problem. Everyone would call me 'Malibu Ken'".

Me: "Yeah, that wouldn't work. What's your last name?"

Surfer: "Beach. That wouldn't work, either. That one's taken."

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved © 2011]