It has been so long, so long ago and the memory and feeling and even 0dor permeate my being on this healthy hallowed day.  Mother and Father are long gone and grandparents even longer and it is now my time to go, somewhere good, I hope.   The beauty of holidays that celebrate this great nation are ever cast into history for us and all our children to enjoy, as long as we can keep this country together in one piece.  Everyone in this country deserves a Thanksgiving with their family and a bird and ample foodstuff to enjoy the blessings of liberty, even the Wracks.   We are here, our children are there, and there is power and force to make it happen.

Grandpa was there, and so was grandma, and even the Fonz when he wasn’t hiding next door in one of the neighbor’s houses.  The Wracks helps Grandma make the stuffing for the bird, and she adds chicken broth to dried white bread, with onions, garlic, tiny pieces of celery and a lot of love.   Inside the cavity it goes and she tells the Wracks to “put it in the vent and truss it up”, and he ties the back legs together with white twine and it goes into the oven at 350 degrees.  Long green beans steam in the steamer because boiling them makes them fall apart, and these will be anointed with olive oil, parmesan cheese and more garlic powder.   Grandma is small, around five feet high because she had rheumatic fever as a child before they had antibiotics.  She has slightly strawberry blond hair and she says she is Italian with the name of Trump after he changed his name.  She tells the Wracks to “tell everyone you are Italian”, because Grandpa and all his friends in Vegas are Italian.  She says, “tell them you are a paisano and they will like you.”   So, the Wracks tells everyone he is Italian even though he has dark brown hair and an olive complexion like an afghani or Iranian.  Grandpa sits in the green reading chair with the Washington post smoking the usual Roi tan cigar with all the windows open and huge tobacco clouds wafting out to the cool autumnal air.    Grandpa says, “Amerada is up and get more American air lines and TWA.”  Then he takes another puff on his cigar. 

Dinner is on says father Wracks, he is Chinese but tells everyone he is Italian because his mother was Italian and he sits at the head of the table with a large bottle of white wine.  “Everyone, have a glass of wine and say a prayer of thanksgiving that we can all be here together today.”

‘Manga” he says in Italian because all his cronies in the rat pack are Italian and he wants to fit in.  the Fonz is here, slick and dapper in a plaid shirt with a tie.   He looks a trifle bewildered because he has spent the morning with the opposition in the lightning bolt club, but he wants to catch some of grannie’s cooking before he goes back to his friends.  He sits next to grandpa. Saint Grandma sits next to the Wracks and puts all her food on his plate because he knows the spook and his moil are slowly starving him to death.  The all-American family eats and eats with second helpings and the Wracks has a wing and his grandmothers second helping of white meat and a ton of mashed potatoes covered in salty, greasy gravy.  Mom sits on the other side of the table and tonight she wears a wig like carol Burnett, she has a whole arcade of wigs when she goes out of town incognito, and they sit in stands like the joker in Gotham city.  

The wracks are happy.   He has family like most orphans never know and Mom brings in two pies for dessert, a blueberry and an apple pie.   He has a huge slice of each and a mound of vanilla ice cream in a separate dish.  Mother Wracks tells the Wracks to bring in the dishes and he does and puts them in the dishwasher and sets it on.   He will begin scrubbing the pots and pans after they soak in soapy water, this is the trick to soak steel pots and grills so the crust and ash come right off with a Brillo pad.  Grandfather and Grandmother, mom and dad are in the living room with the bright green shag carpet and the antique French furniture where the Wracks is told never to venture. The stereo is on playing Christmas music and the Fonz disappears mysteriously to visit his friends in different houses that the Wracks has never known.   The Wracks cleans the table and gathers the cutlery and counts them because they are sterling silver from an exclusive English fabricator.  He takes the dishes out of the dishwasher and puts them in their special cases, scrubs the pots and pans and then places them in the dishwasher for round two.  The Stirling cutlery must be washed by hand because phosphate detergent deteriorates them. 

Grandpa and Grandma announce they are going to retreat to their white duplex in Brentwood and Mom, Dad and the Wracks see them out to their custom white ford Fairlane with huge fins on the side like a spaceship that the Fonz will inherit and convert to a rolling bordello.   Only the Wracks should be so lucky.  He is happy to have a home to come home to.   The Fairlane rolls away with smiling folk and the Wracks retreats to his bedroom which will soon become his grandmothers, and reads his encyclopedia with a single tensor lamp that his grand father bought him for Christmas.  The Holiday season has begun and all is good.

This and them were so very long ago.  The memories of love, camaraderie and friendship are everlasting and they color your very existence until you pass.  All people deserve a thanksgiving.   All children deserve a home and a religious upbringing.   Without a home during childhood and the teachings of religious ethics, human beings slowly migrate to unscrupulous things.   A person, him or her is made in childhood and the upbringing makes them an ethical productive citizen in society.  Without this, everything is lost and Wracks family and his children, wherever they are wish you a happy and bounteous Thanksgiving today.  God bless America, and let us provide justice, secure the blessings of liberty and provide for the common defense.  Mao.

I know what you are doing

I know what you say

Even when you are sleeping

Almost every day

You can be a captain

I can be your crew

It doesn’t matter whatever you do

Because its just a feeling

Way down deep inside

Riding shotgun on this crazy ride

Don’t throw it  all away

Don’t throw it in my face

Don’t be a savior

Of the human race

Don’t throw it all away

Before you have had a taste

Put me in my place

Because I never had a date

Shining stars surround me

I feel that you are near

Somewhat overpowered

In a magazine

On a nebulous horizon

Let me in your dream

Searching for some beauty

Whatever the hell that means

Azure is blinking broadcast

Are you on my team

Holding on so tightly

I am on a bend

I have never ever found a friend

Don’t throw it all away

Don’t kick it in the face

Don’t spin the plastic top

Fame and fortune are a rave

Don’t throw it all away

Before it is too late

Before life has lost its meaning

Getting ready for a date

You can be my captain

I can be some crew

Energy surrounds you

I can feel it too

I can never slumber

Supine  in a bed

Someone tries to get to me instead

Am I getting to you

everything you say

Am I getting to you

by now you have it made

Am I getting to you

Knock, Knock, Knock, it is still big says Malaga.

It is only five in the morning says the Wracks.  The sun isn’t up yet.

I want to check out the overhead, it has never been this big, says Malaga, the swell cleaned up overnight and the winds are Santa Ana, light offshore.   

I am in says the Wracks; I have a yum yum yellow backwards mini-pin shaped by Eggman.   It was a warped blank from Big D; I got for a song and Egg shaped it for an ounce of Kef I got from the man himself.   Let’s go, I have a super suit.

I want to look at the overhead. It has never been this big and the swell has cleaned up from Yesterday.  First make me breakfast.  

The Wracks pulls a small frying pan from the shelves and he makes eggs and toast with butter and marmalade while the automatic coffee percolator makes an eight-cup batch.  Columbian coffee tastes great in the morning with a dash of cream and a cigarette.   

The air is clear and the wind is light and the sun peaks up slowly from the Santa Ynez mountains.  The yellow van with the tuned Abarth exhaust system the Fonz helped install buzzes up Highway one.   The buy is at least six feet on a west-northwest swell and perfect conditions but Malaga wants to go on and see it.   Malibu shows the best form in the spring and late fall when storms gather offshore in the west and push big swells into the continental shelf.

Let’s go out says the Wracks, The Bu is on!

They drive and the whole coast is churning.  County line reefs out in the kelp are breaking fifteen to twenty feet and the bombora out to the left is huge.

Let’s go out says the Wracks, the Line has good shape.

I want to see it says Malaga; it is a once in a life time thing.  

They go on.   The deep-water points that never break are breaking six to ten feet.  If the Channel Islands didn’t block most of the swell from the coast, southern California would be the surf destination for the world.  Hawaii is a lot bigger and the water is warmer. 

Underneath the atom bomb tunnel and into Oxnard and Point Mugu is a huge mass of white water visible from ten miles away.   GB has a navy identity badge to enter the base and he wont surf it, he says it is too sharky and submarines sit in submerged pens not visible by satellites.   Too heavy.   The Wracks agrees.   Soon the van with the blaring exhaust and stolen CD player rockets into the Ventura highlands.   The Wracks lights up another Pall mall cigarette to keep himself awake.  Past C street and the pier, and then stables to the parking lot at the overhead, where a camp ground exists and no one surfs because the vibrations are too intense.   At Stables, the top of California Street point, the ranchers discharge animal offal from slaughterhouses and the farmers discharge agricultural waste.   The stream creates a sediment reef at Stables, the premier spot at C street, which is usually big in the winter.  Then there arises the Ventura Overhead.   The Overhead is called such because the reef only shows when the swell is completely overhead.    The overhead juts out from the top of Stables point, a little bit to the north, and the two, Malaga and the Wracks pull up, have a Coca-Cola and another cigarette.  

Today the Ventura Overhead reef feels the incredible swell and breaks at least thirty feet, with bigger sneaker sets every thirty minutes.   The wave is huge and incredible and breaks in a perfect peak, enabling a surfer to go right or left, their choice.  A slight offshore that will turn onshore in Ventura around noon, together with the rising sun makes the scene supernatural, surreal and heavenly.   Huge waves rear up and break, top to bottom, and the ocean churns and white-water streams all the way to the beach.    The two young surfers sit in the car, time the sets and don’t speak as is the level of excitement grows and explodes.

Do you want to go out asks Malaga.

I will if you go out firsts.   I don’t want to sit in shark land all alone almost one-half mile out at sea, says the Wracks.

It is huge says Malaga, and there arises a channel to take us out to the peak, but no one else is here to brave it.  It is you and me.

I will go if you do, says the Wracks.  It is your decision. 

Malaga sits and looks and lights another cigarette.  It is huge says he, I don’t know If I have the right equipment, I only have a seven-foot six-inch gun and it might not be enough.  

The waves churn and a huge set rises out of depths, one half mile out to sea, pitches and breaks top to bottom then flattens out in the channel.  It probably will never be this big ever again. 

I have made my decision says Malaga, it is too big, I don’t have the right equipment, and we will be the only ones out.   It is a hair out, says Malaga, I can’t believe I am haired out.

I am scared too says the Wracks; you made a good decision.

The car starts up and the two rocket back to civilization, and the van roars flat out at sixty-five miles per hour down the Highway one.

Let’s surf the Bu says the Wracks, the winter Bu is perfect.  

No, I have decided to go to a luncheon at Beverly Hills Hotel with my family.  We missed our window. 

Goodbye says the Wracks as he unloads his yellow pin from the back of the van. Have a good day and as Malaga drives away, he goes to the corner of Mellow Mans land and Bacon and Santa Inez Lane and watches the ocean and huge lines are visible ten miles away and the wind turns westerly and the ocean decivilizes into a texture of afternoon wind.   He would not surf the day after; he didn’t have a ride. 

It has been a long time and the Wracks doesn’t surf anymore.  No time, no opportunity, no money and age.   The Ventura Overhead exists when the swell is extremely big and it breaks perfectly.   Now, the boys have leashes and jet skis and radio communication to the Coast guard.  They have it made, all they need is a really big swell and the right equipment in the twenty-first century.   The Wracks is here and he believes and this is Gods country and the waves will break forever. 

In a very late evening, Bacon Way sits quietly in the middle of exploding Peyton place. At the very best, memories fade with time and the biggest swell ever recorded is merely a feeling in the mind, set aside for now, something maybe to tell your children or anyone who is interested or could ever appreciate the significance of the event.

In Junior High School, life is a series of exciting events punctuated by cataclysms in the long meandering stream of growing up.  Sitting at the big table in a little house with five second homework in hand, a little dog curled up into deep sleep in a little brown basket next to the red brick fireplace. Focusing the light on my books, it is Friday, father is not home again, on another business trip, and the wracks sit alone, mother is out and older brother is gone.  A face forms in the big sliding glass and then a body moves from the shadows into view. A big cat-like smile appears in the form of   Mangala.

“A big swell is going to hit tomorrow” says Mangala

“I checked it out this evening at the lookout; it’s as flat as a board”.

“The North Shore is forty feet plus, Waimea is closed and it’s coming from the North” Screams Mangala.

“If you have gas money and some food you can go.  I just spent all my money on a tune-up.  Kool is coming along.” Adds Mangala.

“I’m in.  When do we go?”

“4 AM” says HP.

Kool appears from nowhere in the dark misty twilight of exploding Peyton place.

Dressed in a Dark robe with hood made from cotton towels, he looks like a Druid heading for a sacred mass.  He has a seven-foot-long green pintail gun.  A dim rumble of megaphone exhausts can be heard in the distance and slowly approaches.  Mangala pulls up in a yellow camperized VW van with sunroom, curtains and tuned exhaust. He smiles at me.

“Load it up” he commands.

“Want a smoke”? Inquires Kool

“I’ll tie them up.”

We load the boards on a rack on top. Wracks homemade board goes on the bottom where it will get notched from the tight ropes. We were all fortunate that our boards did not blow off on the Freeway as Berber’s had and mine someday would.

Kool lived at the top of Mellow Mans Lane past the slalom of Beber’s bowl. He moves in strange ways and shows up at the oddest times. Sitting on my front lawn in full lotus posture in his robe with a lit cigarette, He drags on a Marlboro cigarette and the red glow illuminates his craggy face.

“Hey brau” he says

“Kaena point is forty feet and Churning”.

“Let’s hit Diego”!  I’m Shotgun.”

Motoring down in the twilight to Sunset Blvd. and then to Suicide canyon run onto Pacific Coast Highway, I see no waves in the morning mist and the deserted road blends into the turnstile of the 10 Freeway. The humming yellow van fills up with smoke.  the wracks lies on the big cushioned bed in back, upside down looking out the rear-view window. The highway fades into nothing in the ends of the night until the big refinery lights up the day.

“Jumping Jack Flash, it’s a gas, gas, gas”  

“Brown sugar how you taste so good”

“Yeah, Mellow”

Kool sings along with the videocassette. The flared megaphone of the forty horsepower engine croons me to sleep.  The van rumbles and jumps, in the morning dimness and Kool sings and they smoke and Saturday begins.  At the Trestle, I can hear the surf   booming in the distance. A human can see upper Trestle breaking from the highway, its huge.   The Moon slowly sets in the west and the ocean looks grey

We take the off ramp at La Jolla, to Torrey Pines Road onto the enclave where Lu lives in the summer. We pull up douse the lights and blend into a suburb above a beach called Blacks.  Blacks are totally unused except by nudists and Professors from Scripps.

“I can feel the vibes” exclaims Kool.

“Twisted”.

“Listen” He Whispers

Muffled booms climb the cliffs, up onto the houses, and into the street where we hide in the lemon-yellow van. This is the secret place of Lu.  Simultaneously, the side door explodes and we leap into the morning. From the grocery bag we slam food down our throats and wash it down with a Big Bottle of Coke. Putting on wetsuits, hidden by robes we share the sacrament of waxing our boards and then with a leap take off down the Cliff.  The fastest way down a cliff is to throw your cargo to the nearest ledge and slide the best way you can without falling.  The cliffs at Torrey Pines are least vertical at Blacks and this is the fastest way down to the sandy beach. To take the path down means a day in jail for trespassing.  Black’s beach is worth the risk. A short beach of white sand abuts on a cliff and seaweed litters the shore.  Crabs, fish and lobster swim in the tide pools and the water has fools’ gold suspended within that gleam when the sun reflects off the surface of the water.

Ten wave sets are stirring the ocean surface and the white water comes in in layers. Huge fifteen-foot left waves grind and puff across the arroyo.  La Jolla cove blossoms in the distance.  We try to get out three times but the drift and riptides sweep us a quarter mile down to the pier and finally we give up. 

“It’s impossible to get out when it’s over ten” says Kool

“Let’s try somewhere else” says Mangala.

Taking the Stony Path up is a lot safer than going down.  The guards hide near the top so if they see you coming up it is a short sprint to safety.  This ground is owned by the University of California but really belongs to Lu. After jogging a quarter mile up the switch-backs we make it to the top.  Now the sun is up and the waves corduroy the horizon.  The cove foams white.  It must be over twenty feet and building. 

“Let’s head north” sighs HP

“Throw me a boro”. Says Kool

We put the boards inside the car and head to Pipes.  Pipes is a long gradual reef in North San Diego County that can be ridden right or left and the wave is fun and forgiving. Today it was a huge peak a half mile out in the ocean breaking mainly right. We chose pipes because it has a channel to paddle out in but today waves were breaking in the channel.  We hoped the rip would suck us out. Still in our wet suits we try to paddle out.

We try again and again but a rogue set would send us careening backwards into the chop.

It is still a building swell.  Mangala and Kool catch inside waves but can’t make it outside again Mangala times the sets and we try one last time. He is almost five years older than me and the extra strength of age pays off for him and he makes it outside during a lull.  We then lose sight of him and Pipes keeps firing huge rollers from way way out.  Suddenly on an inside wall Mangala screams down on his brand-new Phaser gun and kicks out early.  We cheer.  He rides two other huge waves but is caught inside on his final ride and is washed up on shore.  Back at the car He sits down and rests.

“It’s really big out there”.  He speaks

“I’m hungry” screams Kool.

The best wave in the world is Swamis.  It can hold any swell.   Today, it breaks over twenty feet on a set of reefs, reforms and turns into a five second tube ride at the point if you can make the section, then the wave backs off again into a beach break setup.  The wracks promised himself when he was older, he would surf swamis on a huge swell, but it never happened and a lot of things never happened but the Wracks is still around

The good news is that the wind is offshore.  The bad news is it getting bigger. The game plan is to find a beach that catches the huge swell least. Off we go.  Kool spies a 7-eleven store and flys in, and flys out with a big brown bag of stuff. He spits some slurpee on my shirt and says “On to Tamarack”.  The guy in the store says Tamarack will be smallest.

Tamarack is next to a boat harbor and a huge jetty wraps long south swells into lefts. We were trying to avoid the big North Swell.  Tamarack was it.  Huge lines wrapped ninety degrees into a peak breaking into the jetty.  It was breaking at less than ten feet. The forces of nature doing the unthinkable in a place out of time and out of season.  Two hours later the Wracks got cramps and had to come in.  Hp and Kool are doing very well and loving it Kool with the long flailing arms backside and HP the team rider tearing up the waves and the wracks on the beach with cramps.  I dress at the car and wait.  Exhausted, four hours later, they wash in.  I tie the boards up on top. Kool smokes and eats, smokes and eats and tosses the bag to Mangala. The van fills with smoke and heads out on the five heading north.  The Wracks lie on the long bed upside down and look out the back.  Maybe he should bring my motorcycle helmet he thinks to myself. Next time.

It is winter and the day is late and the sun turns red and sinks slowly into the west. It is not offshore anymore only glassy with slight onshore and the swell is holding.  The wracks listen to the bass profundo sound of the megaphone headers.  At the Trestle, the wracks look out from behind the curtains and see a small object falling down an immense wall at uppers never seeming to reach the bottom to turn.  He begins a long carve and his view is gone.  The sun is going down, the van roars; we reach traffic and the beginning of the zone. Kool blows smoke in Mangala’s face to keep him awake and I space out to the tunes until suicide canyon drive. Now the wracks are home

“Out you go” says HP

“I have to meet my father for dinner”.

“I have my dad’s station wagon tomorrow” croons Kool as he dances with pintail surfboard.  As mysteriously as he arrived, he left and the wracks did not see him go to or from were. He might be next door at the pink house owned by politicians.   It is night again and the crickets chirp and break up the overwhelming silence in the kingdom by the sea.  What was dinner has been put away. The little dog greets the wracks with wagging tail and he share what he can scrounge with him.  mother is out, father is working and brother is somewhere driving a VW bug.    A stereo is broken and the Wracks goes to read underneath the lamp and the little dog lays belly up on his cushion and talks to himself.  This was December in the twentieth century in the time of my early youth during the long darkness.

On Monday the Wracks sits in homeroom at eight o’clock sharp reading a Surfer Magazine.  The teacher says.

“Get rid of that magazine because Surfing is a waste of time”.

“Cut your hair, you look like a girl”.

The girl behind the Wracks tugs on his hair and says “What did you do this Weekend”?

The wracks turn around and look at her long, long dark hair hiding a halter top and miniskirt. She is the daughter of a movie star. The Wracks is not old enough to notice girls yet.

“Nothing much” he says.

Then the Wracks turns another page of Surfer magazine.