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.