Author Topic: November 22  (Read 4102 times)

headmount

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 5750
    • View Profile
    • Email
November 22
« on: November 22, 2014, 01:07:31 PM »
Many of you are old enough to remember.  Here's that day from my POV at 13 from my soon to be published book, Journals from the Edge.

Dad’s home from sea but it doesn’t matter.  He can only corner me at meals so I skip many and escape to the beach.  I’ve been surfing and that’s all I care about.  Today I’m skipping school.  Nobody cares about me today anyway.  Everyone is watching TV.
It’s foggy on the beach.  I drag Mikey’s board towards the water and see a surfer standing at the water’s edge checking out the waves.  It’s Duke Grey.
I stop a little behind Duke because everytime I get too close, he wacks the back of my head. 
“Hey Duke”. 
His eyes remain fixed forward towards the ocean.  The tail of Duke’s wet suit hangs down loose so he looks like a beaver but I don’t tell him that.  I know that even if he isn’t focused on his surf-check, he won’t turn towards me when he speaks.
“Bitchin’ waves gremlin.  You going out?” 
“Yeah, sure.”
I try to sound enthusiastic even though I’m already feeling how my bones will ache from the icy water.  The ocean is so cold I know I can’t last long out there.  Each wave that hits my face feels like screwdrivers are poking into my eardrums.  I wish I had all that frogman stuff and a wetsuit like Duke's.  He even got one for Mikey.  Maybe I should ask him for one.
“Where’s your brother?”
“Watching TV, about the President.”
“Nothing he can do.  When you’re dead, you’re dead.”
Staring at the back of Duke’s head I know I don’t understand everything that has happened today.  He steps towards the water and I follow.
I’ve caught a good one and step back quickly to crank a turn.  I love this rush of speed when I take off on a wave.
Back on the beach, my blue lips quiver over my chattering teeth.  I’m burying myself in warm sand but it’s not enough. 
The older surfers my brother’s age are also fresh out of the water and huddled around a fire they’ve made inside an oil drum.  They’re not shaking.  From forty feet away, I can see heat waves rise from their drum.  I wish I could get closer but I’m afraid of them.  These guys are tough and don’t let anyone outside their group hang out near them.  I think they only let me this close because I’m Mikey’s little brother.  Maybe some of their heat will drift in my direction.
Mikey has shown up and is talking with Duke.  The surfers shoot the shit and take turns punching their fists into a useless board they call a surf sacrifice to make the waves get bigger.  I’ve seen this before but today the surf is good.  Why are they still pissed off?  They look my way every so often.  Are they making sure I don’t come too close?  I’m freezing but forty feet away is as close as I dare to get.



Zooport

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 3533
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: November 22
« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2014, 01:27:00 PM »
Extremely cool!  Who's the publisher?  Let us know when it is available, I'm sure you will get a lot of buyers from the Zone. 
8'6 Soul Compass
9'1 Sunova Creek
9'6 WaveStorm SUP
9'8 Starboard Element

surfinJ

  • Teahupoo Status
  • ******
  • Posts: 1873
    • View Profile
Re: November 22
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2014, 02:05:31 PM »
A memoir, very brave undertaking. Not sure I could be honest enough to get it all out there, presenting the truth and not a glorified fiction.

How many of us used the surf as a life saving refuge from the crap waiting on the shore of our young lives?

headmount

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 5750
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: November 22
« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2014, 02:12:02 PM »
A memoir, very brave undertaking. Not sure I could be honest enough to get it all out there, presenting the truth and not a glorified fiction.

How many of us used the surf as a life saving refuge from the crap waiting on the shore of our young lives?

Quite a few.  My book has surfing in it but is mainly about a huge issue that many 'baby boomers' grew up with, especially those from military families.  Coping with the crap that wasn't on the table like it is these days.

Also I think it's easier to avoid glorification if you concentrate on an issue bigger than your own personal story.  For example in the movie 'Goodfellows' we see Henry's life but the overwhelming story is about the culture of organized crime.   And really he was an outsider who was allowed in.  Very enticing set up for the audience.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2014, 02:20:30 PM by headmount »

SUPcheat

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 2677
    • View Profile
Re: November 22
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2014, 03:10:37 PM »
Hmm, I was 13 too.  I heard it in an auditorium when I was in parochial school.  Kennedy being a first Catholic President, it was an especially big deal. More interesting was the falseness of the political and social imagery compared to the glaring light of historical facts and realities revealed slowly over the next fifty years.

I was a Navy brat with typical military family dysfunction.  Dad was a vet with the Navy Cross for valor as a dive bomber in WWII.  It wasn't called dysfunction then, it was called "none of your damn business."
2013 Fanatic Prowave LTD 9'3"x30.5x@134L
Sunova Speeed 8'10"x29.12@131L
Sunova Flow 8'7"x30.25"@121L
Carbon 9.3x32@163L Hammer
Me: 6'1"@230 lbs 68 years old

lucabrasi

  • Teahupoo Status
  • ******
  • Posts: 1813
    • View Profile
Re: November 22
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2014, 03:27:36 PM »
Nice.
Goodfellows kind of thing? Who's part does Joe Pesci get in your story? I wanna see this more now.  :) 
I just a tad too young to remember. I think there was a tv on and something different in the air but you did remind me of my friends older brother and his friends listening to the white album after school.......the older kids in the neighborhood and all that stuff. Geez, they were all of 13-16 or so.....

supthecreek

  • Guest
Re: November 22
« Reply #6 on: November 22, 2014, 03:40:18 PM »
Great abstract view of moment frozen in time, even though the magnitude of it was slightly out of your reach.
Classic surf history as well.... grems had to hard earn their scraps....Thanks!

-----------------

Free period at school, so I was in the dentist chair... mouth open, full of sharp metal tools in the very shaky hands, belonging to Old Dr. Craig.... a radio sat on a shelf right next to the chair:

"From Dallas... THE PRESIDENT HAS JUST BEEN SHOT!!"

My mouth and my ears have had better days..... like 2 shots of Novocain... everything was numb.


headmount

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 5750
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: November 22
« Reply #7 on: November 22, 2014, 04:05:09 PM »
Hmm, I was 13 too.  I heard it in an auditorium when I was in parochial school.  Kennedy being a first Catholic President, it was an especially big deal. More interesting was the falseness of the political and social imagery compared to the glaring light of historical facts and realities revealed slowly over the next fifty years.

I was a Navy brat with typical military family dysfunction.  Dad was a vet with the Navy Cross for valor as a dive bomber in WWII.  It wasn't called dysfunction then, it was called "none of your damn business."

You nailed it with  then it was called "none of your damn business."   My parents never divorced but many of their friends did.  The lucky ones.  Well if you were a Navy brat, I think you'll dig my Journals.  It's not a story in the village of happy people.  Many think that dissatisfaction began during Vietnam but I think it started on this particular date in 1963.  Not that Kennedy was a saint but that any president could get assassinated in what I thought back then were 'modern times'.  Nothing drains a democracy like an assassination.

SUPcreek, I have a great dentist section in my story as well only it didn't happen on Nov 22. 

pdxmike

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 6186
    • View Profile
Re: November 22
« Reply #8 on: November 22, 2014, 05:50:36 PM »
I remember it well, too--hearing it at the checkout line at the store with my mom.  Since I was four, it was one of my first memories of real, outside-the-family news, right up there with spaceship launches and the Space Needle construction.

Supthecreek--I read headmount's draft and you'd love it.  Plus maybe it will inspire you to do some writing of your own--seems like you've got the material to make for some interesting reading...
« Last Edit: November 22, 2014, 06:04:27 PM by pdxmike »

SlatchJim

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 2614
    • View Profile
Re: November 22
« Reply #9 on: November 22, 2014, 07:39:33 PM »
I was a mere 7 months old, living in Pasadena in a converted apartment with my parents.  The woman they based the movie "3 faces of Eve" rented another apartment there, and it was like the place was haunted.  The first president I was aware of was Nixon.  As the tail end of the boomer generation, I didn't feel the impact of the assassination, the Watts riots, or really any of the salient moments of the 60s. 

Great account.  I look forward to reading more of your story.

headmount

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 5750
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: November 22
« Reply #10 on: November 22, 2014, 08:25:30 PM »
Well as an event that began a nationwide dissatisfaction, it was also a point of extreme satisfaction during that moment in time when surfing somehow entered my life.  Saved me.  Still saving me.

southwesterly

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 2679
    • View Profile
Re: November 22
« Reply #11 on: November 22, 2014, 08:39:54 PM »
San Blas, Mainland Mexico, May 13th 1981. I was renting a house for $60 dollars a month (split 4 ways) at the base of Mantenchen Bay. As we hiked into town for tacos and refrescos after another day of surfing second point, I noticed the headlines of a Mexican newspaper called the Alarma! The Alarma is the south-of-the-border equivalent of our National Enquirer. The main difference being, the Alarma usually specialized in gory cover photos of dead and bloated bodies found along the side of the road or in a ditch. The laws of Mexico at the time made it illegal to publish a photo of a woman's naked breast, but it was OK to show a close up of a decomposed face of a long dead unlucky farmer.

The Alarma cover and headline I saw that day was different. The Pope had been shot! Not only shot, but shot four times. They showed a diagram of the path of the bullets as they slammed into the Pope. Right next to this diagram was a big photo of Bob Marley. Bob Marley shot the Pope? WTF? Of course it was written in spanish and at the time my spanish was limited to surfer spanish (Hay olas alli? Que camino es mas major?). Due to poor photo placement, not being able to read above a first grade level of spanish and the coincidence of Bob Marley dying within days of Pope's assassination attempt, I really thought The King of Reggae shot the Supreme Pontiff!  I didn't understand that the Pope got shot...  and Bob Marley died. It took some time for me to sort the details of these separate events out. Now I know how rumors get started.

headmount

  • Cortez Bank Status
  • *****
  • Posts: 5750
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: November 22
« Reply #12 on: November 22, 2014, 11:17:45 PM »
SW...Read your story a few times myself to make sure I had it right. 

A good pal of mine that goes to Mexico often sent me some pics a few years ago of a gang war in Mexico where guys skulls were emptied out after a hefty gun battle.  Looked like a Quinton Terrentino movie.  My pal was going surfing.

SuppaTime

  • Sunset Status
  • ****
  • Posts: 300
    • View Profile
Re: November 22
« Reply #13 on: November 22, 2014, 11:58:02 PM »
It is funny how JFK day sticks with you. I was 11 and it was a sort of existential experience for me - it really hit me hard that someone is there one minute and not there the next. My dad and I had a long talk about what dying is. Not coming from a religious family, the death narrative was not as simple as "god's plan".

Turns out JFK was a prelude to lots of other death in our family - my aunt - who I adored, and both my grandparents died within a year of JFK. And my dad followed a couple years later.
Slippahs:
Locals size 13
Reefs size 13
None size 13

firesurf

  • Sunset Status
  • ****
  • Posts: 273
    • View Profile
Re: November 22
« Reply #14 on: November 23, 2014, 08:10:41 AM »
At 5 yrs old my memory is a bit blurry as to where I was when President Kennedy was assassinated. Although over the next few years I can recall the pressing sadness in our home over his loss. Two years later my dad retired from the navy.
I do clearly remember when Bobby K. was shot. I was in my 4th grade classroom when his death was announced over the intercom the following day.   
Memories touched…  Looks to be interesting

 


SimplePortal 2.3.7 © 2008-2024, SimplePortal