Scratching the Horizon

by Izzy Paskowitz

  Don’t have time for the change of clothes, though, so I slip out of my wet suit and throw on a pair of shorts and a clean-enough-looking Maui Jim T-shirt and point the truck towards my parent’s apartment. The event is called for five o’clock, and already it’s a quarter past, but we’ll get there when we get there.

  Dad is dressed for the occasion. Doesn’t quite dress to the nines, my old man, but he hits those sixes and sevens. He’s wearing a loose-fitting corduroy blazer, some throwback shade of green, over a button-down surf shirt and a pair of jeans. Next to me, he looks like he’s in formal attire, but it doesn’t much matter what we’re wearing, not with this crowd. Only matters that we’re here, and soon as we arrive it’s like the tide rolls out to clear a path for us. Of course, I realize the welcome is mostly for my old man, but I’m happy to follow in his wake. Been that way my whole life, just about, and by now I’m happy to soak up some of the smiles I know are meant for him. My siblings are the same way, for the most part. We’ve reached a place where we can celebrate the lives our parents built for us, the opportunities that stretch before us, the legacy we’re still finding ways to inhabit.

  Place is packed with smiling, familiar faces, just like the beach was packed earlier this morning, only here my dad stands at the center of attention. Something about the unconventional, romantic, vagabonding, bohemian, fucked-up lifestyle he’s embraced, the laid-back California surfer ethos he helped to create … guess it embodies what this event is all about. What surf culture is all about. He’s like the surf whisperer, a spirit guide with stories to tell, stories these good people seem to want to hear, and he moves about the room like he owns the place. And he does; in his own way, he does.

  There he is, huddled with his old pal Mary Lou Drummy, another local legend, one of California’s first female surfers, going all the way back to the pre-Gidget days. And there he is with Fran Velzy, Dale’s widow, and Paul Strauch, Jr., one of the sport’s first genius artists who used to ride with the Duke Kahanamoku Surf Team. And there, finally, he’s huddled with his great friend Tubesteak, their backs to the wall, soaking in the scene, reaching past the years for some shared memory or other.

  I stand at the bar, sucking back Guinness drafts, collecting congratulations and reminiscences from people I’ve known my whole life, surfed with my whole life, made trouble with my whole life. I think, Well, Izzy, this doesn’t suck. And, really, it doesn’t. To see your life unfurl in front of good people you care about, to celebrate each other, to be celebrated in return … yep, it’s pretty damn cool. Still don’t mind saying.

  At some point, our friend Steve Pezman takes the stage and sets the scene. Steve is probably the most influential surf journalist on the planet. He used to be the editor and publisher of Surfer magazine. He knows us better than we know ourselves. And he’s got a little something to say about each of the twenty-one Surfer’s Row honorees. A personal memory. A bit of context or history. Something. I start to listen to what Steve is saying about all these great surfers, about the contributions they’ve made to our sport, our culture, our lifestyle. The contributions they’re making still. And for a couple beats I forget all about my family and our place in the mix. I forget how brave and crazy it must have been for my father, and my mother alongside him, to drop off the grid the way they did and raise a bunch of surf rats in a crappy, run-down camper. As Steve talks, I slip into a sweet, dull fog—kind of like that deep breath that finds me when I’m out past the break, waiting on a wave. Time doesn’t matter. Work doesn’t matter. Everything is just put on a kind of temporary hold, and a minute feels like an hour, and an hour feels like a minute, and you step outside yourself, a little bit. It’s quiet, but not really. I’m listening to Steve, and I’m not listening to Steve. I’m waiting to hear what he’s got to say about us and the way we’ve lived, the way we staked out our own territory on the surfing scene, and I’m not waiting to hear. And next thing I know he’s shot right past us, and he’s finishing up his remarks about the event, the moment, whatever.

  Underneath whatever nice things Steve Pezman has to say about us, whatever ribbon he’s tied around this sweet, fine moment, I catch myself thinking, It’s been a good day. Thinking, It’s been a good life, an interesting life. And, Where do I sign on for more of the same? Yeah, it’s been a rich, wild ride, and here, surrounded by these good people, my dad, my daughter, Elah, and a bunch of her friends, my brother Abraham and his family … it feels like it’s meant something. Like it continues to mean something.

  So what do I do with this sweet, fine revelation? Well, I take it in … in what ways I can. I down another couple pints of Guinness. Talk shit for a while longer with some of my pals, pose for a couple more pictures. Hang with Elah for a bit, enjoying the way my baby girl moves about in the life she’s managed to make for herself, alongside the life I’ve managed to make for myself, alongside the life my father had wanted for all of us.

  Finally, I check my watch and decide it’s time to head back up the hill and make for home. On the way, I stop to pick up some take-out schnitzel at this new German place, Barth’s, just opened up on Ortega Highway, figuring Danielle and I can eat a little something when I get home.

  Been meaning to check the place out, and this seems as good a time as any, so I park the truck in front of the restaurant’s big storefront window and bounce inside, where I’m met by an attractive young waitress, looks to be about my daughter’s age. She motions towards a table for me to sit down, but I tell her I only want takeout. She goes to get me a menu, and when she returns with it she points through the storefront window.

  “You are a surfer?” she asks, in a thick German accent.

  I follow her gaze and see she is looking at my truck, with the eight or nine boards fitted onto the bed. “I am a surfer,” I say back, and we fall into talking.

  She brings me a beer, to fill the waiting. Soon, she asks about the tattoos that spill from my T-shirt and run all along my left arm. She’s never seen anything like them, she says. She shows me hers—a simple star, on her belly. Unadorned. Me, I’m adorned as hell. The German waitress, she is curious as hell. She says, “The design, it is almost tribal, yes?”

  I say, “Some of it. And some is just a tribute to my family, to my children.” And then I tell her about the markings on my arm. The names of my kids. A portrait of Danielle from when we first met. The Surfers Healing logo. The tribal designs on my fingers—native shark teeth, pointing away from my body, which is meant to indicate energy and the spirit of aloha flowing out into the world. I tell her how in Hawaii a tattoo tells a story, how the symbols you wear are meant to announce who you are. I say, “This way, when you meet someone, it’s like they already know you.”

  The waitress disappears to collect my food and returns with the restaurant’s owner—also German, also struggling to fill the holes in his English. He looks to be in his thirties. The waitress is anxious to show her boss my tattoos, to introduce him to her new customer.

  “It is very beautiful,” the owner says, after looking at my arm. “Very interesting.”

  “It tells a story,” the waitress says. And then, turning to me: “Someday, you must come back and tell it to us.”

  1

  The Start of Something

  My story begins in Texas, of all places.

  That’s where my father was born in 1921, in Galveston. His parents, Rose and Lewis, were also born in Texas, so it’s not like they were just passing through. There was actually a small, close-knit Jewish community in and around Galveston, which was a popular port for Jews entering the country from Russia. My grandfather ran a dry-goods store, although from what I hear he didn’t do such a good job of it. He ended up as a door-to-door salesman—shoes, mostly, but he sold a bunch of stuff. Basically, he hustled his way all through the Depression. Whatever he could buy on the cheap and flip for a quick profit, that’s what he was into.

  My father, Dorian, was the oldest of three. Behind him were his brother, Adrian, and his sister, Sonia—
both characters, same as my dad. (Some quirk in our gene pool, I guess.) My dad and his sibs would all veer off in their own separate directions. Doing their own thing, their own way … that’s what they had in common. Uncle Adrian became a knockabout musician. He played the violin, here and there, off and on. Everyone always said how gifted he was, what an incredible teacher he was, what an incredible talent, but to us he was just crazy Uncle Adrian. Very creative, very artsy … but, also, very crazy. When I was a kid, he lived for a time in a big house in Hollywood Hills, but other than that he never seemed to have a steady job or stay in a relationship for too, too long. He did have a couple kids—our cousins Nina and Yoab—and we got together with them from time to time, but there was a lot we never figured out about Uncle Adrian. All we knew was that he played the violin. As a gift, he offered to play for my wedding, which is getting ahead of the story, I know, but as long as I’m on it I’ll hit these few notes. I happened to duck into the bathroom during the reception, and there was Uncle Adrian, completely naked. Surprised the crap out of me. He’d taken off all his clothes and was splashing water under his armpits, getting ready for his performance, and I remember thinking he was cut just like my dad. Whacky. Out there. Different. Yeah, he could play the violin like a dream, but he’d go at it his own way.

  Aunt Sonia was on her own wavelength, too. As a young woman she was beautiful—stunning, really. After the family moved to California, she found her way to Hollywood and started working as an actress, during the last gasp of the old studio system. She’s probably best known for her role as Agnes Lowzier in the 1946 Howard Hawks classic, The Big Sleep, opposite Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. She acted under the name Sonia Darrin, but she was never credited for her most famous role, even though her character’s on-screen more than anyone other than Bogey or Bacall.

  She bounced around Hollywood for a time, appeared in a bunch of pictures, but then the gigs stopped coming, which I guess is what happens to a lot of stunning young actresses, eventually. Everything is entirely and wildly possible … until one day it isn’t. By the time I was born, Aunt Sonia’s acting career had come and gone; she’d married a set designer named Bill Reese and started adopting a bunch of kids—my first cousins Mason, Suky, Lanny, and Mark. (Yep, that’s Mason Reese, of Underwood Deviled Ham fame, one of the first true child stars of the advertising age—and a good, good guy.) We saw a lot of them, too, back when we were kids, which I guess left us with the message that family was important. Also with the message that actually working for a living, in a traditional nine-to-five way, was for other families.

  Here again I’m getting ahead of my story, or at least a little off to the side, so let me just head back to Texas for a bit. It was there, in the Gulf of Mexico, that my father rode his first wave. A lot of folks don’t think of Galveston as any kind of surf spot, but these days there’s a thriving surf community down there. Okay, so maybe it’s not thriving in the same way surfing is thriving in California or Hawaii or Australia, but everything’s relative, right? The waves along the Gulf coast in popular surf spots like Stewart Beach can be small and choppy, but if you time it right you can catch a good surf day. There wasn’t a whole lot of surfing going on back in the late 1920s, though. Wasn’t even called surfing, what there was of it, but my father saw a picture in the newspaper of a guy riding a wave off the coast of San Diego and thought this was something he’d like to try.

  I’ve heard so many different versions of this story over the years, it’s tough keeping them straight. Every time my father tells it, he sprinkles in a couple new details and tosses out some old ones. Here are the nuts and bolts of it: When my father was seven or eight years old, he found some old strips of rubber tire and crimped and bound them together like a raft. Then he covered the whole deal in canvas and set off to do his thing. Guess you’d say he was a resourceful kid, the way he made something out of nothing, the way he’d seen a picture of something that captured his imagination and went out and grabbed at it for himself. Damn near amazing, when you think about it—only it wasn’t a very satisfying experience, he says, in almost every version of the story. Says it was more like white-water rafting than actually standing up on a hard surface and riding a wave into shore. But it was something. A germ, a seed, a kernel. A place to start.

  And it wasn’t just a one-off with him, surfing. Once he tasted it, he wanted more. And more.

  Soon, my father got to reading whatever he could about the legendary wave riders out in California or on the beaches of Hawaii. He’d cut surfing pictures from newspapers and magazines and tack them to his wall. He became almost fanatical about it, maybe even a little evangelical. Got it in his head that the only place he could be happy, truly happy, was out in San Diego, so he put it out there that the California sea air would help his asthma. Almost forgot that part: my father suffered from a serious case of childhood asthma; at least, he claims he was asthmatic, although I never once heard the man wheeze or cough. Not once, not ever. But somehow he convinced his parents the flats of Texas were debilitating to a young boy in his condition, and eventually they packed up their house and moved the whole family out to San Diego in the early 1930s.

  Now, I’ve got no real idea if this is how things truly went down. All I know is that this is the story my father has told, for years and years. If I had to bet, I’d say there’s probably a grain of truth in it. I’d say there probably was a diagnosis of asthma, at some point, and a suggestion that my father might do better in a different climate. But there was also the pull of the ocean, the romance of surfing, so I’m sure he went all out to make his case to his parents. He could be very persuasive, my old man—even as a young man. When he sets his mind to a thing, he’s all over it, and he won’t back off until he gets his way. And he’s charming about it, make no mistake. He can be completely full of shit, but he’ll make such a strong case for whatever it is he wants or needs you’ll never know he’s completely full of shit until much, much later. And you won’t really mind when you finally figure out that he’s been jerking your chain to get his way. That’s probably how it happened back in Texas, when he was pushing for that move to California. Truth was, San Diego at the time was all mudflats, so I can’t imagine it was a healthy environment for a young asthma sufferer. It couldn’t have been good for him to breathe all that sulfur percolating through that mud. But that didn’t keep my father from pushing hard for what he wanted.

  Story of his life—and, soon enough, it would be the story of mine.

  * * *

  As a young teenager, my father hit the beach. Wasn’t much more of a surfing community in San Diego than there’d been in Texas, but in California at least you could find a good few like-minded souls. The other kids on the beach started calling my father Tex, which I guess must be the default nickname for every transplanted Texan in recorded history, and he was quick to make friends. That’s another key trait of my dad’s that would play a big part in our family history. He was an accomplished social animal, and a real pro at getting other folks to throw in with him on whatever it was he had in mind. All through high school, he tells, most afternoons he’d find his way to the beach and ride as many waves as the sun would allow. Weekends, more of the same. He’d meet up with his new friends on the beach and together they’d work those waves for all they were worth, and after a while he was as good as anyone else.

  The deal back then was you had to make your own board. Weren’t enough surfers to support any kind of commercially made boards, so you had to have a do-it-yourself mentality. There was no other option—even if you had money, you couldn’t buy a board. Had to just figure it out, you know, and if you weren’t handy or clever in this way you found a way to trade for someone else’s board.

  Early on, my father got a job as a lifeguard on Mission Beach, where he worked with a one-eyed lifeguard captain, Emil Sigler. This guy had made a bunch of heroic saves, so everyone on the beach knew him. Everyone in town knew him. All the other surfers, all the other lifeguards, they wanted to b
e just like Emil; if Emil rode a really giant board, that’s what everyone else decided to ride.

  The Mission Beach lifeguards got the wood for their surfboards from Pacific Homes, a local building supply outfit. The boards weren’t shaped, curved, or beveled. They were just big planks of choice wood, which Tex and his pals would cut down into a basic surfboard shape and laminate. Their boards were long—about ten to eleven feet. And heavy—well over one hundred pounds. At night, they’d just leave their boards on the beach, because they were too big, too heavy to steal. No one else had any use for them, really, although I suspect a few of them ended up as firewood.

  All through high school, surfing was my dad’s main interest. His only interest, really. He did well enough in school, but he did as much riding as he could. For years, he’d tell us his parents never minded if he ditched school when the surf was up. Don’t know if that’s entirely true, but that’s how he remembers it. True or not, surfing was his priority; same went for his friends; it filled their days. And when my father finally graduated from Point Loma High School he joined the navy—I guess under the thinking that he’d be on, around, or near enough to the water to continue with his surfing. Didn’t exactly work out to the good, in terms of surfing. All of a sudden, my father’s time was no longer his own. He didn’t have his fellow lifeguards to keep him company. He’d built up all these great friendships on the beach, and then he’d had to leave those friendships behind, and I don’t think he found too many surfers among his new navy buddies. He was assigned to a medical ship that operated in the Pacific; after the war, he went to Stanford University Medical School, on the G.I. Bill, earning his degree in 1946.

  Up until this time, even with the way he’d skipped out on school when the surf was up, my father was very much a by-the-book kind of guy. By that I mean he always did what was expected of him—or he did just enough of it so he could go through the same motions as everyone else. His parents wanted him to at least make the effort to finish school, so he made the effort. His friends were all enlisting, so he enlisted. And then the thing to do was go back to school and pursue some sort of profession, so he did that, too. But I don’t think his heart was ever in it. High school, the navy, medical school … these grand institutions seemed to suck the life out of him. His heart was on the beach, in the water.