Eventually, my father gave up on photography and went back to being a doctor. It went against what he’d decided was his nature, but he had no choice, really. There were too many mouths to feed, too many bills to pay, so he moved from one hospital to another, one clinic to another. He worked in a local VD clinic for a while, and then for another while in the state medical office. He’d stay at one place long enough to figure out what he didn’t like about it, and then he’d go off looking for another gig. The one thing he wouldn’t do was work in private practice. He didn’t want to be tied down like that. He’d rather fix the dings in his buddy’s surfboards, or hang out on the set of Gunsmoke, where he worked for a stretch as a doctor for the cast and crew. That’s where he met the actor James Arness, who my father quickly added to his growing collection of pals and acquaintances.
I keep a picture in my head of the first five or six of us, standing in front of the Koko Head house. If it’s a real picture, I haven’t seen it in years, but it’s just as likely one of those freeze-frame snapshots we all carry of some special moment or memory; we set up the shot so we can look back at how we were. In the picture, we’re all wearing these crappy, hand-me-down, Salvation Army–type clothes. Even David, the oldest, wore hand-me-downs—so our hand-me-downs were already hand-me-downs. By the time they were handed down to me or Moses or whoever was the youngest at the time, they were pretty threadbare and hideous, but we never wasted anything. Probably, my father was making enough money to buy us new clothes, but he didn’t like the idea of buying new clothes, so we went to the thrift store, came out looking like well-fed ragamuffins.
There were a lot of other kids in our Koko Head neighborhood, but this didn’t really mean all that much. We had a kind of pack mentality, us Paskowitz kids. We moved about the neighborhood together. There were so many of us, we were self-sufficient. We didn’t need any of those other kids; we had each other; we brothers were constant companions—running through the neighborhood, playing on the beach, making our share of little-kid trouble. And we had a blast. That’s the one great takeaway from our time on Oahu—how much we all laughed, all the time. Don’t remember what the hell we were laughing about, but we all remember laughing—uncontrollably, at times. Really, we enjoyed the crap out of each other. (I supposed we beat the crap out of each other, too, but it was never anything more than good-natured roughhousing.) As we got older, we paired off in little sub-sets, by age, and had our own mini-adventures. David and Jonathan were a great twosome. Abraham and I hung out a lot together. Eventually, Moses and Adam were best buddies. And then we’d mix it up from there.
If I went to school while we were living in that Koko Head house, that means David, Jonathan, and Abraham all went ahead of me, which bumps into a line we’d hear from my mother later on, when we were living in the camper. Whenever we’d meet someone new, they’d want to know about us kids and school. That was always the first question we’d get, when folks came to know us; they’d want to know how we managed to avoid the truant officer. My mother always said that if you don’t put your kids in the system they’ll never know about your kids. The “they” in my mother’s mind were the government, the authorities, the man. My parents never had a whole lot of faith in authority, but for a brief time back in Koko Head they sent us to the local school, same as everyone else. After a couple years, I guess they decided we were no better off in school than we would have been on the beach, so they changed things up and went at it a different way.
I don’t believe this change happened all at once. There wasn’t one day when my parents decided we’d no longer be going to school. My father didn’t clap his hands, like he did when he told one of his stories, and announce any kind of big, sudden change. We just sort of stopped going, gradually. Maybe we’d all ditch school as a family one day, if the surf was up and the sun was out, and maybe the next day would check in just as good so we’d skip school again. School just wasn’t important, just then. Don’t think it was ever any kind of big deal to my folks. We would learn on our own—not in a traditional homeschooling sort of way, but in a scattershot, spontaneous sort of way. We’d learn what we needed to know, and if something grabbed our interest we’d learn a little bit more about that one thing. Or not.
Soon, by the time I was five or six, our days seemed to have more to do with going to the beach and being at the beach than with anything else. Eventually, our days at the beach were all about surfing, but that took a while to set in. Like I said, David and Jonathan took to it first. The rest of us were at the baby beaches, just getting used to the water, and we took to it one by one. Wasn’t anything my father ever forced. If you ask him about it now, he’ll say he wanted us to come to surfing on our own, when we were good and ready, each of us in our own way, but that always sounds to me like a pile of crap. The way I remember it, it’s more like he was off doing his thing, surfing, hanging with his surf buddies, and we were hanging back with my mother, doing our thing, and after a while those separate things just kind of bumped into each other—and by that I mean he probably looked up one day and noticed one or another of us itching to paddle out and he got to thinking, What the hell …
Don’t think he ever put any more thought into it than that.
* * *
My first specific memory of surfing didn’t happen until we’d moved to California, to a little house in a remote part of San Marcos. It would be our last house for a while. I went back to school for a short stretch in San Marcos, together with my older brothers, I guess because my parents wanted to give the California schools a chance to screw us up like the Hawaii schools had screwed us up. Only here, too, we went in a half-assed, halfhearted way. One day, might have even been a school day, we drove down to Tourmaline Beach in San Diego, which had always been one of my father’s favorite surf spots, going back to when he was a kid, lifeguarding just down the beach from Tourmaline Canyon. Even now, more than forty years later, we still surf that beach. It’s where we’ve run our family surf camp, since 1972, but this was a couple years before that. I was about six years old, and for some reason I was sitting still on the beach long enough to watch my father in the water. For a good long time, I watched him. Oh, I’d seen him surf before. I’d seen him out there and thought he was absolutely bigger than life, strong as a mule, fearless on top of fearless. But this was the first time I really watched him surf. The first time I considered what he was doing out there, against what my older brothers were doing, what the other surfers were doing. Don’t know that I’d go so far as to say I was studying my father as he rode those big waves, but I was certainly checking him out. Taking notes.
You learn to surf by osmosis. By hanging on the beach, hanging with other surfers. And this was me, starting to pay attention. Starting to soak in what it meant to be up on a board, dancing across the waves.
Here’s what I noticed, that day on the beach. My father was a throwback kind of surfer. Old-school. Even at six years old, I could see there was something different about the way he rode. He was doing these ancient maneuvers that even in 1969 were seriously dated. The way he turned, he did an exaggerated drop-knee turn, which looked a whole lot different from the way other surfers carved their turns. But my father had grown up on such big, heavy boards that was what he knew. He’d put his foot back and his knee would almost touch the deck of the board, almost like one of those Olympic ski jumpers trying to stick a big-ass landing. From that position, he’d basically stall—meaning he’d lean back in such a way that the front end would pop out of the water, slowing his momentum—and then bring the board around, almost in a pivot. It might have been state-of-the-art in the 1930s, but by the time I was a kid it looked weird and old-fashioned.
And it wasn’t just because he rode his big old wooden boards that my father surfed this way. In the years since he’d started surfing, boards had gotten shorter and lighter. There was more shape to them. They were made of foam and fiberglass, instead of wood. They were much more maneuverable. You could do things on these newer, short
er, lighter boards that my father and his old Mission Beach lifeguard pals could never have imagined. But my father rode those new boards in his antique, old-fashioned way. It was in his bones. He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t help himself. Stingers, swallowtails … whatever was new at the time, he’d be out there on one ripping it—really, really ripping it—but I’d catch him trying to carve a more graceful turn and underneath it you could still see the clunky, drop-knee pivot. It was what he knew, and it stuck to him, and this was the first time I really noticed he had his own style out there on the waves.
So there I was sitting off by myself, watching my father do his thing, and I caught myself thinking I wanted to be out there, doing my version of the same thing. I’d been on a belly board before. I’d paddled around on the inside with my brothers, but I’d never gone out past the break. It had never occurred to me, until just that moment, and as I watched my father—so strong, so big, so full of life—I wanted to be just like him.
When he finally came in, I went right up to him and said, “I want to surf.”
So he paddled me out, right then and there. It’s like he didn’t want to give me a chance to think too hard about it, to talk myself out of it. He just threw me on his board and I lay out on my belly, while he knelt behind me and paddled out. It’s a lot harder than it looks, paddling out on your knees with a kid in tow, but my father had no trouble with it. He was big and lean and muscular. He even paddled in an old-school way, supertraditional, with both hands reaching for the water at the same time, like a two-sided stroke.
I wish I could remember what we talked about, as we paddled out, if we even talked at all. I’m sure we did. We must have. I do remember that I wasn’t afraid. I felt completely safe in my father’s care, completely without worry. The waves were high, even for Tourmaline, and we had to get past some giant sets that knocked us around pretty good, but I was completely without fear. I was with my father, on a great adventure. Nothing bad could happen.
Soon as we got out there, my father turned us around and grabbed a wave and rode it back to shore. I stayed on my belly, up front. God, it was fast! In my little-kid head, it felt like we were going a hundred miles an hour. I gripped the rails tight. It was exhilarating. Years later, first time I ever heard that word, “exhilarating,” I thought back to this moment with my father, and this first-ever wave.
We went right back out, of course. Wasn’t even a question. And this time I wanted to ride in standing up. I said, “I want to ride like you, Dad. I want to stand.”
He said, “We’ll see about that, Israel. We’ll see.”
And we did. If that first ride was exhilarating, this second one was the absolute shit—another term I did not yet grasp. But it fit. Hell, yeah, it fit. My dad held my hand and helped to stand me up and as I did I had a quick case of nerves. For a tiny, quick-shot moment I fixed on the idea that I would slip and fall and maybe hit my head on the rail, but as soon as I got up and found my balance and felt certain in my father’s grip those nerves were gone. I was washed over by that same sense of security from the first ride on my belly. I felt like nothing could go wrong. Like nothing could ever go wrong. And with it came this giant adrenaline rush of pure excitement. Still felt like we were going a hundred miles an hour. Maybe even a million miles an hour. Couldn’t think of a bigger number or a faster speed. But on top of that it was such a giant thrill.
I didn’t want it to end.
And there was also this: as I rode, I realized I was standing in the goofy position. I knew my dad rode goofy—meaning right foot forward—and I’d been wondering if I would ride goofy, too. I’d stand on a board on the beach, and I’d try it every which way, trying to figure it out. The thing is, you can’t really know until you’re up on a board which way is more comfortable. And so, as I stood up, I had no real idea what my stance would be, but I set myself right foot forward, just like him. Instinctively. It’s like being left-handed or right-handed, only it doesn’t match up. You can be right-handed and ride goofy, or you can be right-handed and ride regular—left foot forward. It just comes naturally, and whatever your stance that first time you get up on a board, that tends to be your stance forever. Like it or not, plan on it or not, you’re stuck with it. And here I was, riding like my dad. Moving like my dad. Imagining myself like my dad.
Cool.
That one ride standing up was enough. I was hooked, stoked, gone … whatever words express how absolutely sold I was on the sport of surfing, that’s what I was. But that was it for me, that first time. Just those two rides—one on my belly and one on foot. After that, I started to feel cold, shivering cold. My father could see that I was almost shaking. He said, “That’s enough for today, Israel. There’ll be more waves tomorrow.”
* * *
My father had a thing about working past his fears, which he told us in the form of a story. Over and over, he told us this story. Never the same way twice. But always with dramatic pauses and prompts and questions built in, so he could make double sure we’d been listening the last bunch of times.
The story went like this: As a young man, in the early 1960s, he was surfing the point at Makaha, where you could find some of the hairiest, gnarliest, bitchin’est waves on the island. One of our Makaha neighbors was a great big-wave surfer named Buzzy Trent. My father had seen Buzzy surf these giant, killer waves, up to twenty feet. Waves like that scared the crap out of my old man, who preferred to ride waves about half that height. That was his comfort zone. Maybe he could psych himself up to try a twelve-footer, maybe fourteen-, but twenty feet was way out of his reach.
For some reason, Buzzy kept trying to help him ride bigger and bigger waves, but something in my father kept holding him back. At the same time, there was another something that told him he had to try. Something that told him if he stayed in his comfort zone he’d become soft. So he started working on his stamina, by running the hills around our house. He worked on his wind, by skin-diving and learning to hold his breath for a minute and more. He worked on his approach, by studying the big-wave surfers and trying to mimic their technique.
Finally, one winter day, the northern swells reached to our little point and my father decided he was ready. And as he made to paddle out he realized he’d worked on his endurance, his wind, his approach, but he still hadn’t tackled his fears. In fact, the closer he came to trying to ride these monsters, the more terrified he became, and he realized this was one part of his conditioning he couldn’t control. He also realized that if he couldn’t control his fears, he could at least get to where his fears couldn’t control him. But this was no easy thing; didn’t exactly work the way he told it to. Each day, the waves would get a little bigger, and he’d grow a little more fearful. It was an impossible equation. He’d see his pals getting more and more juiced about the tides and the weather, and then he’d see these same pals getting slapped around and wonder how the hell he was going to ride that kind of surf. These guys weren’t just his friends, they were his heroes, and my father started to think that if big-wave legends like Buzzy Trent and Bud Morrissey were struggling he’d be a fool to even attempt those giant sets. He hung back, and he hated himself for hanging back, so he pushed himself to paddle out.
It was one of those one-step-forward/two-steps-back-type deals, because once my father was past the break, on the outside, he couldn’t imagine riding one of those giant waves back to shore. He’d psych himself up for it; then he’d psych himself right back down. Up close, the waves were even more terrifying than they’d been at a distance. So what did he do? Basically, he froze, but as he did he realized something about himself, something important, and it was at this point in the story that he always asked us kids if we knew what that something was. We’d always wait for him to answer his own question. He’d say, “I am who I am. I don’t have anything to prove.”
And so he never surfed those twenty-foot waves. Not then, not later. Not if he could avoid them. The lesson, for him, was to take your own measure. To know the differenc
e between being soft and being reasonable. To know your own limits.
Only I never thought this was a lesson he wanted for his sons, because the story came with a punch line—and the punch line came, he said, from an old World War II movie, where an officer finds a lowly paratrooper shivering in fear before attempting a jump. The officer can’t understand why this young man keeps jumping, since by this point he has completed a great many practice jumps and still appears to be paralyzed by fear.
“Why do you keep jumping if you’re so scared?” the officer asks the paratrooper.
“Because, sir,” the paratrooper replies. “I love to be around men who aren’t scared.”
That young paratrooper was like my father, who loved to be around men who weren’t scared. Men like Buzzy Trent and Bud Morrissey and all the other great big-wave surfers of the day—the fearless giants of the sport who went looking to surf the giant waves, typically twenty feet and taller. That’s why he pushed himself past those killer sets, to at least think about attempting to surf a giant well, to soak in the fearlessness of his friends. It’s not like he was out of his element, my old man, or in over his head as a surfer. No way. He could keep up with a lot of these guys, when the waves were in reach, but when things got a little hairy he pulled back. He drew off their fearlessness, but only to a point. And looking back, I can’t shake thinking my father was raising us to be like those balls-to-the-wall surfers in Makaha Bay. It’s like he was breeding this band of tiny surf warriors. Like we could somehow stand in for him when it came time to surf those giants. Like we could become those men without fear.
Scratching the Horizon Page 5
