Anyway, that was my take. My brothers might have seen it another way. And my father, he’d wonder what the hell I was talking about. But why else would my old man make us march around our house each morning to the blare of Chairman Mao’s wake-up call? This went on for a long stretch. My father had this scratchy old record he’d play at full volume, and he had us march to Chinese military music and do calisthenics and all these bizarre drills. And he had us do them in all seriousness. He’d line us up and put us through our paces, while the music blared on and on. It almost had a Captain America, cartoony feel to it; I’d hear the horns of Chairman Mao’s march and think we were in a cartoon all our own. But we couldn’t smile or goof around or not take it seriously because then we’d have to go at it again.
He was big into rituals, my father. They framed our days. They made us stronger, he always said. He’d start each day with his morning prayers, and when we were old enough we’d join him. When he sang the Shema blessing on Friday nights he’d have us stand and sing along, like we were saying the Pledge of Allegiance at school. He’d say the evening prayers at the end of the day, too.
At night, we’d have to be home by sundown. That was our dinner bell. Even when we were living in the camper, spending all our time on the beach and in the cliffs along the coast, we’d know that when the sun started sinking low and dipping past the horizon we’d better hustle on home. We’d eat as a family, and every night my father would ask us what we did that day, what we learned, what we enjoyed. He’d start with the oldest and work his way down, and I was filled with dread as David, Jonathan, and then Abraham took their turns. Either I’d have no idea what I was going to say or I worried I wouldn’t be able to find the words or that one of my brothers would steal what I was going to say, because of course a lot of what happened to me each day happened to my older brothers as well. It was a whole lot of worry, every night, so I usually ended up stammering and never quite making my point or even uttering a full sentence.
My brothers used to tease me and for a while my nickname was Wha Wha Wha, because that was the sound I made when I was fumbling. I don’t think the nickname bothered me; I just heard it like an inside joke. But it fit: I stuttered as a kid. I shrank from any kind of public speaking, so most of my contributions to my father’s evening ritual started out with, “Wha Wha Wha.” When I finally spit out something intelligible—it could have been something I learned about surfing, or about people, or about how maybe the mussels we’d used for bait that day when we were out fishing weren’t as good as when we’d used the live baby crab—I’d hang back and wait for my father’s approval. If I managed to say something smart or insightful or helpful to the other brothers, he’d reward me with a big smile or a clap of his hands or a pat on the head. That’d be like getting an A. If I could only shrug and mumble, “Wha Wha Wha,” he’d leave me to sit and fidget for a minute or so before moving on to Moses. That’d be like getting an F.
Soon, even our diets were regimented. My mother used to feed us this dreadful morning gruel for breakfast, made from millet, raw wheat, corn, and who knows what the hell else. We were always told it was made with seven different grains, but I don’t think there’s a single one of us (my mother included!) who could name them. The stuff would congeal the moment my mother dished it out. If you were hungry, it tasted okay; if you weren’t hungry, it was awful. We were sometimes allowed to sweeten it with a bit of honey and a pinch of raisins, which didn’t help it go down that much easier.
They used to feed us this super-ultraorganic healthy bread, from a local bakery. It was kind of nasty, actually. They’d cut us these big, thick slices and stand over us to make sure we ate them. Sometimes, my mother would bake her own bread—and I hate to say it, but it was also nasty. It’s not that my mom couldn’t bake; it’s that she couldn’t put anything good into whatever she was baking.
Throughout the day, whatever we ate was carefully monitored. We couldn’t eat anything that had been processed or refined or manufactured in any way. We couldn’t have any butter. We couldn’t have any sugar—not even brown sugar. And our portions seemed to get smaller and smaller as we got bigger and bigger.
Our portions shrank because my father believed we should be thin and lean. (In later years, when there were more and more of us, and less and less work for my father, portions were small for an entirely different reason, but by then we were used to it.) We never complained about the small portions, because there was only so much of this stuff we could take, but after a while the big bellies the oldest four or five of us had carried as little kids began to melt away. After a while my parents had us looking like the leanest, fittest, healthiest kids on the beach—which we were, I guess.
Telling it now, a lot of their ideas on diet and fitness leaned a little on the wrong side of crazy, but my brothers and I were so full of energy and confidence … it had to have at least something to do with the way we were being raised. We were strong, fearless, healthy beyond measure—and by the time the oldest of us were teenagers, we started to feel invincible.
In some way, our energy and confidence spilled over into how we surfed, just as how we surfed spilled back over into how we lived. It was all tied together. Like I wrote earlier, we mostly learned to surf by hanging around and watching other surfers. By thinking about surfing, all day long, and soaking in the mood and movements of others. Even when I was way little, I understood the cycle of the waves. I got that they came in sets and that in between the sets there’d be lulls and gaps and that this was when you were supposed to paddle out. Nobody had to explain this to me; you watch something for so long, you figure it out. By the time I was six or seven and starting to ride myself, I’d seen so many people surf I could identify them from a couple hundred yards away. I could tell by their stance, their style, their foot placement. How they held their hands. And by the paddle, too. They might have one foot in the air, or they might paddle with two hands at once, like my father. So I watched all these surfers, all these waves, over and over and over, and eventually I carried a picture of myself in my head, of the way I wanted to surf. It’s like I was holding a mirror to the scene on the beach and finding myself in the reflection.
My father had some particular ideas about surfing, and he passed these on to us as well. Not so much in terms of style or approach, but more in terms of philosophy. As kids, we were taught not to waste anything. This applied to the food we ate, the clothes we wore … all the way down to the waves we chose to ride. A lot of times, you’ll see surfers hanging on the outside, sitting on their boards, waiting and waiting on the perfect wave, but that wasn’t the Paskowitz way. My father’s idea was to catch every wave you can, and to ride it all the way in, as far as you can. It was the same as telling me not just to eat the center of the watermelon but to eat the whole thing, right down to the rind. He’d say, “Ride that wave as long as you can, Israel. If you ride it in longer, you’ll be a better surfer than the other guy. He’ll just ride in the sweet spot and then kick out at first chance. He’ll be done, and you’ll still be surfing.”
This made sense to me, as a kid. Still does. To this day, when I’m out surfing for a couple hours I’ll grab every wave that comes my way. It’s different when you’re competing, when you’ve got a certain amount of time to do your thing for the judges. When you’re competing, you have to pick your spots, but when you’re just playing, you have to surf. A lot of folks don’t get this. Serious, kick-ass surfers—some of them just don’t get this. They’ll see me point for a nothing-special wave, and they’ll call out to me. They’ll say, “Hey, Izzy, there’s a much bigger set coming.”
But in my head I’m gone. In my head I know there’s no such thing as a better wave than the one I’m on.
3
Israel to Israel
Our adventures in the Pacific were interrupted by a couple trips to Israel, although I guess “interrupted” is probably not the best word in this case. Doesn’t do these trips justice. Probably better to just say it straight: my par
ents found a cheap way to reimagine our days and expose us to another part of the world, so they jumped on it.
Twice.
The first of these trips came just after the Six-Day War, in 1967. We were still living in a house back then, so pulling up stakes and traveling overseas represented a major change in our day-to-day. The plan was for us to stay on an ulpan, which was a little bit like a kibbutz, only we wouldn’t work or farm or live in any kind of communal way. It was more like an intense school, so us kids could learn Hebrew and study our Jewish heritage. (Wasn’t much chance of that happening—the studying part—but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.)
The ulpan was located in a small village just north of Tel Aviv and was run by the Israeli government, which explains why my father moved us there—because he wouldn’t have to pay for anything. Oh, he took it seriously, but the emphasis was on the taking. The idea behind these ulpans was to help immigrants assimilate after the state of Israel was founded in 1948. I don’t think my parents ever planned to make aliyah and move us to Israel permanently; we were more like long-term tourists or guests who overstay their welcome. Clearly, the program didn’t apply to us Paskowitzes, but that didn’t stop us Paskowitzes from applying to the program. There were so many Jews from all over the world who wanted to move to their new homeland that the government had to put these ulpans in place to help with the transition. Even observant Jews didn’t know the language, the traditions. My father was a big supporter of Israel, and I believe he really and truly and passionately expected to single-handedly repopulate the Jewish population with his (mostly) biblically named sons, but he wasn’t above getting a free ride, or taking full advantage of a government subsidy. So he quit his job in Hawaii and made plans to ship the whole bunch of us to the Middle East, together with a couple surfboards and a puke-yellow Dodge Caravan with one of those camper pop-tops.
My father made us all kiss the tarmac when we got off the plane—as much for show as to demonstrate that this was a holy place. It was pretty embarrassing; that’s how it registered at the time. At four or five, I didn’t know what Israel was or what it meant. All I knew was that we had the same name and I had to kiss the ground when we got there.
My father remembers that we didn’t stay very long on this first trip, and that we were probably the first Jewish family in the history of Israel to be asked to leave the country. I think he might be exaggerating on this one, but it’s possible we were the first family to get kicked out of this one ulpan. Not only were we asked to leave, he says, but the Israeli government paid for our airline tickets home—another first, probably. The whole trip was essentially a struggle, from start to finish. My older brothers kept getting into all kinds of trouble; I joined them in some of that trouble, although I was still a little young for some of the bigger-kid, starting-fires-in-Porta-Potties-type messes they made. Jonathan was our chief troublemaker; he commandeered a tank and came home with a live grenade he found in the hills with Abraham one afternoon. But the biggest problem was we couldn’t sit still in our classes, which my parents could have predicted the first time they saw the words “intense” and “school” used in the same sentence.
There’s a story that goes with my brothers finding that live grenade. Actually, there are two. The first one started innocently enough. I was wandering the hills with my brothers and came across a fence with a skull-and-crossbones sign, with Hebrew lettering. I couldn’t read Hebrew, but I knew what the skull and crossbones meant. My brothers, too. To us it meant, “Hey, let’s see what’s on the other side of this fence.” So we snuck under the fence and started looking around. There was a lot of neat stuff in there. Some abandoned, bombed-out buildings. Exploded grenade fragments and casings. We stuffed our pockets with our most interesting finds. I just had a bunch of shells, but Jonathan grabbed something that looked like a tin plate with some wiring coming out of it.
To us it just looked like a bunch of bitchin’ stuff—way cool. So we started heading home with it, back to the ulpan, and I guess someone must have seen us eyeballing our prizes as we walked, because all of a sudden there were sirens going off and all these military types forcing us to empty our pockets. There were even a couple bomb squad guys sent to dismantle Jonathan’s cool tin plate, which turned out to be a live grenade, set out like a land mine.
Oh, man, was my father pissed! We got spanked hard that night—really hard. Mostly, I think he was pissed because we embarrassed him in our adopted homeland. It wasn’t the trouble we made so much as where we made it. He hated that his boys had made him look bad in the eyes of his Israeli fellows, so he lit into us pretty good.
Didn’t exactly teach us a lesson, except that it probably wasn’t a smart idea to piss him off.
The second live ammo story came around almost forty years later—at the Camp Pendleton base in San Clemente. I was a rookie member of a local riding group called the Tortugas. My wife, Danielle, and I were living at our ranch in the hills of San Juan Capistrano, where we’d moved so she could tend and ride her horses, and I’d taken to riding as well. I’d dragged Danielle to the beach for so many years and she’d been such a great good sport about it, I figured it was the least I could do to embrace her passion, same way she’d made a go at mine, and after I’d been riding awhile I fell in with this great group of local riders—my Tortuga brothers.
There are over a hundred of us, and we dress ourselves out like serious cowboys and head for the hills on long treks. But we do it in style. We’re trailed by a gorgeous RV that serves as a kind of deluxe chuck wagon, dishing out great food and a bottomless supply of beer and cocktails. Every hour, we stop for beer breaks—because, hey, it’s pretty gosh darn grueling out there on the open trail.
I was riding my horse True—a dark bay gelding who was always true to his name. He was True. Always took good care of me, even when I had no idea what the hell I was doing, like on this one ride through Camp Pendleton. I was a decent-enough trail rider by this point, but to my Tortuga brothers I was still something of an oddball. They were a bunch of ex-marines and retired executives, so they didn’t know what to make of my long hair and tattoos. But I fit myself in, eventually. I wore them down. Didn’t help, though, that I pulled up on this one ride in a beautiful stand of trees, on our way to our second or third beer stop of the day. We rode in a kind of string that stretched to almost a mile, but True and I got kind of sidetracked by a sweet little stream, so I pulled off the trail and had a look around. I was drawn to a shiny object that had kind of nosed itself into the ground. Kind of brassy in color. So I reached for it and saw that it was a giant bullet. A giant, heavy bullet. Thought it would look pretty cool in my house. So I dug it out of the earth with my trusty bowie knife. Felt like it weighed about eighty pounds, but I slung it on my shoulder and started walking back with True towards the group.
Well, I must have looked like a damn fool, trudging towards the gang with my boots, my spurs, my weekend cowboy gear. We really dress the part on these long trek rides, and there I was, humping down the hill with this big ole bullet on my shoulder.
When I reached camp, I leaned away from the weight on my shoulder as if I was about to drop the bullet to the ground at our feet, but just as I made to do so one of the guys screamed. He said, “What the fuck is that?” And it wasn’t just a straight-out question; it was filled with alarm and panic and disbelief.
I froze, afraid to move.
Then another one of my Tortuga brothers came up alongside me to inspect my find and said, “You dumb motherfucker.”
There was a whole bunch of mayhem and confusion at this point. And general disgust, towards me, because apparently I’d unearthed a live 105 howitzer round. The ex-marines in our group knew what it was immediately, knew how much damage that thing would have done if it went off. Probably, it would have blown us all to bits—and wasted all that good food and drink. And here I’d been pounding on it with my knife to get it out of the ground, and slugging it back to camp, and treating it like a harmless pi
ece of discarded ammo.
My guys cussed me out pretty good. Took a long, long while for me to recover whatever credibility I’d built up to that point. Took longer still for them to forgive and forget, which is about what happened back on the ulpan when we were kids, when we brought home that live grenade.
Must be something about us Paskowitz boys and shiny artillery.
* * *
Back to Israel.
Wasn’t exactly Club Med, where we were, but I think my father thought of it as a kind of vacation. A loophole. A way in. He’d slip us through the cracks of the system, and we could live and eat at relatively little expense, and get a good cultural education besides—only it didn’t take long for the folks running the ulpan to figure we might be getting the better end of it. My poor mother would go out every day to a little market that was set up in the middle of the compound and collect whatever food she thought we needed. That’s how it worked; you’d receive according to need, so she’d stand in line behind one woman who’d ask for one pear. Then there’d be another woman, who maybe asked for two pears. Then when it was my mother’s turn, she’d ask for nine pears, because there were only seven of us kids at that point. (My next-to-youngest brother, Salvador, had just been born, so even though he was a long way from eating solid food my math might be a little off.) Whatever these other good people needed, to put together a subsistence-type meal, we’d have to multiply by nine, so the folks in charge started to see it cost a small fortune just to feed us.
Basically, we were a huge pain in the tuchus.
We went back a couple years later—this time just after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. This time I had a better idea what it meant, what we were in for. This time, we had Navah and Joshua in tow, so there were eleven of us, and we were probably an even bigger pain in the butt. That first trip we’d stayed just a couple months, but on this second pass we stayed a little longer—about six months. We lived on the beach, just south of Tel Aviv, and when my father wasn’t working in a local clinic or lifeguarding or helping out on a kibbutz we’d pile into the van and tour the desert, the countryside, the cities. He wanted us to experience some of what he’d experienced on his first trip to Israel as a young man; most of us were old enough at this point to understand his deep and profound connection to the place and to its people—and, he was hoping, to feel some of that connection for ourselves.
Scratching the Horizon Page 6
