When I think about getting older, soon I start to think about being younger. The beautiful women, perfect waves, good times, good friends, some good golf shots, my favorite dogs, and my children, as they have grown from infants to young men,  are episodes in my life that show me just where I am now.

This is a story about a bit of that.

CHAPTER ONE -MY WORLD

A beautiful Gold rooster ran across the front lawn of my Hawaiian plantation home, situated on Oahu’s North Shore.

A fresh coat of white paint for the house and shingles for the roof were needed.  Mickey, my German Shepherd had just nudged the rooster from his food dish on the front porch. Mickey saved some of his hamburger and Pedigree dry food every night so, the next day, he could play this game with his chickens. Right now he had three roosters and twelve hens to play with, and guard his food from.  He really felt good about letting his chickens have some once in a while, lying next to the bowl with a very benevolent, fatherly expression.

On the Southern fence line, passing cows and their calves walked the bridal path between the house and the Auuka Marsh.  With his chickens and coconuts,  Mickey’s yard was his domain, ever since I brought him home at six weeks old. 

Across Kamehameha Highway lay Puena Point, where there were secluded beaches and surf spots SB called his own.  World class waves, depending on the swell size and direction, were everywhere. North East swells were best  at Laniakea, Laniakea is easily one of the best right slides in the world, holding anything from 2-20 feet.  It is just a phenomenal wave which really starts to show it’s true character at eight feet.

A Hawaiian measure for a wave that is perhaps 20 actual feet from the bottom to the top is called 12 feet. 

A significant number of the crowd become absent at this size because of the serious nature of the seascape. Definitely  threatening. Without a doubt

. Although “goofey foot,” his stance putting his back to the wave, Laniakea was a favorite of SB’s, when the swell was Northern. If the swell was from the West, “Jocko’s”on the Waimea side of the point was the spot. A place where I put in as much time as anybody alive. I think Greg Noll and Bing Kopelin were the first to surf it in 1958. Me and the famous World Champion Jimmy Blears, had surfed it for years. A lot of  times just the two of us, and with others, before leashes were invented. Then, Jimmy and Mark Sedlak were among the first to get leashes. Jimmy showed SB how to make them. They were made out of nylon rope and surgical tubing. Now, they are a nylon composite. The leash connected the board to the surfer, saved an immense amount of swimming, and board wear and tear, and lives. But they also kept “kooks” in the line up you’d rather not be there, who were always getting caught inside. They were inevitably right in front of you with eyes popping out of their heads in panic, when you were trying to take off. Without leashes, they would have lost their board and made to swim, and become part of the reef or something. Now they had their lifelines.

It was funny to see this generation break a leash, because they had never had to swim in before. They didn’t know where to swim to, and didn’t have their cord to attach them as their buoy. But still, a wonder nobody had thought of leashes before about 1976? That was 34years ago.

The Legendary Jock Sutherland

“Jocko‘s" ,  was the surf spot  Chun’s Reef side of Laniakea, named after Jock Sutherland.

Jock surfed all four ways. “Regular foot” facing a right slide, or “backside” going left. “Goofey foot” facing a left slide, or “backside” sliding right. And switching stance in dangerous parts of the wave with ease. No one, to my knowledge, can do that to the degree of consummate proficiency that Jock can, still. Jock won  “The Duke Contest” when he was 17, I think. The most prestigious event in surfing at that time. 

I called Jock, “The Clock.” His timing on waves was absolutely uncanny. He could paddle faster than almost anybody in the water. Always in the right place. He always saw the “sets” (waves) coming and almost never got caught inside, still. “Didn’t you see that set? “Lawrence!” As I paddled back into the lineup sputtering, after being caught inside and dragged almost all the way to the rocks.

Sometimes he called me, Lawrence, because that was my first name, and because Jock, ....... was Jock. Formal at times and he spoke the Queen’s English.

If you had ever met “Audrey”, Jock’s Mom, you would know why Jock was the “scrabble” champ, and was well spoken. Audrey is the author of “Paddle Your Own Canoe,” and other books. She is a real Naturalist.

SB said to her once ,“You’re a Naturalist, ” as she handed him a peanut butter and papaya smoothie. 
“Of course,” Audrey said.
She has paddled her canoe, at ages I won’t mention, (she’s a lady), every summer along the Alaskan coastline, by herself for fun, and just to be by herself, until it was too cold. So, ... all summer. She travels with her meals dehydrated and already prepared for each successive day.
“Just add hot water.”
Pretty elaborate meals considering. Things like beef stroganoff. She personally dries everything, all her grains and fruits for the trips. She even had grass hopper pie for desert in one meal.
“You just like to be by yourself?”
“Sure,” she said.

Audrey told me about a trip she was on, and about a bear she had met. She said, “I was camped the evening before this incident, to one side of a path, so as not to hinder any passage of wildlife that normally would pass by. I know bears can sense that I am female and without cubs. So I pose no threat to them. I am alone with no interest in their territories. This young bear came into my camp area in the morning. The thought I got from him was, “I saw you last night, and I checked you out, there’s no problem, I just stopped by to introduce myself.”
By sauntering into my camp and rolling over on his back and waving his legs in the air, just sort of playing around, he did . I think he weighed about 600 pounds. He’d never seen a human before. He was a wilderness bear. None of the wildlife where I go, have seen people.  Then he went down to the creek and showed me how he caught salmon. Some, he caught with his paws, but mostly, he grabbed them with his teeth, with his mouth. He’d just take a big bite out of the middle of one and toss it aside and catch another. The Bald Eagles, and all the other varmits would get the rest. He was a young male operating on his own.

“How big were his claws?” I asked.
“About this long , holding her hands apart, “about six inches.” “Whoa!” I said unknowing.
 Part of the fabric of Jock.

Over the years Jock had been a friend of mine. There had been years of water under the bridge, each doing their own thing. Almost from the time Jock got back from the Army, I had watched him in the water, and learned.
They had both been married, divorced

Jock had given me work on the roof, when I needed the money.  Jock was a professional roofer and a perfectionist. Jock took care of people. He was fair, tough, did not swear, except at me on the roof, and was toughest on those he liked the most. So perhaps on his own sons, Mattie and Gavin. He didn’t smile, just for the sake of it, not too much. But in 8-12 foot Laniakea, he smiled a lot!

Jocko’s is right in front of Jock’s Mom’s house.
Years ago, Jock and I were standing in front of this perfect left slide that Jock had grown up surfing.

Jock had asked me, “What do they call this place?”
“Jocko’s, when you’re not around,” I replied. 

Jockos was a hollow left that held 8 feet with some Sunset Beach characteristics. The way a set could come in and shift, moving the “lineup” sometimes fifty yards. At times, the point break held larger, until the Waialua Sugar Company irrigation ponds up in the cane fields had broken during a torrential week of rain. Now there was, I estimated, one million cubic tons of red Hawaiian clay over the reef out in between Jocko’s and Chun’s reef. Both spots had been affected. Even thirty foot swells and larger had not budged the clay. This had happened long enough ago, so that I did not know too many who were still surfing, that actually knew what the spots used to be like. Chun’s Reef had been way longer and much hollower. Both spots had been shortened and didn’t hold as much size,  but especially Jocko’s. How good was Jocko’s ? Wayne Lynch had said to me, it was his favorite left he had ever surfed. Who’s Wayne Lynch? Kind of like the “Jock of Australia.”

On the Haleiwa side of Waimea, these were “the spots,” for me.  I didn’t go up to Pipeline anymore.  Sunset Beach and he had never gotten along. Mainly just too crowded, but he loved “Backyards” next to Sunset Point toward Velzyland. 
But Sunset was a wave,  if you got a good one, before it got you, the mere experience would last you a week! And Pipe? They had gotten along, but I took chances, the adrenaline kicking in, and I thought I could do things that sometimes I could, but other times,..... I couldn’t. Let me put it to you this way, “Have you ever wiped out at Pipeline? You don’t want to. If you do, which you will, it is not something you can keep on doing for an indefinite period. Like the quarterback Steve Young, just how much do you think you can take? I guarantee you, the boys in the NFL would not be “having a time“ while in the clutches of  “Pipe.” A surfer or football player or whoever, everyone who is not already dead, eventually figures out they have been in something resembling a major car accident after “wiping out” at Pipeline. Sometimes complete with no face, stuff like that. And, O yeah, I have to describe to you, the sound in the tube at Pipeline. You should understand you are in a circle, if you make the drop.  The circle is throwing WAY over and collapsing, so that a giant amount of air is compressed and trapped into this cylinder. The effect is like a magnificent cannon shot of air, “spit”, that comes out of the tube,  sometimes taking the board and the surfer out at the same time. The sound of the trapped air in this tunnel is like a train shooting down the track. It’s really loud, like Niagra Falls. It’s the air, not the water. Except there is water exlpoding far below you,  at the bottom of the tunnel, big, and say this as you breathe in, hard. 
“WHO EE WW.... .” I can make the sound, I can immitate it. I have been explaining what it sounds like for years. Spelling it is tough. That’s what it sounds like. I call Pipeline “The Astrodome.” If you were paddling out at Pipeline, you would call it... hell, or ..... The Astrodome!

At about 12-15 feet I had found my limit, even in his best years and shape.
At that point I left the “big waves” to Eddie Aikau and the numerous “Daniel Boones” of the era.

I knew Eddie a little. I had been at the Lolly Brothers birthday party at the “A” frame at Jockos when Eddie had come to pay Mike and Jim Lolly tribute. Nat Young had spoken about these Caucasian identical twins and the speed of the Lolly brothers, about that time.

Anyway, Eddie sat down with the guys against the wall and played his ukulele

.
I always remember Eddie on a particular glassy fifteen foot day at Laniakea. Absolutely no wind. (I called these conditions church.)  Taking off on this massive point bowl, with a three hundred yard wall, no exaggeration.  He got off a top turn, almost a kick stall and looked up at the ceiling of the wave already curling over.  He took the drop with something like the “Hoover Dam” exploding some 25 feet below him. He was already “locked in at the point of the top turn, it was that big.

Eddie was already in the tube. Not a care in the world, a power surfer with a distinct Hawaiian style. Anyone who had seen Eddie Aikau in the water remembers his stance. SI described that wave to lots who visited  my surf shop.

“There are guys who surf and have surfed 25 foot waves and have never been photographed and don’t care to be. They live and work and raise their children on Oahu’s North Shore.” Never leave out “the men who have surfed” I thought. Because nobody surfs forever, and what they have done, is worthy of respect for a lifetime, from the few who know. They have ridden waves that would make any man cry. We are not talking about fear here. Fear keeps you alive. We are talking about how long you can hold your breath. We are talking about death. Because it’s that big, so big, you can’t believe it.

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