In Honor to all Masters of Surfing :
THE TEACHINGS OF DON REDONDO (PART TWO)
A SURFER'S WAY OF KNOWLEDGE
by Careless Constipeda as told to Drew Kampion
The story so far: Student and neophyte surfer Careless Constipeda, seeking information for a college thesis on Surfing and its mind-altering effects on Surfers, becomes friends with Don Redondo, a true Waterman. Careless, who has a huge fear of the sea, is determined to follow in the footprints of Don Redondo, who agrees to teach Careless a few things about Surfing. One night, while watching a surf movie designed to put a lot of "stoke" in everyone, Careless finds himself on the beach in the middle of the night, where he is confronted by a huge dog that playfully tears at his throat. Later Don Redondo reveals to Careless that it wasn't a dog that attacked him but "El Grindo." Although Careless presses him for more information, Don Redondo remains silent. Further conversations reveal to Careless the four enemies of Surfing, and it is soon after that he asks Don Redondo to teach him to be a Waterman.
PART TWO
June 4, 1966
I arrived late in the morning. Don Redondo put something in the trunk and told me to drive to the point. Malibu was six foot and perfect with maybe 400 out. Don Redondo took a strange device from the trunk and slipped a handle-like pole into the other, vacuum-cleaner-like part.
"What are you doing, Don Redondo?" I asked him.
"I'm gonna teach you to find power," he said.
We walked down onto the beach, which was packed with people from the Valley. It was a hot day around exam time and sand space was at a premium.
Don Redondo began to move the device back and forth an inch or two above the sand as we walked slowly up and down the beach.
"What are you doing, Don Redondo?" I asked again.
He told me to shut up and that if I couldn't I'd have to go sit in the car. "Yer a pain in thrash Careless," he said and I had to agree with him. I was terrified of not knowing what was going on, and being terrified kept me from knowing what was going on, and so forth.
Don Redondo found a gold ring and $1.73 in odd change in a short time. There were also an assortment of other articles. He said they were power objects.
"How can you tell they are power objects, Don Redondo? "
"'How can you tell they are power objects, Don Redondo,'" he said, mimicking me. "Look, kid, they're power objecks becuz you kin control people with 'em. Watchere!"
He walked back to the barbed wire fence where all the heavy surfers hung out. Don Redondo selected an especially nice place, occupied, as it chanced, by a rather rough-looking biker sort.
"Take a, walk," Don Redondo said, handing him a quarter. He did the same to the kid next to him, who was smaller, except it only took a dime. I was stunned. His sheer mastery of the situation seemed so far beyond my abilities.
"Oh, Don Redondo," I whined, "how am I ever gonna become a Waterman?"
"You need an ally," he said. "With an ally any wimp can become a Waterman. Even you."
As always, his words inspired me. I watched humbly as he recounted his change.
July 25, 1966
"One of the greatest allies what a Waterman's got is yer crab. You gotta catch two crabs, Careless, and bring 'em out to d'end of d'pier. There you'll pass your next text."
Just the mention of the word "test" gave me the shakes. I crumbled to my knees. "Do I have to, Don Redondo? "
"How do you feel about crabs?" he asked.
I did not know how to answer. I was so concerned about tests that crabs had not even occurred to me.
"Okay, I guess," was all that I could summon as an answer.
"So find 'em and bring 'em down to d'end of d'pier. There you will pass yer next crab." That helped, and I went to find two crabs.
I found a couple of nice, pink Dungeness ones at Safeway, but they were $3.49 a pound and they weighed five pounds together and I only had a ten- dollar bill. I came back and told Don Redondo. His laughter made me truly angry; I almost reached over and turned off The Mod Squad, one of his favorites.
"What's so ha-ha funny, Mister Redondo?"
"Live crabs, shorty; live crabs."
I stalked off. Was he kidding? Live crabs?
It took me four days to find the crabs. They were in the biology lab at school. I paid a kid the ten dollars to bring them to Malibu for me, and then I made him carry them out to the end of the pier. Don Redondo was already waiting.
The kid dumped the crabs and left. The crabs began to squiggle across the boards. I passed out.
When I awoke Don Redondo was sitting down on the pier massaging the bellies of the crabs. They seemed to be asleep. "You gotta talk to 'em, Careless. Tell 'em you ain't gonna hoit 'em. Rub 'em a little; c'mon. I aint got all night."
I told the crabs that I was their friend, that I wasn't going to hurt them, I just happened to be passing by and noticed that they looked lonely.
"Now," said Don Redondo, "take this fella and poke out his eyes."
"You're kidding."
He held the other crab toward me in a very threatening manner. I poked out the little guy's eyes.
"Now, stuff your hankerchiff in this fella's mouf."
I stuffed my hankerchief in the other crab's mouf. He was a large crab.
"Okay, yer set. Now ya gotta figger out somethin that choo wanna know, then send off the one with the stuffed mouf to find it out. The hankerchiff will keep 'em from blabbin to someone else on the way back. When he comes back he'll tell the other guy. He won't be able t' see yer not a crab and so'll tell ya everything ya wanna know."
I formed a mental picture of a time long ago when I had first come to the ocean. I was eight. I had this terrificMickey Mouse Club wind-up radio that played the Mickey Mouse Club song. It disappeared that day and I never saw it again. I'd often wondered who'd taken it, and I asked the crab with the stuffed throat to find out. To do this I had to hold him, so I made my question brief and to-the-point and set him down. He tore off down the pier.
"Fast crab," I said to Don Redondo.
Within ten minutes I saw him scurrying backwards out the pier again. He pulled up short beside the other crab. I snatched out the handkerchief and observed how they began to feel over each other with their antennae. They seemed to be communicating, but Don Redondo appeared impatient. He bent over and flicked one with a finger and said "Get to the point."
Then I picked up the one with no eyes and held him to my ear.
"I don't hear anything, Don Redondo."
"You won't," he said. "Just close yer eyes and watcher movie." I closed my eyes and there it was: Mommy and Daddy and Bennie, the beagle, and sister Sally. We were at the beach for the first time. I was eight, and there . . . THERE! was my Mickey Mouse Club wind-up radio! Then things became foggy, and when they cleared I saw a large man, all hunkered up with his back to me, and then I heard the Mickey Mouse Club song, played in those rubbery little notes I remembered so well. The figure then straightened, as if suspecting the presence of an observer, and slowly he turned a diabolical grin, greasy smooth eyebrows, my Mickey Mouse Club wind-up radio in his hands. It . . . was . . .
"Don Redondo!!!" I screamed. "Ouch and oh-my-gosh! " I screamed.
The crab had a hold of my ear, paying me back for his popped-out little bug eyes. Don Redondo laughed uproariously. His greased eyebrows flashed in the sun. In pain and panic I leaped off the pier.
September 8, 1966
Three weeks ago Don Redondo had prepared a mixture of various substances which, he promised, would give me increased personal power. The mixture had been "brewing" in a chrome construction helmet under his patio. It was one of the "power objects" that he had detected beneath the sands of Hermosa Beach on a previous expedition. Yesterday he brought out the helmet and set it on the picnic table. I moved to my "spot" as was my practice and jumped up onto the grate. There was an immediate sensation of "juice" and well-being followed shortly by an even greater sensation of intense pain. I'd forgotten that Don Redondo was about to barbeque.
"Keep t'hell outta my barbaque, wouldja, cornflake!?"
I apologized as I doused my seat with lemonade. My new ivy league trousers were scorched.
"Take it as a sign," said Don Redondo.
"A sign of what?"
Don Redondo smiled strangely. "Okay, Flakey," he said, ~drop yer pants."
"Hey, wait a minute, Don Redondo, I . . . "
"Well, just roll them up then. I need atcher knees."
I rolled up my trouser legs. The idea that Don Redondo had actually asked me to remove them frightened me. What did he think I was?
With a popsicle stick (Evidently grape by the color) he began to plaster the area beneath each knee with a sticky black substance.
"What is it, Don Redondo?"
"oh, it's gotcher ground sand crabs and yer fiberglass shavings and yer neapreem cement and yer kelp juice and some of Rosa's hotsauce."
"What will happen, Don Redondo?"
"You will 'Surf', Careless."
After he finished with the areas under my knees, he applied large gobs to the tops of my feet between the base of the shins and the toes.
My first sensation was one of intense burning, yet quite a different burning that that with which my "seat" still throbbed. Next a terrific pulsation of energy began in my feet and knees, surging up my legs and into the rest of my body. For a moment my vision became distorted. I almost saw something diabolical in Don Redondo. Then it went away. Everything became drowned out in an incredible humming sound. HMMMMMMMMMM went everything, and then the same thing happened to my eyesight, everything looked HMMMMMMMMMM. I wanted to ask Don Redondo what it all meant, but he was just another HMMMMMMMMMM mixed up with all the other HMMMMMMMMMM, so it was impossible to use him as my advisor, though right then I remembered something he had said once before: "When in doubt, shorty, call on yer ally." Which was fine, except that I didn't know who my ally could possibly be.
Meanwhile I was walking out over the ocean as if I was walking down your typical city street. I walked on out to the line-up and a voice said: "Your feet are growing long; they are stretching out in front of you and behind you; they are growing together; your heels are growing a fin; your ivy league trousers are baggies; the rest of you is well-tanned skin; you are a hot, young junior from Waikiki." And I was!
It was ten foot and glassy and my feet were my board and they were well- shaped with just enough kick in the nose, a step-deck, egg-rails, and a Greenough Stage IV fin, so I ripped ! And in the middle of my ripping there was this short little guy who surfed along with me; he said he was my ally. Call me anytime you want to Surf, he said. His name was Murphy, and after that all he said was "OXOMOXO" which made perfect sense to me at the time. Better than anything I've heard since.
September 9, 1966
"How did I do, Don Redondo?"
"You did as well as can be spected," he said, sipping a Buckhorn and looking off the patio at the smog between us and Catalina Island. "You Surfed, Careless. You Surfed."
"Did I ready Surf, Don Redondo?
"Hey! You bet you did, shorty. You rippo'd."
"I mean, did my body actually walk out over the water and my feet become a surfboard and was Murphy actually there with me and is he my ally?"
"Look, kid, you just can't pinner down like that. Ya Soifed and that's what. What's yer bod got t'do wid it?"
"What do you mean 'What's your bod got to do wid it? ' My bod's got everything to do with it, Don Redondo!"
"Seal poop!" exclaimed Don Redondo. "You surfed."
"You're putting me on?"
Don Redondo shook his head rather mournfully and walked to the bag of briquets. Automatically I slid out of my power spot.
"Did I really, Don Redondo? "
"Chuck steak," he replied.
October 12, 1966
My last meeting with Don Redondo occurred on September 25th. My field notes, scrawled in a jittery hand only a few hours after the experiences of that day, give a clear account of those soul-wrenching hours.
Huge, well-formed knots had developed in the places where Don Redondo had applied the mixture. In addition two weeks ago, Don Redondo had led me patiently through the Acetone Ritual, so that now my lengthening hair was a brilliant transparent shade of gray. I was ready for the Big Test.
When I arrived at Don Redondo's place, he had two huge redwood boards leaning up against the house.
"C'mon, cornflake, we're goin soifin."
"But, Don Redondo, there are no waves."
"There are waves, kid. A Waterman kin see 'em. Maybe t'day you kin see 'um too."
We took down the heavy surfboards and hauled them to the beach. It was dead flat and overcast. I almost began to argue with Don Redondo about going out, but he was already paddling away with swift, strong strokes. I followed him as best I could.
When we were a few hundred feet offshore (out further than this place would break on a forty foot day) we stopped.
"Now, shorty, I'll line ya up. Sight on yer telegiraff pole there and set it up b'tween the pollum tree and the pink truck. Gotit?"
"Sure, Don Redondo, but what happens if the truck moves? "
"That truck don't never move. It's bolted to the road. At's m yline-up truck, kid."
He then proceeded to tell me that this was my spot and I was safe as long as I stayed on it. Move and I might be squashed.
"No matter what, stay where you am and you'll be alright, y'hear me cornflake?"
I agreed to stay there, and then Don Redondo said he was going in for a beer and that I'd be alright if I stayed precisely on that one spot. But if I moved . . .
I watched him paddle in, lay down the board, and walk up to his bungalow and go in. I sat there and popped kelp bulbs and waited. And then it began!
I felt a movement. I looked up. A huge wave was nearly on me, soundless and black and feathering grotesquely at the top. It must've been eighty feet big. I thought I must be hallucinating or asleep or both. I scrambled off my board and clawed for the bottom. But there was nothing. I came up. It was flat. I crawled onto the board, panting and perspiring, though it was cool and the water was even fairly cold. And then it happened again: the movement, the monster black wall, only this time there was Don Redondo sliding down the face and coming right at me.
"Don Redondo!" I hollered, but he continued right for me. I dove off just in time, sinking into the black water with the vivid impression of his evil grin stamped into my mind, his greased eyebrows, his thick neck, his dirty gray sweatshirt which he wore even in the water.
Again and again this happened. I nearly panicked and left my spot many times, but somehow I was more afraid to do that. Finally, with Don Redondo bearing down on me once again, the huge, towering black wall threatening my total annihilation, I hollered out "One more time y'old fart, and no more groceries!"
Suddenly all was calm.
With my last vestiges of strength I paddled into the shore. I found Don Redondo asleep in front of the TV. Star Trek was on. I took a sip of warm Buckhorn and slipped out the door again. I got in my car and drove off, and I have not seen Don Redondo since. Our only communication is through grocery lists. He writes down what he needs; I do what I can. He drinks a large amount of beer and consumes an enormous quantity of beef. Such is the Way of a Waterman. A Way with Guts.
As for me, Remedial English pushes me to the limits. And then I have two part-time jobs to keep Don Redondo in briquets. I am not too interested in learning about Surfers and Surfing any more. I'm afraid I have succumbed to the first eminemny.
June 4, 1966
I arrived late in the morning. Don Redondo put something in the trunk and told me to drive to the point. Malibu was six foot and perfect with maybe 400 out. Don Redondo took a strange device from the trunk and slipped a handle-like pole into the other, vacuum-cleaner-like part.
"What are you doing, Don Redondo?" I asked him.
"I'm gonna teach you to find power," he said.
We walked down onto the beach, which was packed with people from the Valley. It was a hot day around exam time and sand space was at a premium.
Don Redondo began to move the device back and forth an inch or two above the sand as we walked slowly up and down the beach.
"What are you doing, Don Redondo?" I asked again.
He told me to shut up and that if I couldn't I'd have to go sit in the car. "Yer a pain in thrash Careless," he said and I had to agree with him. I was terrified of not knowing what was going on, and being terrified kept me from knowing what was going on, and so forth.
Don Redondo found a gold ring and $1.73 in odd change in a short time. There were also an assortment of other articles. He said they were power objects.
"How can you tell they are power objects, Don Redondo? "
"'How can you tell they are power objects, Don Redondo,'" he said, mimicking me. "Look, kid, they're power objecks becuz you kin control people with 'em. Watchere!"
He walked back to the barbed wire fence where all the heavy surfers hung out. Don Redondo selected an especially nice place, occupied, as it chanced, by a rather rough-looking biker sort.
"Take a, walk," Don Redondo said, handing him a quarter. He did the same to the kid next to him, who was smaller, except it only took a dime. I was stunned. His sheer mastery of the situation seemed so far beyond my abilities.
"Oh, Don Redondo," I whined, "how am I ever gonna become a Waterman?"
"You need an ally," he said. "With an ally any wimp can become a Waterman. Even you."
As always, his words inspired me. I watched humbly as he recounted his change.
July 25, 1966
"One of the greatest allies what a Waterman's got is yer crab. You gotta catch two crabs, Careless, and bring 'em out to d'end of d'pier. There you'll pass your next text."
Just the mention of the word "test" gave me the shakes. I crumbled to my knees. "Do I have to, Don Redondo? "
"How do you feel about crabs?" he asked.
I did not know how to answer. I was so concerned about tests that crabs had not even occurred to me.
"Okay, I guess," was all that I could summon as an answer.
"So find 'em and bring 'em down to d'end of d'pier. There you will pass yer next crab." That helped, and I went to find two crabs.
I found a couple of nice, pink Dungeness ones at Safeway, but they were $3.49 a pound and they weighed five pounds together and I only had a ten- dollar bill. I came back and told Don Redondo. His laughter made me truly angry; I almost reached over and turned off The Mod Squad, one of his favorites.
"What's so ha-ha funny, Mister Redondo?"
"Live crabs, shorty; live crabs."
I stalked off. Was he kidding? Live crabs?
It took me four days to find the crabs. They were in the biology lab at school. I paid a kid the ten dollars to bring them to Malibu for me, and then I made him carry them out to the end of the pier. Don Redondo was already waiting.
The kid dumped the crabs and left. The crabs began to squiggle across the boards. I passed out.
When I awoke Don Redondo was sitting down on the pier massaging the bellies of the crabs. They seemed to be asleep. "You gotta talk to 'em, Careless. Tell 'em you ain't gonna hoit 'em. Rub 'em a little; c'mon. I aint got all night."
I told the crabs that I was their friend, that I wasn't going to hurt them, I just happened to be passing by and noticed that they looked lonely.
"Now," said Don Redondo, "take this fella and poke out his eyes."
"You're kidding."
He held the other crab toward me in a very threatening manner. I poked out the little guy's eyes.
"Now, stuff your hankerchiff in this fella's mouf."
I stuffed my hankerchief in the other crab's mouf. He was a large crab.
"Okay, yer set. Now ya gotta figger out somethin that choo wanna know, then send off the one with the stuffed mouf to find it out. The hankerchiff will keep 'em from blabbin to someone else on the way back. When he comes back he'll tell the other guy. He won't be able t' see yer not a crab and so'll tell ya everything ya wanna know."
I formed a mental picture of a time long ago when I had first come to the ocean. I was eight. I had this terrificMickey Mouse Club wind-up radio that played the Mickey Mouse Club song. It disappeared that day and I never saw it again. I'd often wondered who'd taken it, and I asked the crab with the stuffed throat to find out. To do this I had to hold him, so I made my question brief and to-the-point and set him down. He tore off down the pier.
"Fast crab," I said to Don Redondo.
Within ten minutes I saw him scurrying backwards out the pier again. He pulled up short beside the other crab. I snatched out the handkerchief and observed how they began to feel over each other with their antennae. They seemed to be communicating, but Don Redondo appeared impatient. He bent over and flicked one with a finger and said "Get to the point."
Then I picked up the one with no eyes and held him to my ear.
"I don't hear anything, Don Redondo."
"You won't," he said. "Just close yer eyes and watcher movie." I closed my eyes and there it was: Mommy and Daddy and Bennie, the beagle, and sister Sally. We were at the beach for the first time. I was eight, and there . . . THERE! was my Mickey Mouse Club wind-up radio! Then things became foggy, and when they cleared I saw a large man, all hunkered up with his back to me, and then I heard the Mickey Mouse Club song, played in those rubbery little notes I remembered so well. The figure then straightened, as if suspecting the presence of an observer, and slowly he turned a diabolical grin, greasy smooth eyebrows, my Mickey Mouse Club wind-up radio in his hands. It . . . was . . .
"Don Redondo!!!" I screamed. "Ouch and oh-my-gosh! " I screamed.
The crab had a hold of my ear, paying me back for his popped-out little bug eyes. Don Redondo laughed uproariously. His greased eyebrows flashed in the sun. In pain and panic I leaped off the pier.
September 8, 1966
Three weeks ago Don Redondo had prepared a mixture of various substances which, he promised, would give me increased personal power. The mixture had been "brewing" in a chrome construction helmet under his patio. It was one of the "power objects" that he had detected beneath the sands of Hermosa Beach on a previous expedition. Yesterday he brought out the helmet and set it on the picnic table. I moved to my "spot" as was my practice and jumped up onto the grate. There was an immediate sensation of "juice" and well-being followed shortly by an even greater sensation of intense pain. I'd forgotten that Don Redondo was about to barbeque.
"Keep t'hell outta my barbaque, wouldja, cornflake!?"
I apologized as I doused my seat with lemonade. My new ivy league trousers were scorched.
"Take it as a sign," said Don Redondo.
"A sign of what?"
Don Redondo smiled strangely. "Okay, Flakey," he said, ~drop yer pants."
"Hey, wait a minute, Don Redondo, I . . . "
"Well, just roll them up then. I need atcher knees."
I rolled up my trouser legs. The idea that Don Redondo had actually asked me to remove them frightened me. What did he think I was?
With a popsicle stick (Evidently grape by the color) he began to plaster the area beneath each knee with a sticky black substance.
"What is it, Don Redondo?"
"oh, it's gotcher ground sand crabs and yer fiberglass shavings and yer neapreem cement and yer kelp juice and some of Rosa's hotsauce."
"What will happen, Don Redondo?"
"You will 'Surf', Careless."
After he finished with the areas under my knees, he applied large gobs to the tops of my feet between the base of the shins and the toes.
My first sensation was one of intense burning, yet quite a different burning that that with which my "seat" still throbbed. Next a terrific pulsation of energy began in my feet and knees, surging up my legs and into the rest of my body. For a moment my vision became distorted. I almost saw something diabolical in Don Redondo. Then it went away. Everything became drowned out in an incredible humming sound. HMMMMMMMMMM went everything, and then the same thing happened to my eyesight, everything looked HMMMMMMMMMM. I wanted to ask Don Redondo what it all meant, but he was just another HMMMMMMMMMM mixed up with all the other HMMMMMMMMMM, so it was impossible to use him as my advisor, though right then I remembered something he had said once before: "When in doubt, shorty, call on yer ally." Which was fine, except that I didn't know who my ally could possibly be.
Meanwhile I was walking out over the ocean as if I was walking down your typical city street. I walked on out to the line-up and a voice said: "Your feet are growing long; they are stretching out in front of you and behind you; they are growing together; your heels are growing a fin; your ivy league trousers are baggies; the rest of you is well-tanned skin; you are a hot, young junior from Waikiki." And I was!
It was ten foot and glassy and my feet were my board and they were well- shaped with just enough kick in the nose, a step-deck, egg-rails, and a Greenough Stage IV fin, so I ripped ! And in the middle of my ripping there was this short little guy who surfed along with me; he said he was my ally. Call me anytime you want to Surf, he said. His name was Murphy, and after that all he said was "OXOMOXO" which made perfect sense to me at the time. Better than anything I've heard since.
September 9, 1966
"How did I do, Don Redondo?"
"You did as well as can be spected," he said, sipping a Buckhorn and looking off the patio at the smog between us and Catalina Island. "You Surfed, Careless. You Surfed."
"Did I ready Surf, Don Redondo?
"Hey! You bet you did, shorty. You rippo'd."
"I mean, did my body actually walk out over the water and my feet become a surfboard and was Murphy actually there with me and is he my ally?"
"Look, kid, you just can't pinner down like that. Ya Soifed and that's what. What's yer bod got t'do wid it?"
"What do you mean 'What's your bod got to do wid it? ' My bod's got everything to do with it, Don Redondo!"
"Seal poop!" exclaimed Don Redondo. "You surfed."
"You're putting me on?"
Don Redondo shook his head rather mournfully and walked to the bag of briquets. Automatically I slid out of my power spot.
"Did I really, Don Redondo? "
"Chuck steak," he replied.
October 12, 1966
My last meeting with Don Redondo occurred on September 25th. My field notes, scrawled in a jittery hand only a few hours after the experiences of that day, give a clear account of those soul-wrenching hours.
Huge, well-formed knots had developed in the places where Don Redondo had applied the mixture. In addition two weeks ago, Don Redondo had led me patiently through the Acetone Ritual, so that now my lengthening hair was a brilliant transparent shade of gray. I was ready for the Big Test.
When I arrived at Don Redondo's place, he had two huge redwood boards leaning up against the house.
"C'mon, cornflake, we're goin soifin."
"But, Don Redondo, there are no waves."
"There are waves, kid. A Waterman kin see 'em. Maybe t'day you kin see 'um too."
We took down the heavy surfboards and hauled them to the beach. It was dead flat and overcast. I almost began to argue with Don Redondo about going out, but he was already paddling away with swift, strong strokes. I followed him as best I could.
When we were a few hundred feet offshore (out further than this place would break on a forty foot day) we stopped.
"Now, shorty, I'll line ya up. Sight on yer telegiraff pole there and set it up b'tween the pollum tree and the pink truck. Gotit?"
"Sure, Don Redondo, but what happens if the truck moves? "
"That truck don't never move. It's bolted to the road. At's m yline-up truck, kid."
He then proceeded to tell me that this was my spot and I was safe as long as I stayed on it. Move and I might be squashed.
"No matter what, stay where you am and you'll be alright, y'hear me cornflake?"
I agreed to stay there, and then Don Redondo said he was going in for a beer and that I'd be alright if I stayed precisely on that one spot. But if I moved . . .
I watched him paddle in, lay down the board, and walk up to his bungalow and go in. I sat there and popped kelp bulbs and waited. And then it began!
I felt a movement. I looked up. A huge wave was nearly on me, soundless and black and feathering grotesquely at the top. It must've been eighty feet big. I thought I must be hallucinating or asleep or both. I scrambled off my board and clawed for the bottom. But there was nothing. I came up. It was flat. I crawled onto the board, panting and perspiring, though it was cool and the water was even fairly cold. And then it happened again: the movement, the monster black wall, only this time there was Don Redondo sliding down the face and coming right at me.
"Don Redondo!" I hollered, but he continued right for me. I dove off just in time, sinking into the black water with the vivid impression of his evil grin stamped into my mind, his greased eyebrows, his thick neck, his dirty gray sweatshirt which he wore even in the water.
Again and again this happened. I nearly panicked and left my spot many times, but somehow I was more afraid to do that. Finally, with Don Redondo bearing down on me once again, the huge, towering black wall threatening my total annihilation, I hollered out "One more time y'old fart, and no more groceries!"
Suddenly all was calm.
With my last vestiges of strength I paddled into the shore. I found Don Redondo asleep in front of the TV. Star Trek was on. I took a sip of warm Buckhorn and slipped out the door again. I got in my car and drove off, and I have not seen Don Redondo since. Our only communication is through grocery lists. He writes down what he needs; I do what I can. He drinks a large amount of beer and consumes an enormous quantity of beef. Such is the Way of a Waterman. A Way with Guts.
As for me, Remedial English pushes me to the limits. And then I have two part-time jobs to keep Don Redondo in briquets. I am not too interested in learning about Surfers and Surfing any more. I'm afraid I have succumbed to the first eminemny.
© Drew Kampion, 2002
http://www.drewkampion.com/surfing/donredondo_2.htm
.
