“In the game of chess, the king is the most important piece on the board. It can move one square in any direction. “
Cambridge Dictionary
What was the greatest year of your life?
A simple question. Yet for most, one extremely difficult to answer. Try it out for yourself. What is your answer? The question implies a time when you were everything at once of who you are, were and meant to be. A cumulation of all of your past focused onto a time of meaning and purpose. A spiritual pinpoint on a life, an arrival at destiny. A time that will define your future and haunt you until the day that you die. Who are you? This time is when you found out the answer. I find that everyone that I have asked it of, mutters something along the lines of “hmmmmmm, wow. Let me think about that one.”, then spend quite a bit of time shuffling through the various memories of their lives. Many times they are unable to answer. The first time that I considered this idea of the very best of times, my answer came without hesitation. Immediate. My best year was and will be that first year that I was in Hawaii, from February 1984 - March 1985. The idea that specific times are better than others and a possible scientific reason why occurred to me years later, probably around 2014. By then I was mid-career as a science teacher, having built up enough years and gotten my National Board teaching certification, to be rewarded with advanced students and classes. We were studying the properties of energy, specifically wave energy.
The lesson we were discussing went something like this…
When raindrops fall into still water, they create tiny waves that spread out in all directions away from the drops. What happens when the waves from two different raindrops meet? They interfere with each other. In two distinct ways. Destructive interference is when the amplitudes, or distances a wave can reach from a resting point, go downward or are negative from the wave at rest. Constructive interference describes the positive addition of energy to the waves when they meet, doubling in size and energy. It looks like this in the textbook.
On the drive home after that day with my students, I had my own moment of clarity. I thought about the words “constructive” and “destructive.” Human beings as well as all of the natural world, pulses with energy as well. Just thinking about that word “destruction” brought to mind so many of my own experiences and regrets, especially my own teenage years. I grew up during the 1970’s in Florida. Mistreated a lot of people badly, most especially the girls who loved me, did drugs that I most definitely should not have and spent way too much time with people who liked to drink, especially in my first couple of years of college. Sex, drugs and rock and roll were not just words then, it was a way of life. I thought about my own selfish impact on others and many that I chose as “friends” during this time of my life. These destructive choices had led to many emotionally painful experiences for me. I was kicked out of school on academic probation, lived in a closet and washed dishes until I realized that getting back to school was what I had to do. It took me a year, but I changed my life.
Then their faces flashed immediately to me. Those kings of Oahu. They interfered with my life in every good way. It wasn’t about careers, money, cars or any luxuries at all. It was about having nothing and everything you could possibly want. There was a buzz of positive energy every time we were with each other. We were all, every one of us, living our dreams in a place that was filled with others just like us. Being that vision of ourselves we desired to be. What I did that year because of them went far and away past what I had ever personally thought that I would do in my life. Their energy so positively impacted me personally in every way. I met them all, except my brother, there on Oahu. And then, as it started, it abruptly came without plan to an end, just that time when people go their separate ways.
“Julie, it’s Mark. I am here”, I whispered into the phone, barely above audible. I heard her delay for a second before she replied, her voice a reflection of the fun loving, sweet soul that she was, “ Great! Where are you?” “At the airport.” I continued to whisper. She made no effort to conceal the conversation.“ Wow! I can’t believe that you are here! What a surprise! That is great! I will be right there. Where should we meet?” “How about you all pull up at departures, I will sit out front with my hat down covering my face.” “Ok, see you soon!”
I had called her before leaving Australia. My brother's girlfriend, Julie Rose. Although we had never met, I knew already that she was adventurous. I told her that I was coming to Hawaii and that I wanted to surprise Jon. My brother and I had not seen each other for three years now. Jon and Julie were studying at the University of Hawaii. Jon and I had started surfing together about a decade before in Florida, he took to it right away while I spent a month trying to paddle out while yelling cuss words in hopes that would help. By now we had travelled to many places, but to be together to surf the North Shore was a sacred level of delight.
I hung up and went with my backpack up the stairs to the arrival area to wait. Besides this small backpack, I had a straw hat that I had been using in the past few weeks on a stop in Fiji. I found out later that Jon had been sitting right next to the phone when I had called and that they were studying together for tests for classes they were taking at the University of Hawaii. Jon was instantly curious about the conversation after Julie hung up. “Who was that? “It was my cousin! SHE just flew in! SHE is dying to meet you! Come along!” Jon, immediately sensing something not quite right, especially since she had never mentioned it before, replied “ I will just wait here,” glancing up and then immediately back to his textbook and notes.
Evidently there was some serious negotiating going on, yet somehow she managed to talk him out of his studying and into the car, which in this time was no easy task as Jon was a focused and determined student in his senior year.
At the airport I waited patiently, excited to put the pain of leaving Australia behind, smelling the scent of flowers in the warm tradewinds and feeling the pleasant cool humidity of a February evening in Honolulu. It felt surreal to finally be in Hawaii, the place of dreams especially for a surfer. I would face the ultimate challenge of the North Shore now for sure. It was no longer an abstract. A distinct feeling of intimidation and fear came with that realization, to ride those waves that I had already been studying in the minute details of every surfer magazine photo over the past decade. There would be no backing out. Their names flowed like a mantra as I waited there. Pipeline, Gas Chambers, Log Cabins, Rocky Point, Laniakea, Sunset, Velzyland, Off the Wall. I crouched into a sitting position on the ground, my knees to my chest and my face on my hands. I hung my head, covered it with my hat angled down over my face and hoped to look like some random guy sitting there sleeping. It started to become very uncomfortable, besides the trouble I was having controlling the excitement of the moment and seeing my brother again. I had never met Julie, but knew that she had left Orlando with Jon first to go to Oregon for a winter season before moving together to Oahu.
All the other cars and the crowded excitement of the arrival of the flight had passed, the foreign sounding pidgin english “howzits!”, “braddahs” and “alohas” with everyone greeting their friends and family with beautiful flower leis while wearing flower print shirts and muu muus enhanced the wonderful foreignness that I was feeling of being in the islands. The hint of plumeria in the humid trade winds blowing across from the northeast. Flower overload. Soon I found myself alone by the road out front, still in my attempt to hide. After a short while, I heard a car pull up, skid to a stop and from under my hat I could see the passenger door. I heard the driver side door open and slam, Julie’s bare feet ran by me. I heard her giggling. A moment later, Jon slowly opened his door and stretched out, starting the amble towards where Julie had disappeared. As he passed me, I exploded to my feet, threw out my arms like some vaudeville actor and yelled “hey bro!” Jon looked like he had guessed I was there. As we hugged, he said, “I knew something was up with how hard she argued with me to get in the car. She never does that.”
Julie came running back and stopped a few yards away. She glowed with youthful joy and laughed. She radiated excitement and her smile hinted at the beautiful person that she was in her heart. Julie's eyes glittered with a love of living and especially of that moment. I will never forget that first time that I saw her. She is to this day one of the loveliest and genuinely good people that I have ever met. Over the next several years, because of her love and generosity, with a true aloha spirit of family, she became a rock in often tough times in the lives of everyone in this story. Julie Rose loved you because of who you are. A rare person. My brother is someone that I have always looked up to, although he is younger by three years. Jon has always taken his own road. He quit school at 15 because he wasn’t learning anything, choosing to go surf in El Salvador during a civil war instead. He always seemed to have a long term goal in mind when he planned things. He could focus on a novel laying on a couch in the midst of a party. An almost autistic level of concentration sometimes. Jon decided to go to Costa Rica in 1980 and two others tagged along. Those two, Dan Leforge and Steve Albershardt form the basis of the fantasticness of the year ahead for me. In particular, Steve Albershardt. Along with my brother and others. Jon at this time was serious about finishing college to the best of his abilities. He was a changed person in many ways. But in the surf, he still was the charging guy I grew up with. He had a distinctive surf style where he floated atop his board, very focused eyes on ahead and his tongue poked into the side of his cheek when he first stood up. His nickname was “Maynard”, from the charging character in a surf comic. My brother was a shining example of who I wanted to be. The only problem that I had was a subterranean, gnawing anger I have always had. I didn’t want to fit in. No job, no girls, no hustling for stuff, no car, no payments, no dining out, no normal. I just wanted to be in waves with a surfboard. Period.
On the drive out I told them that I had about $500. This was almost exactly the amount that I had when I had landed in Sydney almost three years before. When I told Jon, he confidently and casually encouraged me, “that’s plenty, bro! You’ll get a job somewhere.” The three of us cruised slowly through the evening of downtown Honolulu, past the iconic statue of the Hawaiian King Kamehameha, standing draped with leis of respect, along Kalakaua Avenue, the main road along the south shore of Oahu where tourists amble the sidewalks at all hours, through Waikiki towards Julie's house she was renting at the base of Diamond Head. For the first time I could feel the salt of the surf in the air and smell its fecund, wonderfully briney waters. Inviting. The entire distance of the drive, the windows open to the mid Pacific, smelling like flowers and seeing them along the route, something I have never experienced anywhere else. Jon had been tempting me with these images for about a year while I was in Australia. He had sent me a postcard when he and Julie had first arrived to Oahu. It stayed in my backpack and haunted me the entire time. It was one of the reasons that I finally left. I had to go surf the North Shore.
Soon, we bumped into the curb in front of the small two room place they were renting at the base of Diamond Head, the international symbol of Hawaii. Like every other home, this was raised a few feet off of the ground on wooden posts to allow the tradewind breeze to help cool the place. No air conditioning required. They both decided that the study idea could wait, Jon being too excited now to show me the North Shore. It became a mission, something he loved and still does. The waves were forecasted to be 8 feet. I had unknowingly arrived in February, one of the best months for consistent surf conditions on the North Shore.
Julie and Jon packed up quickly, bringing their books and notes along, and we changed cars to Jon’s yellow 1975 Ford Pinto, a car infamous for all of the wrong reasons. Most notably that it was prone to being engulfed in flames with the very real chance that passengers could not escape the bent frame of a rear end collision. All because some design idiot thought putting the fuel tank between the bumper and the axle was no big deal, resulting in a lower build cost. “There’s no floor, so be careful,” Jon laughed. “We named it The Blender.” I threw my backpack into the backseat and could see 2 x 4s placed across the huge gaping hole below that used to be the floor, framed in jagged, crusting rust. The wood flooring was a very common remedy used in Hawaii to prevent what is called, in surf lingo “Flintstoning” in honor of Fred and Barney’s cars in the cartoon where they put their feet through the floor to stop the car. Funny on television, a good way to die in reality as your legs become separated at the knees and the entire blood contained in your body blows out in under a minute. As soon as he started The Blender, it was instantly the single best name for a vehicle that I have ever heard. Exactly like the ice crush mode on any kitchen blender. The only difference being the volume of The Blender’s crunching rattle. It was loud inside the car to the point where all conversation required yelling and this Pinto could be heard a quarter of a mile away when Jon was approaching. I am still not sure exactly why he chose this particular car except that it ran, cost almost nothing and got him from the North Shore and back to Julie’s, an hour drive each way. I spent the hour out concentrating on keeping my feet on the wood and my bag from falling off the seat through the floor. The fear of someone crashing into the Blender behind me was constant as I tried to fight back the image of me surrounded by wood, crushed inside yet another burning Ford Pinto.
“Don’t you have boards?” I asked, already extremely stoked to finally be heading to see the North Shore surf I had dreamed about since watching the Don Ho show on black and white television when I was a kid and the surf magazines that always featured photos of the giant, beautiful, perfect waves of Oahu that I had studied for hours when I had learned to surf as a teenager. I had left my one constant companion, an Aloha 6’ single fin, with 6 channel board back in Australia. It was not a board you would use for Hawaiian waves. Surfboards are hand shaped by true artists that have a deep knowledge and understanding of surf condition and made boards individually for riders of those waves. The North Shore required boards longer, thinner and now with a thruster fin setup, three fins at the tail designed for speed, holding a line in steep tubing conditions and ease of turning. I knew Jon had a quiver of boards I could use for the time being.
“I keep all of my boards under the place out at Rubber Duckies' ' Jon said, suddenly laughing. “Rubber Duckies?”, I asked, thinking he was joking. “The place the guys rent out on the North Shore. It is called Rubber Duckies.” I spent the next bit of the drive in silence trying to picture this. The famed, frightening names along the seven mile miracle of surf spots along Oahu’s North Shore are known worldwide. - Haleiwa, Waimea Bay, Pipeline, Sunset Beach. It seemed like we were going to the kiddy pool. Rubber Duckies? It was never mentioned ever in any magazine. I immediately felt embarrassed. Jon told me it was walking distance to giant, frightening waves at Waimea Bay and the shopping market Foodland. I was soon to meet surfers. Athletes who don’t give a shit about training. The ones that are utterly consumed with getting every ounce of satisfaction from life, ridiculous levels of humor and willing to suffer every inconvenience so that they can ride waves. To be the free kings of their souls. Personal glory or eternal obliteration, to risk it all to ride the North Shore. The Promised Land.
This is a chapter from a memoir that I am writing - kings of Oahu. Based on the simple question “What was the best year of your life?” My answer came fast when I considered it, the first year I spent surfing Oahu during the season February 1984 through April 1985. I have tried to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity in some instances I have changed the names of individuals and places, I may have changed some identifying characteristics and details such as physical properties, occupations, and places of residence.
A science teacher! That was a revelation in this chapter. I listened to this on my way back from my vacation so waves were definitely on my mind and I loved how you taught the topic.
Definitely the best writing from you since I started reading your work. The flow was great and writing succinct. Can’t wait for Chapter 2!
I really enjoyed this one Mark. You are a very gifted writer and are inspiring me. Thanks!