My First Day
by Terry Eselun
It was still dark. I turned off the alarm before it sounded at 5:00 a.m. I’d been up since 4:00, trying to sleep in my two-piece bathing suit. I bolted out of bed, pulled on my cut-off Levis, and threw on a sweatshirt. I grabbed a beach towel, snuck into my parents’ room and slipped $3.00 out of my mom’s purse: a dollar for gas money, a dollar for soda, candy, and chips, and a dollar for a subway sandwich off the “roach coach.”
In the cool, damp morning, I half ran the two blocks down to the bus bench on Cherry Avenue in Signal Hill, the agreed pick-up point. I strained my eyes up the hill as I waited to see the yellow Willy Jeep rumble down the road. Few cars were out at this hour on a Saturday morning in 1962. I didn’t have my own surfboard and, at twelve years old, I was too young to drive. So, I nagged and begged the boys until they finally agreed to take me with them surfing.
There they were! They pulled over only briefly; instructed me to get in and climb over the boards in the rear. I crammed myself into the back, squeezed between four surfboards. I didn’t care. I was on my way to the surf!
We arrived at Seal Beach’s Ray Bay just as dawn crept over the top of Saddleback Mountain in the east. The four sandy-haired boys piled out and each carefully slid his board out the tailgate.
One shouted, “Hey, Terry, lift that nose up over so it doesn’t scratch.”
I dutifully lifted the 10’6” Harbour past the edge of the lift gate. I followed them all down to Crabs next to the rock jetty as if I were a hungry puppy. I knew I’d have no luck getting one of them to let me use their board now, so I spread my towel on the dry sand and waited. I waited while the sun rose, warming my body and making me even more delirious to get in the water, but I waited, mesmerized by the ocean’s sparkle. I had longed for this day since I was nine years old and I first watched the surfers ride the waves at Doheny. I knew then that I had to be out there.Finally, Richie came in around 11:00 a.m. for lunch. I seized my opportunity.
“Rich, would it be okay if I took your board out for awhile?”
He dried his dripping face with a towel, gave me a sideways glance, and paused.
I could hardly stand still.
“Uh, okay. Careful! No dings.”
“I will!”
I ripped off my clothes down to my bathing suit, picked up the nose of the board, and started to drag the thirty-pound board down to the water’s edge.
“Hey,” Richie shouted, “Pick it up!”
There’s no way I could get it under my arm, so I hoisted it onto the top of my head and staggered into the water. No instructions, but I’d studied the waves from the beach for so long that I had a picture in my mind of what to do. I pointed the nose into the three-foot waves and waded out until I could flop down and start paddling. Immersed in a liquid world, freed from land, I found my rhythm.
I slipped several times as each wave hit me, until finally I made it to where the boys sat. They ignored me. It didn’t matter. I watched, and I learned. A set appeared. I lay down and paddled. The wave was whitewater when it hit me and lifted me forward. I steadied my rails and jumped to my feet. It was over in an instant. Thrilled and spitting water, I surfaced and swam in for my board. The rush of the sea had captured my soul.
I was finally surfing.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
All rights remain with the author. For more information contact hwsurfn@gmail.com