JD

On a recent flight from Palm Springs, California to home in Portland, Oregon I viewed the 2012 movie Chasing Mavericks and was reminded of an old friend I actually think of quite often, though regrettably, I haven’t seen him in many years. The movie, which tells the story of a teenage Jay Moriarity (died one day shy of 23) and his quest to surf the giant waves that occasionally break in this now legendary spot near Santa Cruz, just north of Half Moon Bay in Northern California, brought me back to the days of my own very short lived experience as a novice “surfer” growing up in Del Mar, California (after a move in 7^th grade from Hillcrest near San Diego proper). While my career as a “surfer” was quite short, for my friend JD it became a passion I suppose, and possibly, the 10,000-hour rule worked its magic (theory that you can master anything that you practice for 10,000 hours). However, I believe what ultimately made JD a great surfer and yours truly a pretty dreadful surfer can really be summed up with one word. JD was one of the most fearless people I have ever known. And, one of the most interesting…

Growing up in Southern California during my high school years, I mostly knew three types of kids. Athletes were by far the largest subset in the group of three. I also associated with a fair amount of kids for whom surfing was a passion and a way of life, long before that became a marketable, mainstream thing (even for people who wouldn’t know a surfboard from a paddleboard); these guys, however, were the real deal. The third group was composed of recreational drug users (OK stoners) for whom this became a lifestyle (think Jeff Spicoli of Fast Times at Ridgemont High fame). Marijuana was the drug of choice for most, yet alcohol, cocaine, and psychedelic mushrooms were certainly part of the mix in a descending order of usage. The really interesting part… These distinct groups dabbled in or in fact prioritized somewhat equally one or even all of the identity choices. For example, some of the best athletes I knew were also great surfers who smoked lots of pot. And, most definitely, many of the kids I grew up with at this time, fell strongly into two of the categories. There were a few “one category guys,” yet this was actually rare. One of my very best friends to this day, Scottie W, was a one category guy and a truly great basketball player but had no interest in drugs or surfing. As I reminisce on these days, I am reminded of the need to tell any of my 40 and under readers just how incredibly different (and in my humble opinion) better life was before the advent of the Social Media / Technology Overload world that has become the New Normal. A subject for another day, yet suffice it to say that I feel incredibly blessed to have been young and adventurous in those halcyon days of the mid 70’s to early 80’s. Life was blissfully simple though I can only fully understand this through the hindsight lens of the year 2020 and close to 57 years on the planet. At the time, we couldn’t have imagined the ways in which life’s pace would accelerate. Wouldn’t trade the experience for the world…  

I first met JD during the summer after my sophomore year of high school.  He and his family had moved from a palatial home in Virginia to the then modest coastal town of Solana Beach (not so modest now). According to JD (pretty circumspect, reticent guy), his former place had an indoor wood tiled basketball court, a large swimming pool, and lots of special amenities. As a kid you really don’t think of all the details of adult life with its financial highs and lows which are simply a part of the human experience for most of us. Unbelievably, from the context of then versus now, the move was a massive scale down for the family (North County San Diego was the sleepy sticks in those days). JD’s father was an entrepreneur type from my recollections, and I recall that he had invented a number of board games for Milton Bradley and had made a lot of money, yet something must have happened to precipitate the move. Needless to say, JD fit in nicely as he could certainly check off two of the boxes as he was a great athlete who loved basketball and marijuana with equal fervor. Surfing would come later of course…

At about this time, basketball was a huge part of life. Without going into all of the details and machinations of this topic (of which there were many), suffice it to say that for my core group of friends, basketball was life. We ate, slept, and drank basketball and we often played for hours on end. Though we played in many different places and in many different levels of structured organization from the playground to high school teams, I was lucky enough to be the kid who had a really nice court at his house (built on a tennis court no less). We spent many hours on that court doing battle and it was great.  JD was a really good player and I will always remember a little fade that he had to his shot that made him really tough to guard. The guy was a real warrior on the court, and I remember many encounters both with and against him that served to cement our friendship strongly. He certainly wasn’t the best player I played with, but he was certainly one of the tougher. If the modern plus /minus analytics could have been magically measured at that time, I’m pretty sure his would have been quite good.  A great competitor… Little did I realize at the time; I truly had no idea just how lion-hearted the guy would prove to be.

For whatever reason, and I cannot tell you exactly when this began (though it was early in our high school experience), myself and two of my closest friends decided to try our hand at surfing. Rich, the transplant from New York (7^th grade) and Ray (family home near the ocean in Del Mar) were my partners in crime for this venture (and countless others), and I must say we had a lot of fun in the process. Both Rich and Ray were far more serious about it than myself, yet I do recall that we were all pretty determined to figure it out. I still remember the yellow “rounded pin” board that I inherited from someone I knew who was a really good surfer and had outgrown this rather pedestrian style and had moved on to a “tri-fin swallow tail.” I was happy to have it. From the beginning it was an exercise in humility. We started out by learning to wax our boards and then soon moved on to riding the white water near shore. Sometime thereafter we graduated to attempting to ride puny waves. “Attempt” is the perfect word as it was really difficult. I remember marveling as I watched some of my “old hand” friends make it look so easy. To this day, there are few things I enjoy more than watching talented surfers do their thing. Eventually we graduated to the “inside” nearer to shore and moved to the “outside” where the actual surfers do their thing. Needless to say, a trio of beginners heading out to the real waves is not exactly the fondest desire of the skilled surfers, yet I never felt any noticeable animosity. I must say it was both exhilarating and terrifying, but I also must say one thing really held me back. It dawned on me rather quickly that this surfing thing was really dangerous and that I was clearly a danger to not only myself but those around me as well. Many a time I remember hesitating  on larger days when, with one or two more determined strokes I could have caught the wave, at which point the odds were extremely high that I would proceed to fall and/or “pearl” (a spectacular headfirst wipeout in surfing parlance). And let me tell you, that water could really toss you around like a rag doll. It was a powerful force which often made mincemeat of me both physically and emotionally. I had a healthy dose of what I would like to call “pragmatic fear.” For someone who hasn’t experienced the sheer power of waves it is almost impossible to describe. Seeing it from the shore and experiencing it from where the waves are breaking on a moderately large day, is like seeing the same movie, one in an Omni Max Theater with 3D glasses and the other on a small circa 1975 black and white television with rabbit ear antennas. Mercifully, my career was short though I have continued to love being in the ocean and have become a strong swimmer. Interestingly, my good friend Ray still surfs and has become quite good despite his many attempts to tell us that he isn’t. We all know that he is being modest.  

Back to JD… Around this approximate time, JD realizes that he would also like to learn to surf and he begins the aforementioned painful process. I remember watching him a few times and I was astonished by how terrible he was, and also by the horrific wipeouts he was willing to endure. JD seemed to be completely devoid of even a dose of “pragmatic fear.” I thoroughly enjoyed watching him as it was darn funny to witness his spectacular and truth be told, dangerous wipeouts. Never seemed to faze him; he was having the time of his life. In retrospect, it now reminds me a little of a Rocky Balboa fight. The more punishment and abuse he took, the more he seemed to thrive. It made no sense. Not quite sure how he didn’t drown.

At about this same time, JD in keeping with the interesting side that I mentioned earlier, gets his first job at a cash station pumping gas. Now remember that JD was quite fond of marijuana “consumption” and that he had an older brother that was everything that JD wasn’t. Quite frankly, he seemed to be a bit of a bad seed who would eventually run into some real trouble as a result of his prolific drug usage and transacting. I believe he spent some time in jail and I am a little unsure as to how JD escaped a similar fate.

I remember seeing JD at my house for a basketball game and he tells me that he has quit his job at the gas station after receiving his first meager paycheck. Soon after that, it would be not uncommon to see JD with his pockets stuffed with cash looking like he had just rolled out of bed. He always looked a little unkempt so that was not terribly unusual, yet the added feature of cash wads, added a comical air to the new optics. JD was selling marijuana and who knows what else with his older brother. Something tells me; this probably wasn’t the first time. Also, around this same timeframe, JD noticed that I played a lot of tennis. Remember our house had a tennis court. So, one day while at my house with a couple of friends, he asked me if I would like to play a set. Possibly we were hanging around the pool or perhaps he just stopped by unexpectedly. I mention this because he was barefoot. I remember looking at him thinking he was nuts. I had played a lot of tennis in my life and he had no shoes or a racquet. I knew JD was a little crazy, but what was he thinking? I dismissed it and yet he persisted. He mentioned that he had played a little bit over the years though he didn’t even own a racquet. Finally, I relented and agreed to play a set with him, expecting to wipe the court with him. Instead I ended up having to work really hard to beat him 6-3 (barefoot and using a borrowed racquet!) Classic JD I must say… Flash forward several years, and he was routinely beating me, and it drove me nuts at the time. I can still see him unloading his pockets of crumbled cash, often losing some of it as he headed down the glassy slope to the court before our match. I would pick it up and point it out as he often seemed oblivious to it. I look back on it now and smile though at the time I still couldn’t believe that this relatively inexperienced player had gotten so good. At least he now wore shoes!!!

JD and I continued to become good friends and despite that fact, as so often happens in life, we ended up eventually heading our separate ways and sort of lost contact with one another. I ended up in Santa Barbara to study History and JD headed to Humboldt State to study Accounting (yes you read that right). I definitely thought of JD, but I certainly did not see or hear from him.

Several years later I remember bumping into a mutual friend who had also gone to HSU, and he told me a story of a day in Humboldt when huge waves pumped into the area. This is not a terribly unusual thing as big surf is common in the area (just north of Santa Cruz). This was not your average big surf day; this was a day that brought in monster waves from some type of El Nino event. He described how people crowded the best vantage points watching as a mere three extremely brave and crazy surfers ventured out to take on the huge walls of water. And, yes, you guessed it, one of the three was none other than JD. According to the story, JD held his own and managed to ride these towering waves with great skill! From knowing the guy, I would have expected nothing less. And, it really made me proud as JD was a special dude among many special people I have known during my life.

Years later, after marriage and kids for both of us, I ran into JD though I do not recall the circumstances. The only reason I remember it at all has to do with the fact that he had become a high-level auditor for the IRS!!! You gotta love the irony. I wonder if he ended up claiming any of the cash transactions that were such a large part of his early employment history? Doing a little extra research via the magical world of the internet, I learned that JD went on to get a master’s degree, and that after 25 years of government work that included contract accounting, auditing, consulting, and training, he started his own CPA firm.

 Life would in fact be far less interesting without the presence of a JD type in everyone’s life. Most of us observe from a safe distance (both literally and figuratively) and marvel at the extreme contrast with which these precious few live their lives. Secretly, I believe most us wish we had a little of what people like JD seem to have in abundance. The Jewish word chutzpah comes relatively close to describing these traits, yet I do not feel as though it quite captures the essence. For me and my relatively simple mind, I feel it is the perfect blend of crazy and determined. Or said another way, perhaps simply crazily determined…      

Thomas M. Cook

2/1/20