When I first stumbled across the Gathering, I instantly became a true believer.  I’d just gotten out of the hospital after having a seizure during the height of the pandemic, and didn’t know what had happened or who I was anymore.  Pain had forced me into such a tight place that I was willing to take any suggestions, and what the other ghosts were telling me made total sense.  I wanted out.  I wanted to be saved. 

I could hardly imagine that there were con-artists out there, who would use the meeting to take advantage of the goodwill of others.  What I found out was that many poltergeists were just looking for a spotlight and a handout.  Their stories were rehearsed.  They knew just what to say.  Sure, they’d messed up.  They would freely admit that.  This time would be different, however.  They were ready to get with a guide and go through the steps.  All they needed was enough for a down-payment on a place, or enough for a phone, then they were ready to get down to serious business.  Did they mention their dear granny was in the hospital?

When I walked up to the Gathering the seventh day of the US Open and saw Fresno Joe there, going around high-fiving and hugging everyone, I hit such a wall of resentment that I had to retreat to the bathrooms to lurk around until the meeting was over.  What I could see from a distance was Joe dominating the meeting, telling his time-worn tales, playing loudly on his heartstrings for everybody to hear.  When he was finally forced to give up the floor, I saw him swipe a bag of cookies and make his way back to the pier.

The day might’ve gone downhill from there, but I ran into Betsy, along with a visiting friend of hers, Anne.  They were interested in checking out the skateboarding, so I walked that way with them.  Hatch came along, walking his bike beside mine.  When we got to the Van’s Village, he didn’t have a lock, so I used mine to lock both our bikes together, needing to stretch it as far as it could go to make that happen.

It almost felt like we were on a double-date.  I’d always gotten along with Betsy, but hadn’t really zoomed in on her until Royal bought us T-shirts a few days earlier and we’d picked out the same one.  It may have signified nothing, but seemed to align our stars.  I kept sneaking glances over and saw her lips curled up in a contented smile.  The girls wanted to check out the merchandise booths.  We registered for free acai bowls and then got shaved ice.

The Vans Off the Wall skateboard finals were about to get underway.  It had taken them a few days to convert the bike course to a skatepark.  The skateboarders were just warming up.  We found seats in the bleachers and I ended up next to Betsy.  The fact that I kept wanting to reach for her hand, which was resting on the bench beside me, was a completely unexpected turn of events.  I’d already begun plotting my next move, trying to decide where I’d head to when the summer was over

When it came time to split back up, Hatch and I went down to retrieve our bikes.  I dialed the combination on the lock, the four lucky 7s in a row, and to my immense chagrin, found it wouldn’t open.  The lock was stuck.  I tried once more, then spun the numbers all around, and tried again, giving it a yank for extra measure.  No.  It was truly stuck.  Our bikes were locked together around the same pole. 

I explained with a nervous laugh what was going on.  It was impossible to even imagine what could be done about it.  I took a deep breath, got down on my knees, and aligned the numbers, with the tense concentration of a man trying to crack a safe.  The lock wouldn’t budge.

There was a bike rental nearby.  Hatch suggested I go over and see if I could borrow a hacksaw.  That seemed insane.  Who was going to loan out a hacksaw to a stranger on one of the biggest days of the summer?  My mind was racing in desperation as I stumbled toward it. 

Then I heard a shout, and turned to see Hatch victoriously dangling the lock in the air in front of him, like a viper that’s head he’d just managed to crush.  Quick-thinking Hatch, an operations expert during the Gulf War, had begun trying every possible variation of the code, and found that one of the 7s had slipped down to a 6 when I’d stretched out the lock to fit it around both bikes.  It was something I never would’ve thought of to do.  The day was salvaged. 

I took the coiled lock he handed over and promptly walked it to a trash can, holding it as far away from my body as possible, as if it might suddenly come back to life and lunge at me with its fangs.

About a month before the Open, I’d gotten a message on Facebook, out of the blue, from JC Turner, the bass player who’d played on Ghost on the Roam.  I’d only met him during a brief rehearsal and then the day when he was laying down his parts, and hadn’t heard from him in the twenty-five years since.  He wrote to tell me that playing on the record had been a meaningful experience for him, and he’d started writing songs and gotten his own band together some time after that. 

JC had no idea where I was, or if I was even still alive, but wanted to let me know about an upcoming gig he’d be playing in Sunset Beach.  It was getting that message that had caused me to start thinking about the record and decide to commemorate its anniversary by playing on the pier.  When I saw that JC’s gig was on the second to the last day of the Open, it seemed like the perfect culmination for both events.  I’d decided to make it a point to show up and surprise him.

There is something I saw on the internet once that made me laugh because it was so true.  It described a musician as someone who puts five thousand dollars-worth of equipment into a five-hundred-dollar car to get to a fifty-dollar gig.   In my ten years in Los Angeles, I’d met hundreds of musicians doing their own version of that, quite often just for the vaguest hope of getting some exposure.  Often, the audience wasn’t even pretending to listen, instead talking over the music as if it were the soundtrack to a movie that they were the stars of.  That hadn’t kept anyone I knew who needed to make music from going out and making it anyway.

Once I got to Sunset Beach, I went to pay my respects to the old Don the Beachcombers, at its peak one of the best live music venues anywhere.  It had been a Tiki lover’s paradise back in the day, with three stages, one in the restaurant, one in the bar, and one in a large banquet hall in back that could fit up to three hundred people.  Emptied out and converted into an Indian restaurant, it now resembles little more than a depressing slab of cement.

From there, I made my way down PCH, briefly stopping at Mother’s, a motorcycle roadhouse with live bands on the weekends.  I knew the band that was playing.  The Road Warriors.  The first time I’d seen them, a few years back, I figured that the owner was just being charitable to a few of his buddies by giving them some stage time.  They could barely make it through a song without stopping to tune up.  Apparently, they’d been doing some practicing since then.  The bar felt like a boat, rocking on the waves of country rock.

When I got to Abalone, the former Halibut Hal’s, it was dimly lit and largely deserted.  Fishing nets and seashells hung from the ceiling.  JC and his crew were set up in one corner.  I sat at the bar and let them finish their first set before going up to say hi to the band.  JC was glad to see me.  He introduced me all around, telling the guys all about the great record we’d made together back in the day.  That came as a bit of a surprise.  It was encouraging to learn that something I’d done had taken root somewhere.

When they started their second set, I went back to the bar and listened to them play.  JC had a pedal steel player sitting in with him, an instrument I’d featured on half of my later recordings.  I could hear how well it fit in with a shuffle rhythm and the ukelele songs I’d been playing on the pier all week.  I started hearing a new sound in my head.  Ghost Country Surf.  Ghost Country Surf.  It was hard to describe, but all the elements were there.

Before leaving, I stopped by the stage to say goodbye and give my regards to the band.

We should make another record, I mentioned to JC.

He told me that he’d love to.

It sounded like a plan.

After nine days of buildup and anticipation, it was finally the last day of the Van’s US Open.  From over two hundred surfers, it was down to just the top sixteen.  The conditions were smaller than they’d been all week, but clean.  Fido the Surf Dog was out hanging ten on a long board.  Phil Collins’s I Can Feel It was blaring over the sound system.

5..4..3..2..1..

The contest was on.  They were starting with the semifinalists in the Women’s Challenger Series.  The pier was already packed to capacity.  It would be my last morning playing ukelele on the pier, at least for some time.  It was hard to say if I’d accomplished anything, outside of doing it just to do it.  Jiminy came up to me, squinting into the sun, a smile full of giant teeth, like Gary Busey in Big Wednesday.  The fact that it was the finals didn’t faze him much.  Any day that involves surfing is a good day to him.  His stoke will never fade away.

When I went down to the Gathering there were a lot of ghosts there, which was a little surprising considering how many people were around.  In the first few months of the pandemic, I’d met hundreds of them, kindred spirits I hadn’t even known existed before my seizure.  Some of the regulars I’d gotten to know a bit.  Every so often, a member of our old crew, the Gallows, would show up and we’d talk about how we needed to paddle out.  On this morning, I searched for Betsy.  There she was, with her blonde pigtails and faded sundress.  She smiled at me like there was a secret we were sharing.  It was too early to know if that were true or not, but I waved and smiled back.

During the finals, I sat on the grass by the plaza and watched the action on the big screen with Roy.  He started getting emotional about how much the Gathering had changed his life.  I had to agree.  Before stumbling across it, I hadn’t known a soul in Huntington Beach.  Now I ran into faces I recognized everywhere I went.   They might’ve been lost-souls, but they were souls nonetheless.

Three out of the four champions crowned that day were from Hawaii.  Hawaii was representing itself in the competition, waving its own flag.  Two Hawaiians captured the top spots in the Challenger Series.  Another won the women’s long board finals.  Only a guy from San Diego prevented the Hawaiians from completely sweeping the Open.  It was a great day for them.

Almost immediately after the contest was over, workmen began deconstructing Van’s Village and the big screen TV in the pier plaza.  The circus was moving on.

It was a big crowd that showed up for the Drum Circle the last night of the US Open, possibly the largest of the summer.  I’d gone back to the camper to get my djembe drum and had ridden down Main Street on the Cruiser, pounding out a primal thump on my way back to the Pier Plaza. 

Every poltergeist within a five-mile radius was sure to be there.  They were leaving their stations outside of 7-Eleven, abandoning dumpsters, crawling out of the riverbed, making their way to the pier.  There was Big Steve with his bass drum, the Wizard making toilet paper swirls in the air, Mark the Shark, on his skateboard, shaking his death rattle.

Of course, right in the middle of it all was Fresno Joe, working the crowd.  Right away that upset me.  It almost made me leave.  Most poltergeists don’t bother me.  I’d been one of the worst of them in my time.  As long as they respect other people’s boundaries and don’t demand too much attention, I can sit and play music with them, provided we stick to the same beat, which isn’t always the case. 

Fresno Joe was already broadcasting, however, that everything was all about him.  He went over to the Frisco Kid, who was sitting on a wall with a bottle wrapped in a paper bag, and took a giant swig.  The Frisco Kid stood up and started kicking his feet from side to side, like a boy with wooden legs.  Then Joe turned around and started pulling all the vibes from the circle into his bare chest, demonstrating that his energy was only beginning to build.  Before long, he wouldn’t be able to contain himself.

It was then that I looked up on the top tier and happened to notice Santos, standing with his arms raised, like Moses in the battle against the Amalekites.  He was standing there in support of all the hungry ghosts in the world, both those seeking salvation and otherwise.  I went up to him, looking to vent about Fresno Joe, but he wasn’t having it.  Where I saw Joe as being a narcissist and conman of the highest order, Santos reminded me that he was a very sick individual who deserved all the love and understanding we could give him. 

I sat down with my drum, still irritated, and began to play.  There was a solid groove that everyone was locked into.  After a while I began to cool down, and see the world in a kinder light.  Fresno Joe was out there showing off, hogging the spotlight, waving his ass in the air, but at the end of the day didn’t he just want what we all wanted, to connect with others and find some place to belong?  Santos may have had a point.  Even so, I wasn’t about to run up and give him a hug anytime soon.  Instead, I just concentrated on the music.

The beat I was keeping on my drum was the same I’d been playing on my ukelele all week.  It was the tempo of the ocean, the rhythm of the waves.  I’d been hearing a new sound in my head since stopping by to see JC’s band the day before.  Ghost Country Surf.  The next record would be the follow up to Ghost on the Roam.  The ukelele, drums, bass, and pedal steel.  We’d try to keep it simple.

That evening the sun began to set and the sky turned gold.  It made black silhouettes of the palm trees.  There was only the slightest breeze.  The surf contest was over, but tomorrow would be another day.  Everyone would be moving on.  It was time to hit the waves.

The whole time that the US Open had been going on, I hadn’t paddled out once, instead focusing on sitting on the pier with my ukelele every morning, commemorating a record I’d made twenty-five years earlier.  Now that the contest was over, the crowds had dispersed, and the Van’s Village was coming down fast. 

The pulse of the day was coming on strong, so I decided to head down to Tower 7 with my board before the Gathering, and at least get wet.  In one week, the waves had gone from epic to almost nothing, as if the competition had used them all up, but I’d observed a few things from the pros that I wanted to try and put into practice.

I got the Muley out from the side of the shed, the bike with the surf rack attached to it, and grabbed the spring suit I’d picked up from the Frog House at the beginning of the summer.  My board was a 9”0 Russel that had been my brother’s prize board in high school.  It had sat beside my mother’s house so long the resin had turned to amber, and the fin had come out of the fin box, but I’d managed to pound it back in.

After taking the Muley in to get the back tire fixed, it had been returned to me, stuck in seventh gear, and that’s what I struggled with now.  It was almost impossible to pedal, and the front tire kept hitting the nose of the board every time I turned too sharply.  Just making my way to the beach, I was already putting on a seminar.  How to recognize a kook.

I’d surfed enough to know the difference between a kook who’s a beginner and makes honest mistakes, however, as opposed to one who knows how to surf and consciously disrespects surf etiquette and the other surfers.  I’d missed a lot of waves in my time and blown a lot of rides, but I’d never dropped in on anyone on purpose, and had been able to celebrate the achievements of others, without getting too envious. 

Jason always said that the best surfer on any given day is the one having the most fun.  When the Gallows first got together, we all would have tied for first place on any given day. As I made my way to Tower 7, I remembered seeing the other guys one morning, crossing the bike-path ahead of me, looking like a team of superheroes, one I was proud to be a part of.

Back then we’d always joked about staging a kook Olympics.  We had all these patented moves: the stunt man left, stunt man right, pearl jam, Malachi crunch.  I had my own invention, the cat on a hot tin roof, but also another stunt I was saving, should that much joked-about contest ever come into fruition.  It is a variation of the Niagara Plunge, except one where you need to lock both your arms and legs around the board, bent at the elbows and knees, and go over the falls sideways, looking at the crowd with a big smile.  That would be untouchable.

When I got to Tower 7, I could hardly believe my eyes.  It was high tide and the waves were no bigger than a foot.  I wasn’t even going to be able to catch any shore-break.  Still, I paddled out and sat facing Catalina.  There were things to consider.  As a seasoned ghost on the roam, it felt about time to be hitting the road, but by now I’d made some friends, was thinking about another record, and had even met a girl.  What did it all mean? 

Maybe one day I’d actually leap to my feet and ride a big wave around the world.  In the meantime, I’d have to just keep showing up and see what happened next.

The new neighbor saw me in the alley looking at his house, the one pulsating with dance music, illegal fireworks shooting from the roof, and came over and begged me not to call the police.  I would never call the police.  An assassin, on the other hand, would be a permanent solution to the problem.  He tried to blame his kids.  They were just having fun.  No.  It was his loud voice that was always dominating the proceedings.  He’d earned enough money to be as noisy as he wanted to be.  The rest of us just lived here.

The party wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I didn’t have a shuttle to LAX at five in the morning, about the same time they usually were wrapping up their affairs.  The fact that I was sleeping in a cloth camper didn’t help matters much.  It was like I was sleeping in front of one of their speakers, right in the middle of the dance floor. 

Another firework went off like a stick of dynamite, causing car alarms to go off all around the block.  Could I blame them for having some Halloween fun?  No.  Not really.  Could I put on a mask and slip some poison into their punch bowl.  It shouldn’t be that difficult.  I’d just empty one of the rat traps.

By five o’clock, I was lying there rigid with fury, my suitcase on the floor next to me.  Since I was already dressed, all I needed to do was sit up and put my shoes on.  I went out the side gate and waited for the shuttle on the porch.  The pickup time came and went.  When the shuttle was fifteen minutes late, I started to get worried, and after a half hour, agitated.  I looked at my invoice for the ride, and somehow found a phone number for the driver. 

It sounded like he picked up the phone in Lagos.  How long had he been in the country?  He was sitting in the darkness, one block over.  When I corrected him on the street address, he got out and tried to find the house on foot.  We didn’t have time for that.

When he finally pulled up in front of the house, he tried to make up for lost time.  We raced up to Seal Beach Boulevard and went barreling north on the 405.  The traffic was still pretty sparse.  As we got closer to the airport my mood began to lighten. 

Considering two days earlier I hadn’t even known I’d be going to Mexico City for Day of the Dead, I was pretty lucky to have found a reasonable roundtrip flight and hotel for the first five days.  At the speed we were moving now, we’d get there in plenty of time.  What if I hadn’t thought to call the driver, however?  Although I’d still tip him, I wouldn’t be showering him with smiles and praise anytime soon.  If he was going to be responsible for getting people to the airport, he’d better get with the program fast.

United flies out of Terminal 7.  Like many international flights to Mexico and Central America, I would be transitioning through Houston, which I knew to be an enormous airport.  A handful of times I’d come close to missing my flight, so little time had they given me to pass through security and make it to my gate.  That couldn’t happen on this trip.  The Day of the Dead Parade was happening the next day, and it had been a stroke of fortune to get a flight arriving when it did. 

My passport wouldn’t scan when I got to the kiosk to check myself in.  A woman had to come over and help me.  Then it was an additional thirty-five dollars to check a bag.  When I’d dropped off my bag and passed through security, I still had a few minutes, so got a coffee, banana, and muffin.

There was a Mexican woman next to me on the flight who barely spoke any English.  I tried to help her with her eight-hundred-pound bag.  It was a three-hour flight to Houston.  I’d brought along a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead which I thought might make a relevant addendum to my three-and-a-half-week trip.  I also was bringing along a set of rune stones and a few books explaining their significance. 

For a slim book, the Book of Dead was full of dense writing.  I had to read the first paragraph at least a dozen times, my mind distracted by the upcoming adventure and still worried about making the airport transfer.

When I got to Houston, I had to walk a half mile to get to my next gate.  My feet had inexplicably blown up with arthritis.  It was painful to walk, but I had no choice, but to move fast regardless.  If I needed to walk on coals to be there on time for the Day of the Parade, I was willing to do so.  There are just some things in life that you need to see.