Some lunatic poltergeist had a box of cold french-fries and was throwing them at the seagulls, which were dodging them like missiles.  He got to the bathrooms that I was sitting next to with my ukelele and threw the whole box on the roof.  Then he turned to me, wild-eyed at first, but gradually seduced by the tune I was plucking.  Eventually, he ended up right in front of me, weaving back and forth like a cobra.

Royal had asked me to meet him for breakfast.  I had a half hour to kill.  I watched the sun come up.  The waves were projected to be six to eight feet, but cleaner than the day before.   The surf photographers were staking out their spots and setting up their gear.  Among them I saw Fresno Joe, infiltrating, standing there as if he were a colleague, shirtless, in tar-stained board shorts.  He was giving his opinion on the best angles to shoot from.  Good God.  One time I saw him get up and start dancing along with some Japanese Taiko drummers who were putting on an exhibition on the Pier Plaza.  Their manager came dancing out to intercept him and it almost turned into a sumo match.

Royal is a big-spender.  Evidently, at one point he’d owned a few casinos up in Reno.  I met him outside of the Mako Bar and found he’d already ordered for the both of us.  That was fine with me, as long as he was paying.  Once a prospector, always a prospector.

Royal wanted to check out the Van’s Village after we were done eating, and we ran into Daisy locking up her bike.  Daisy is a casualty from the Summer of Love, but since it’s love she overdosed on it wasn’t such a bad thing.  She wears her hair in blonde braids and still kills in a bikini.  She came along with us and we walked down to the sand like a band of acid-drenched siblings.  I would’ve had a seizure years earlier if I’d known it was going to introduce me to so many new friends.  What we have in common can’t be denied.  We’re all screwed up in the exact same way. 

Royal offered to buy us T-shirts when we got down to the village, and I hesitated because I didn’t want him to ask for a favor later.  Then I realized I’m broke and don’t have a car.  It was probably OK.  There were about three hundred shirts to choose from and Daisy and I both picked out the same one.  Was that a coincidence?  It was hard to say. 

As we walked out of the merchandise hall with shopping bags over our arms we ran into Lance.  He was smiling but still radiating the inverse charisma of a dead jellyfish.  He wanted to know what we had in our bags.  Not what he’d had in his bag five years earlier.  That had gained him a lot of notoriety and lost him most of his freedom.

Betsy had somewhere to be, so Royal and I walked out to the end of the pier to watch the contest.  He started getting nostalgic about the good old days when the boys from the Gallows would meet up and paddle out before every Gathering.   There was a memory he’d come to cherish about some kook dropping in on him and a bunch of us, his band of brothers, paddling over to back him up.   If it had happened, I hadn’t been there.  He recalled another morning that had been like the invasion of Normandy, a band of ghost surfers coming out of the fog, storming the beach, taking no prisoners. 

If that’s the way he chose to remember it, that was fine by me.  The fact that the nose of my board had probably been planted squarely in the ocean bottom at the time made no difference.  I was just happy to be included.

By the sixth day of the US Open, the men in the Challenger Series had completed their round of 24 and the women had completed their round of 32, and it was down to the bracket stage, which would lead to champions being crowned on the last day of the contest.  The Duct Tape Invitational was set to kick off, which was a separate longboard event.  I’d been sitting at the end of the pier with my ukelele every morning, watching the first surfers of the day, learning a little about how the competition was being run and judged.

Unlike football and baseball, where there are rulebooks and clearly designated ways to score points, surfing is a much more subtle and nuanced sport, not entirely subjective, yet sometimes a performance with enough heart and courage can make all the difference.  What the judges are looking for is a combination of commitment, aggression, willpower, innovation, a variety of maneuvers, speed, grace, and power. 

As a kook who’d only recently started surfing on a soft-top, before graduating up to my brother’s old longboard, the most I could ever aspire to was to become some sort of soul-surfer.  It was how I’d approached everything in life, especially my music, not to be the best, or at the top of the charts, but to follow my own muse and try to create my own style. 

On the south side of the pier there were surfers surfing for money and prestige.  On the north side there were surfers, just as good, who were doing it for love and fun.  My place in life had always been on the north side, but I was still enjoying the spectacle and carnival atmosphere of the Open.

One of the surfers in the Duct Tape Invitational was the son of a famous longboarder.  He came out on his first ride of the day, cross-stepping and walking the nose.  A few minutes later and someone’s board had already been broken.

When I got to the Gathering, one-legged Rudy was acting as scout.  It was a small group that morning.  The crowds were keeping a lot of the ghosts away.  Hatch, Wilson, and Roy were there.  Betsy was there.  Lydia was there.  Susan was there.  There were a few visitors I hadn’t seen before. 

The topic of the meeting was acceptance and living life on life’s terms.  Most of us had lost our humanity by running so far from the pain of life that we were no longer living it.   We’d poisoned ourselves in our isolation and instead of escaping from the pain, had eventually been consumed by it.  If there was a solution, it was to surrender our wills, which had led us so astray in the first place, to that of a higher power and help another ghost.

By the time I got back to the longboard event, the women were surfing in their first heat of the day.  One of the them, from Japan, had raised her own money to get to the event through crowd-funding, and the announcer was explaining how difficult it is for most of the surfers to come up with the money to compete in the World Surf League, flying to events around the world, paying for hotels and expenses, even a decent board can cost a small fortune. 

On this unfortunate day, the Japanese woman bravely surfed into a walled-out section, but then her board got away from her and broke in two on a piling.  I watched it happen on the big screen TV that was set up in front of the plaza.  Only a few hours into it, and the Duct Tape Invitational was already breaking hearts and breaking boards.

The sun was rising in the east, through rippled clouds that were the color of peaches.  It was quiet at the end of the pier. Despite the surf competition that was going on, the only thing getting attention at the moment was a black seal that was swimming between fishing lines, looking to snatch up an easy snack.  I saw Lydia in her uniform, the black track suit, her grey hair up in a bun, wrapping up her nightly ramble, in search of a son who disappeared in the waves years ago.  Another long vigil and still no clue, like so many of us who wander through life never finding the answers we seek.

The contest was beginning to wind down and so were the waves.  Although they had peaked out at six to seven feet midweek, the surf was predicted to be three to four feet during the finals.  I’d been out there every morning with my ukelele.  The idea had been to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of my first record Ghost on the Roam, but I hadn’t done anything to promote it, instead, mostly playing to the waves.

There is only one copy of the record that remains.  I tracked it down on E-bay after burying six boxes of it in a landfill twenty years ago, more to hide my disgrace than conceal any great treasure.  From that copy I’d created wave files that I transferred onto my phone.  Now, with an Anker Bluetooth speaker, I figured I’d sit and play the record in its entirety.  It had been a long time since I listened to it.

What I heard was an enthusiastic, unpolished burst of energy, and a young guy I didn’t even recognize anymore, wearing his heart fully on his sleeve.  He’d hoped at the time that it would open some magical door, when in fact every door had stayed closed and forced him off the map, in sheer desperation.  I sat mouthing the words at people who looked right through me.  Were they blind?  Were they deaf?   Who were all these people who’d never once stopped to listen?   I was used to it by now, but momentarily felt the pain of rejection come back and lash me like a stingray’s tail.

The area where Main Street meets the PCH in Huntington Beach has been called the Times Square of surfing.  You have Jack’s, with the surfing Hall of Fame, on one side of Main Street, and Huntington Surf and Sport, with the Walk of Fame, and statue of Duke Kahanamoku, the father of modern surfing, on the other. 

As I was leaving the pier, I saw that a big tent had been set right at the intersection.  It was an induction ceremony for the Surfing Hall of Fame.  The audience was made up of a lot of long-time locals and some of the titans of surf.  I pushed the Cruiser over and stood in back, listening to a couple of the speeches.  A famous board-shaper was being inducted, as well as a former Open Champion, and a popular band that used to play at the Golden Bear.  No matter how long I hung around my mother’s yard in Huntington Beach, I’d never belong to that club.  I would always be an outsider among outsiders, just another phantom blowing through.

At the end of the ceremony, a collection of surf-greats, past and present, all wearing Hawaiian shirts, got up for a group picture.  That’s when I noticed Fresno Joe climb up on stage and try to wedge his way into the picture.  That figured.  Where he’d gotten the Hawaiian shirt from, I have no idea, but it hardly matched his tattered board trunks and dirty, bare feet.  If there was attention at all to be had, he was sure to be there.  He was going around shaking hands, trying to pass himself off as one of the Big Kahunas from the 70s.  Later, he even signed a program for a kid.  That was just messed up.

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.