Some Like It Cold

by William Povletich

  Blessed with all the charisma and panache of an award-winning actor strutting along the red carpet, Tom Ziegler stepped out of the car’s passenger side. Adjusting his sunglasses, squarejawed Tom strode into the garage as if avoiding imaginary paparazzi inquiries and photo flashbulbs. Such was the life of Sheboygan’s most eligible surfing bachelor.

  If the spine-tingling sound of metal-on-metal from the oilparched driver’s side door didn’t grab the attention of the two enchanted Williams boys, Randy Grimmer, sporting pork-chop sideburns and a gaucho hat, did. By giving the brothers just the slightest of nods, he sent thrills through their skinny chests. Even if the glance was because he had just caught his car keys in his shirt’s breast pocket after tossing them around and over his back or because he still smelled the perfume on his collar from another amazing night with the local supermarket checkout girl, Randy was the boys’ newest hero. He might as well have walked around with the letter “S” emblazoned on his chest and a cape billowing in the wind.

  When Andy Sommersberger pulled up alongside the convertible in the club’s official van—emblazoned on both sides with “Lake Shore Surf Club” hand-painted in bubble letters—it felt like a chunk of the moon fell on top of the brothers. Andy exited the van with the gravitas of a future world leader, completely ignoring Lee and Larry standing in plain view. Instead, he barked into the garage, “Are you butt nuggets going to help me unload the back of this van, or what?”

  Andy represented what Sheboygan surfing was all about. He was loud, he was brash, and he was a rebellious leader. With the combination of Hollywood good looks, a well-rounded education, and an ambition that couldn’t be quenched, he demanded respect not only from his peers but also from adults, a quality not lost on the group since it was believed he could truly convince a snowman to lie in a tanning bed. Taking guff from nobody, Andy was one of those teenagers who everyone said was “going places,” and the Lake Shore Surf Club was his first taste of leadership’s intoxicating power.

  “If I have to unload these boards by myself, you’ll all be riding short boards this afternoon,” he said. “The other half of your boards will be floating down the Sheboygan River.”

  Instantly the six Lake Shore Surf Club members reemerged from inside the garage, two already holding cold cans of Pabst beer. The boys began unloading plywood scraps from the surf van’s back doors with military precision, as if they’d performed the maneuver numerous times before.

  The lumber was part of a larger course of action that could only be explained as the self-preservation skills of a surfer. Always in need of money, surfers rarely held down jobs since their passion for waves superseded any sort of structured responsibility. So at night, or when the waves were flat, the boys scouted various construction sites around town and when nobody was around, they’d fill the back of their truck with abandoned construction plywood and supplies. When they weren’t chasing waves, they spent their free time cutting out skimboards, sanding the edges, and emblazoning them with hand-painted logos and racing stripes. For a whopping twenty-five dollars apiece, they’d sell their boards at nearly a 100 percent profit for beer money.

  The Williams brothers watched the plywood scraps getting unloaded as if watching heroes in battle. The fact that the heroes had stolen the wood fueled Lee’s and Larry’s passion for the adventurous lifestyle surfing would bring to their mundane lives growing up between two of Wisconsin’s most popular cities—Milwaukee, sixty miles south and Green Bay, sixty miles north.

  Jack and Mary Williams outside their home in 1976

  Located on Sheboygan’s south side, the Williams house was modest and cramped compared to those of their friends who grew up north of the Sheboygan River—the unofficial dividing line between the community’s haves and have nots. Their father, Jack, was a former Coast Guard submarine rescue diver who had spent the first part of his career in the military welding submerged submarines in the Manitowoc shipyards, outfitted with a big brass bell helmet, canvas suit, and lead boots. He learned his trade operating cranes to unload ships with the Seabees in Guam and the Philippines, and it was there that he also acquired the virtues of discipline and responsibility, qualities he tried to instill in his boys. When he ventured down to the beach with his sons to skip stones or shoot twenty-twos along the abandoned army campgrounds, he always promoted the benefits of living just three blocks west of Lake Michigan.

  Lee and Larry’s sense of adventure stemmed from their father. In his earlier days, Jack Williams was an aspiring saddle bronc rider with dreams of making it big in the rodeo. When he broke his shoulder only a few days after arriving on the circuit, everyone from the rodeo pooled thirty-five dollars in bus money and told him, “Kid, this isn’t for you.” With his dreams of being a rodeo star bucked, Jack returned to Sheboygan, where he had been born, to build a new life and family for himself. In recent years Jack had become a first mate on 750-foot ore carriers, delivering coal and ore throughout the Great Lakes. The demanding work schedule kept him traveling for all but a few months a year.

  That schedule left the boys to be raised by their mother, Mary. At less than five feet tall and weighing eighty pounds, she was truly a stick of dynamite. She possessed a volatile combination of emotions that were liable to explode if properly ignited. Her lack of size did little to diminish her spirit. After spending an exhausting day dealing with narcissistic doctors and incompetent hospital staff as a nurse’s aide, she was never in the mood to tolerate any of her boys’ shenanigans. If they looked at her the wrong way or sassed back in the heat of an argument, she stood her ground. The fact Lee and Larry are still alive today is proof that counting to ten in a moment of anger can save lives.

  Following one of the more heated arguments between mother and twins, Lee and Larry, freshly graduated from second grade, tried to avenge their punishment by swiping her new pair of shoes. Caught up in anger, they dumped her shoes in the toilet, poured in an entire box of soap powder, and repeatedly flushed until suds and bubbles overflowed into the hallway.

  Mary thought she was losing her mind. How could her boys be channeling such evil? Yelling at them to stop only made them laugh louder and flush faster. Instead of intensifying the retaliation, she took a moment and sat down at the dinner table to plot out her next move.

  “I’ll give you something to laugh about,” she shouted to them from across the house. Lee and Larry ignored the threat until she walked down the hallway, grabbed both of them by their arms, and marched them into her bedroom, locking the door behind her. With Mary standing in front of a locked bedroom door, the boys’ stopped snickering.

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” Larry asked in the most innocent of tones.

  “I want something to laugh about now, so let’s get dressed to go out,” she replied.

  Mary proceeded to dress her rambunctious boys in outfits of her choosing. Since she was extremely petite, she knew the boys would fit into their new outfits without any problems. Within a few minutes the boys stood aghast, swaddled in dresses, with complementary housecoats and shoes.

  “This isn’t funny,” Larry said.

  “Oh, it is for me,” she answered. “Now let’s go into the kitchen and see what your father thinks of your new outfits.”

  As the three walked the short distance from the bedroom to the kitchen, the boys’ defiance turned to fear as both started to sob. When they were told to sit at the kitchen table for dinner, Jack couldn’t guide the soupspoon into his mouth from laughing so hard.

  “You two look like a couple of Betty Crockers!” he roared.

  For a few moments Lee and Larry continued to bawl, but soon their cries of embarrassment turned into laughter as their father kept cracking jokes at their expense.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Larry snickered. Lee agreed as the two started to play along with Jack’s jokes.

  Not to be foiled, Mary realized she was losing her grasp of the lesson to be learned and played her next move. “All right, boys. Time to go outside and play!”

&
nbsp; Being dressed in women’s clothes made that one of the most terrifying statements any mother could make to a couple of young boys. Lee and Larry’s laugh party was over. When Mary opened the front door, the laughter and banter of neighborhood children sprinkled into the house. The boys’ embarrassment was about to go global. With their luck, a group of their neighborhood friends were playing outside. Any shred of dignity either of the boys possessed was gone. They burst into blubbering sobs, complete with shrieking screams of terror and short, gasping breaths.

  “We’re sorry, Mom,” both blurted repeatedly, as if the more they said it the quicker their actions would be erased off the public record. “We’ll never do that again,” they were willing to swear under oath. Mary had gotten their attention and more importantly, had reinforced that the house was still a dictatorship under her rule.

  Since Lee and Larry’s older brothers—John, ten years older, and Tim, seven years older—were already grown and gone, Mary focused on her twins. She made sure the house was always clean, the car always washed, and the grass always cut. Regardless of her work schedule at the hospital, there was never a time three meals weren’t waiting for her boys at home. If anyone was late, even by a minute, his meal ticket expired, and he was left to fend for himself.

  Being on time was a skill Lee mastered early in life, and he rarely missed a meal. Larry, on the other hand, struggled with an internal clock approximately sixteen minutes behind, a tendency he often blamed on being born second. Thanks to their penchant for sticking together, Larry missed fewer meals than he would have otherwise.

  Regardless of Mary’s efforts to keep her kids well fed, there were summers when they said they weren’t hungry. Little did she or her neighbors realize that the “garden gremlins” plaguing their backyard vegetable plots were actually her sons. After the lights were off in the Williams house and everybody was tucked in bed, Lee and Larry slipped into the warm summer night in search of a midnight snack. Neighbors blamed rabbits, which added to the boys’ fun. The fun soon grew into a competition: who could eat the most without getting caught. Even though the neighbors grew suspicious, they couldn’t fathom local teenagers doing such a thing. Lee and Larry grew so cocky about not getting caught, they brought their own salt and pepper shakers—stolen from local restaurants, of course. Tomatoes, carrots, green peppers, kohlrabies, and soybeans were fair game when they came into season.

  Nobody was a bigger target than Mr. Wakefield, who at eightyfive years old prided himself on being a lifelong gardener and a darn good one at that. His strawberries practically melted in one’s mouth. After nearly two months of raiding his gardens, Lee and Larry dug into a feast one night with confidence. While they were passing the salt and pepper shakers and slicing into the ripe berries with their pocket knives, Mr. Wakefield appeared from around the corner of his house wearing nothing but a nightshirt and brandishing a black iron skillet.

  “What the hell are you two doing out here?” he raged. “I’m gonna squash you hoodlums like a bug!”

  They gawked at him. Stunned into silence. Frozen. But when Mr. Wakefield sprinted toward them, Lee and Larry bolted out of the garden and out of the yard, leaving their salt and pepper shakers behind at the crime scene. Being chased by a cussing old man wielding a frying pan felt surreal to the boys, who ran as fast as they could.

  When Lee caught up to Larry at the foot of a chain link fence, he catapulted his brother over to the other side and proceeded to crawl over it with the agility of a spider. Thinking Mr. Wakefield would give up the chase now that they’d cleared the fence, they paused for a second, but the old man’s resolve only grew stronger as he tromped closer and closer. When his nightshirt caught on the chain link, he growled at the fence and jerked toward the boys, tearing the fabric in one swift motion. No fence was going to stop him from catching the two raiders who had pillaged his precious fruits and vegetables all summer.

  When the brothers sprinted through yet another neighbor’s yard, Larry couldn’t help but think, “We’re athletes. How’s he keeping up with us?”

  It was clear the old man would not be denied—as the fluttering shreds of white nightshirt hanging on a half-dozen chain link fences made clear. Whenever Lee and Larry jumped a fence, Mr. Wakefield was right behind them.

  “He’s got to give up eventually,” Lee panted.

  “He ain’t quitting,” Larry said. “We’ve run over four blocks, and I can still hear him cussing.”

  “Well, maybe it’s because you’ve got tomatoes falling out of your pockets leading him right to us,” Lee said. He pointed to the trail of red bulbs fading into the darkness behind them.

  After ditching the remaining tomatoes, Lee and Larry ducked into a small, unlocked storage shed just a couple houses from home. After about fifteen minutes of waiting while trying to catch their breath, they opened the door.

  “I don’t hear him,” Larry said.

  “He did have on just that night shirt, so chafing may have been an issue,” Lee joked.

  Once the boys realized the coast was clear, Lee decided they had had enough fun for the night. “We gotta get home,” he said. The night sky had begun to lighten, and their dad would be leaving for work any minute. Slinking back into the house, they agreed to find safer forms of entertainment.

  They focused on saving enough of their allowances to buy a pair of matching skimboards from the Lake Shore Surf Club, and they began dividing their summer days between the beach and the garage. They spent their mornings darting across the foamy edges of Lake Michigan’s breaking waves on bullet-shaped plywood. Skimboards were a lot less stable and maneuverable than surfboards because they were smaller and lacked skegs—fins on the bottom used for controlling direction.

  Like many surfers before and after them, Lee and Larry used skimboarding to learn the basics of riding waves. It provided an inexpensive way to grab an adrenaline rush that, although a bit shorter, was almost as intense as the one surfers thrived on. Standing approximately twenty feet from the water, they would wait for their waves. When one ominously surged above the horizon, they’d race toward the water’s edge with boards in hand, as if to joust the oncoming wave. Upon reaching the wet sand, they’d drop their boards while jumping onto them as quickly as possible in mid-stride. If they managed to get the board under their feet without wiping out, they’d skim across the thin layer of moisture above the water-soaked sand. Literally slipping across the slick film of water, they tried to keep their balance while transitioning onto the oncoming wave. Combining a series of tricks on the wave, from skimming over, banking off, and riding it back into shore, Lee and Larry had tasted the potentially addictive endorphins ignited by gliding across a mountain of water.

  By the Fourth of July, the brothers were often joined outside the Lake Shore Surf Club’s garage by a group of friends from their junior high school, including Rocky Groh’s younger brother, Kevin. Kevin had been a friend of the Williams brothers since kindergarten and was often referred to as the third twin by their parents. The previous summer, the three of them had become tired of older kids constantly kicking over their sand castles and beach forts. Kevin decided to exact revenge by burying concrete bricks underneath and walk away. When one of the older guys would walk by to kick over their creation, he got quite a surprise. Often a yelp of pain was followed by a circus of cuss words while he limped away, no longer looking cool as he tried to catch up with his friends.

  Kevin also provided the litmus test for gauging the danger level of a stunt. If he managed to injure himself, but not die, it was worth trying. One summer when Kevin, Lee, and Larry were in elementary school, they ventured over to Motorville, a shop that specialized in selling motorboats and Volkswagen cars. In back by the dumpsters they found abandoned boxes from recently sold outboard motors. Never one to miss an opportunity, the boys dragged the orphaned boxes to the nearby sledding hill that ascended at a steep angle from the foot of the beach. However, in July there was no snow, only dry and prickly grass. Lee and Larry coaxed Ke
vin to take the first ride down the hill on one of the cardboard boxes. Peering down the steep hill, Kevin was unsure but eventually agreed. He took a running start with his box and slid down the hill, going so fast it seemed his makeshift sled would burst into flames. When he made it to the bottom of the hill without combusting or breaking his neck, Lee and Larry raced each other down on their cardboard toboggans to meet him, knowing they had nothing to fear. Daredevil Kevin had proven his mettle many times and when the boys began their skimboard phase, Kevin was right there with them. They would duel each other, performing outlandish tricks to see who could slide along the shore doing the most eclectic combination of 360s, ollies, fire hydrants, flyaways, coffins, bomb drops, and headstands. When the waves were too big and choppy to skim, they’d use their boards as bodyboards for surfing into the shore break.

  They spent most mornings trying out their stunts. In those days before waterproof watches, it was a miracle Lee and Larry didn’t miss more lunches that summer. Following their daily pilgrimage home for lunch, the brothers often spent their afternoons hanging out in the dusty alleyway next to the Lake Shore Surf Club’s garage. But instead of standing alone, they were often joined by Kevin, who didn’t help draw interest from the older guys despite his brother being one of them. Nor did their newly earned status as accomplished skimboarders.

  While the rest of Wisconsin’s teenage boys seemed to be caught up in Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, souped-up sports cars, and big-game hunting, Kevin and the Williams brothers were mesmerized by the Lake Shore Surf Clubbers and what the group represented—a lifestyle born in far-away places like Oahu, Bora Bora, and New Guinea.

  Together, they patiently hung around outside the club’s garage, killing time while hoping to get invited inside for the chance to help sand skimboards, jam to Jan and Dean on the radio, or swap Lake Shore Surf Club jacket patches—the group’s ultimate symbol of acceptance. Maybe if they were in the right spot at the right time, Genyk Okolowicz would ask them to carry his acoustic guitar into the garage after he wowed a group of teenage girls with his poetry and guitar riffs. Andy might need them to carry in pieces of stolen plywood, or Tom could be a hand short with the Friday night keg.