Some Like It Cold

by William Povletich

  The coveted Lake Shore Surf Club patch

  But such opportunities for servitude never arose, and the boys would eventually leave to focus on how to acquire an actual longboard, which would increase their status within the surfing circle. But between them, they were flat broke and a decent, new surfboard would cost well over one hundred and fifty dollars.

  Although emulating the club members in any way possible—from their clothes, their slang, and their music to their style of pushing the limits on the beach—Lee, Larry, and Kevin knew they couldn’t consider themselves surfers until somebody else referred to them that way. So like most budding surfers, they would have to abide by the maverick laws that governed the Lake Shore Surf Club.

  Sheboygan’s surfing community—like so many around the world—made its own rules and hierarchy in which the better surfers enjoyed the greater fruits of the lifestyle. Andy Sommersberger was king of the Lake Shore Surf Club pyramid of power. Everyone else ranked below him. If word came down from Andy on any issue, it was recognized as law. His strictest rule was never to disrespect anyone who ranked higher in the hierarchy. If someone didn’t figure out that simple fact fast enough, he suffered some public embarrassment. The first offense often earned a slap behind the ear and a warning to straighten up. A second offense warranted getting stuffed into a garbage can or dropped off in some field in the middle of nowhere, wearing only his skivvies, with no way to get home. That was the law on the beach and nobody questioned it.

  Accepting the rules and the hierarchy was part of being a member of the club—as was receiving a nickname. Anyone who surfed long enough or was crazy enough within the Lake Shore Surf Club circles was given one. Nicknames were earned and couldn’t be self-applied. Andy was called “Garbage” for being such a trash talker and for being able to eat anything, especially on a dare. There was also Tom “Tommy Z” Ziegler, a simple nickname that was intoxicating to the ladies. Bill Kuitert was called “Wipeout Willie,” more for the alliteration than his surfing style. Riding the hottest noserider model at the time, Randy “Weber” Grimmer was nicknamed after the famous surfboard’s designer, Dewey Weber. Until Andy recognized them as surfers or they got nicknames, Larry, Lee, and Kevin would be nothing but annoying gremmies—surfer slang for an inexperienced wannabe.

  Whenever they saw Andy Sommersberger bolting around town in his old red Dodge van with big white Lake Shore Surf Club letters painted on the sides, tires jacked up in the back and decked out surfboards tied on top, the Williams boys recognized how he epitomized what California surfing was all about. If they felt for a moment that they, too, were part of that culture, Andy put them in their place by not offering so much as a casual wave or even a glance, leaving them behind in a cloud of green exhaust.

  Lee, Larry, and Kevin felt they were surfers on the inside, but they wanted to know what it took to be accepted as a surfer on the outside. Andy, Tom, Randy, and the rest of the club often tried to draw attention to their outlaw status by wearing something outrageous—German World War II helmets, floppy sombreros, or straw hats—and the younger boys did the same. But no matter what kooky ensemble Kevin, Lee, or Larry pulled from their closets, they were never noticed standing outside the garage. And then, just when they were ready to give up hope of recognition, they caught a break.

  Kevin’s older brother, Rocky, covertly invited them to their first Lake Shore Surf Club party. “Just know your role and don’t screw it up for all of us,” Rocky warned Kevin. The three were invited to hang out, but only to speak when spoken to and only to enter the water when the older members were too distracted with their beer and their girlfriends to notice.

  That night, the excited trio traipsed to Optenburg’s Iron Works Beach and were awed by the scene. Hypnotized by it. Bonfires blazed in three separate fire pits, forming an inner circle of mayhem. The sounds of the party—girls shrieking, guys roaring, tires squealing, and electric guitars blaring out of car stereos—would’ve prompted neighbors to call the police, except that this uninhabited corner of Sheboygan was well out of sight from passing traffic and inquisitive cops.

  Engines revved, tires screeched, and headlights appeared out of the darkness. A parade of ’57 Chevy Bel-Airs, Nomads, paneled ’56 Ford station wagons, and ’50 Oldsmobiles with surfboards hanging out of the trunk skidded into curbside parking spots, quickly filling both sides of the street. The ominous shadow of a rusty Dodge van hissed down the street, knocking over two municipal trash cans as it came to a smoldering halt against the curb. Andy Sommersberger jumped out, orphaning the surfboard in the passenger seat. From the back seat, Tom Ziegler appeared, followed by a six-pack of giggling girls. As Andy and Tom followed the girls toward the party, Lee, Larry and Kevin watched from atop a nearby sand dune, silently taking in the entire scene.

  “Are those guys boss or what?” Larry asked.

  “They sure know how to host a hooter,” Lee answered, trying to sound as cool as the older guys.

  Tanned honeys and drunken surfers writhed the Watusi to the sounds of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, the Shirelles, the Four Seasons, the Coasters, Bo Diddley, and Elvis. When the tunes slowed to make-out music—Johnny Mathis, the Platters, and Andy Williams—they clung to each other like magnets.

  Even though the party had been raging since dusk, no fights broke out, only the occasional drunken debate over who won the last chugalug contest. The more drunk the partiers got, the more they flopped onto the shabby couches dragged onto the sand, making out and grabbing and groping in ways that Frankie and Annette never did in movies like Beach Blanket Bingo.

  Even when Randy Grimmer, crooked German helmet and all, fiendishly grabbed hold of the keg spigot and rained beer down on the hordes of people in front of him, nobody even flinched as their sweaty bodies continued to move, groove, and grind to the music.

  Lee, Larry, and Kevin had been perched on the dune for almost three hours. For Lee, the excitement of being invited to watch the party from afar began to wear off, and he finally said, “I’m heading home.”

  “But this is the party of the year,” Larry said. “Who knows when we’ll be invited back?”

  “You call this being invited?” Lee shot back. “Maybe if we’re really lucky they’ll ask us to clean up after them.”

  “But this is the surfing lifestyle.”

  “Then where’s the surfing? All I see is us sitting on a pile of sand like seagulls waiting to get fed. Surfing is about getting on a board. You can have the lifestyle.” Lee sauntered away, heading off toward home in the warm summer air.

  Larry watched him go before calling out, “I’m here whenever they invite me. This is the place to be, man.”

  On the sand, the flowing beer and rocking music kept everyone in a frothy, romantic mood. Andy Sommersberger, Mark Hall, and Bill Kuitert were ankle deep in sand, dancing slowly, pressed against their dates. Tom Ziegler was making out with a local Betty on the sand-covered couch. Randy had finally crashed out, peacefully snoozing alongside that same sand-covered couch. While Genyk let the Platters’ ballad play, he quietly strummed along with his acoustic guitar for a small audience of love-struck girls.

  When the party quietly slipped from the beach into the catacombs of the Sheboygan neighborhoods around midnight, Kevin and Larry kept quietly perched, hoping to get invited to one of the after-parties. The closest they got was when a few slumping and stumbling members gave them drunken shoutouts of “Hey man,” or “Dude, what a helluva party.”

  When Tommy Ziegler, who looked like the twin brother of international surfing sensation Miki Dora, strode by with an armful of ladies, Larry and Kevin perked up, but were once again completely ignored as the posse ventured a few blocks south into a local bar. For Tommy, the party was just getting started as he proceeded to jump on stage with the band to sing along on a few songs. When he wasn’t riffing on stage, he was tearing up the dance floor, wooing women with his smooth moves. By the end of the night, he’d have two older women hanging off his arms. But no matte
r how late he was out partying, Tom was sure to be in the water surfing the next morning. Kevin, Lee, and Larry would be there too.

  The trio sat atop the sand dune with a clear view of the Lake Michigan shore. The entire Lake Shore Surf Club was in the water, seemingly recovered from the previous night’s hedonism. Tom was as graceful riding a wave that morning as he had been on the dance floor a few hours earlier. He was cross-stepping and nose riding while tearing up the waves with a laid back style nobody could touch. Never raising his hands above his waist or placing his feet farther apart than his shoulders, Tom was flawless on the board, no matter the size or chop of the wave. Among the Sheboygan surfers, he was considered the best longboarder on the local surf circuit.

  After an hour of taking in the scene, Lee, Larry, and Kevin saw Rocky heading down to catch his first waves of the morning. Under his arm was a new Con Ugly Noserider Surfboard that he had bought recently for an astronomical two hundred and thirty-eight dollars. At the time, that was a lot of money. You could buy a real good junker of a car for only five hundred bucks. But none of his friends thought Rocky was crazy after capturing their first wave on the new board. America agreed. That two-footwide board with a flexible nose quickly became the number one nose-riding board in the country.

  And it was about to send three boys on the ride of their lives. Noticing them sitting patiently, Rocky trotted over to them. “You want to take it out?” he asked.

  “Us?” Larry replied. He was stunned.

  “What’s the catch?” Lee asked.

  Rocky shrugged. “Just trying to be nice to my brother and his friends. You’ve been hanging around us long enough to deserve a chance to prove yourselves.”

  The boys all looked at each other, still unsure whether Rocky was playing a joke.

  Rocky said, “Hey, I can’t surf today anyway.” Earlier in the week, when there wasn’t any surf, Andy Sommersberger and the boys had taken their motorboat onto the water to tow the surfboards—sort of a makeshift water-skiing/surfing excursion. Rocky’s wetsuit had been in the bottom of the boat soaking in a puddle of gasoline. When Rocky put the wetsuit on the next morning, he quickly got a full-body, bright-red rash. The pain was excruciating. It was a small price to pay for a bunch of adrenaline junkies looking to push the envelope whenever possible.

  By the time Kevin, Larry, and Lee decided to accept the invitation, Rocky’s board sat perched in the sand, on the outskirts of the Lake Shore Surf Club’s temporary beach camp of towels and coolers. Kevin approached the board like a first-time cat burglar, knowing he could be scolded at any moment for even entertaining the thought of surfing alongside Andy, Tommy, and the rest. Hoping not to be noticed, Lee and Larry stepped off the sand dune, following about fifty yards behind Kevin, who nervously lugged the board toward the shoreline. None of the guys in the water noticed him, focused instead on keeping their balance in the thrashing waves.

  Kevin hit the water with Lee and Larry right behind him, all of them waiting for their fantasy to end with a harsh comment from the older guys. Instead, they found the Lake Shore surfers going about their business, completely uninterested in the boys down shore.

  The trio spent the rest of the morning teaching themselves the nuances of balancing atop the longboard while navigating some pretty intimidating waves. Although they never lasted more than a handful of seconds atop the board, it was enough to experience the adrenaline rush that only surfing can evoke in a man’s soul.

  As Lee, Larry, and Kevin paddled out into the Lake Michigan surf, they were about to realize the importance of respect—in this case, respect for the wave—by being taught their first of many life lessons through surfing. Each of them ignored their fear of the unknown as they came closer to the waves’ intoxicating impact zone. They discarded their goal of catching a manageable wave to surf, exchanging that goal for the glory they could achieve by surfing the largest of arcing barrels, despite their inexperience. After being thrashed around by several waves, where nature’s law of survival of the fittest plays no favorites, they took a more rational approach when the next set of white-tipped waves approached. When the initial endorphin rush gave way to other sensations, their fears subsided, allowing them to communicate with the swells, sensing the rhythm and natural language of the waves. That morning, the three boys were introduced to the deeper meaning of what it meant to be on a lifelong quest for the perfect wave, as only a surfer atop a wave on a surfboard can truly experience.

  The following week, Kevin, Lee, and Larry continued to hang around the Lake Shore Surf Club, thinking they had, at last, earned attention as legitimate surfers. No dice. They were as invisible as they’d been before.

  Lee had suffered long enough. “I’m out,” he told Larry and Kevin. “You can spend the rest of your summer standing outside this garage or chasing these guys around, but I’ve got better stuff to do with my time.”

  “But we’re so close to being accepted,” Larry said. “And we never would’ve got to ride Rocky’s board if we hadn’t put our time in.”

  “Rocky would never admit it,” Kevin said, “but these guys like having us around. Their girlfriends dig how they let us be their charity cases.”

  “Let’s go ahead and ask them to let us be members,” Larry said. Lee shook his head. He didn’t want to be there to watch them wipe the floor with his eager brother. He wanted to be acknowledged as a surfer but he had his pride, too.

  Following an awkward silence, the boys decided to go home for the day. They walked back without saying a word, each of them thinking about how to resolve the situation. School would start again in a few weeks, and they’d spent the entire summer trying to be surfers.

  The next morning, Larry awoke with the roosters as the sun peeked over the glassy waters of Lake Michigan. He jumped out of bed and ventured down to the garage alone. As a man on a mission, he dismissed Lee’s theory of never being accepted into the group as nothing more than a lack of effort. The only reason they weren’t members yet was because they hadn’t outright asked. Shyness was for wimps.

  Marching down the alleyway, Larry kept talking through the script, determining everyone’s responses. He had imagined the conversation with Andy, Tom, and Randy all night, a process that kept him awake into the wee hours of the morning. By the time he walked into the garage, his membership request had been universally accepted in his own mind with a hearty “Welcome to the club, Larry, and here’s your honorary patch.”

  Instead, Andy Sommersberger, who had been crashed out on the couch until awakened by the creaking door, peeked with one eye open and growled, “Who let you in here, gremmie?”

  Still confident but caught slightly off guard by Andy’s aggression, Larry stuck to his script. “We want to become members of the Lake Shore Surf Club.”

  Without pause, Andy fired back, “Get out, you snot-nosed punk. Who do you think you are asking to be a member of our club?”

  “We’ve spent the entire summer hanging out, just waiting to become part of the Sheboygan surfing scene,” Larry said, his voice cracking just slightly. “We’ve earned the chance.”

  “The club is no place for a bunch of bare-chested kids. There’s too much drinking and womanizing going on. You don’t even have your driver’s licenses yet.”

  The last snipe silenced Larry, who lowered his head and moped out of the garage. It was clear, even to the ever-hopeful Larry, that the club would never acknowledge them as surfers or let them join. He slowly shuffled his way back home, feeling that everything he’d done all summer was, as Lee said, a complete waste of time.

  When he got home he told Lee about the conversation, including the qualifier about obtaining driver’s licenses, which was still two long years away. Larry admitted Lee had been right all along and prepared himself for an I-told-you-so.

  Instead, Lee said, “Why can’t we form our own surf club? Who says they own the exclusive rights to surfing in Sheboygan?”

  Larry perked right up. Of course. If they couldn’t join the cool club
they’d start a new one. And by the end of the conversation, the Great Lakes Surf Club was born.

  Chapter Two

  Modeling their creation after the Lake Shore Surf Club, Lee and Larry began recruiting a handful of friends. Some had aspirations, like Lee and Larry, of one day being accepted by the Lake Shore Surf Club. Others were just looking for something exciting to do during the remaining dog days of August before school started.

  The group’s first official member was Kevin Groh, and they quickly grew to about two-dozen strong. Unlike the Lake Shore gang, the Great Lakes Surf Club not only accepted, but actually encouraged girls to join. The boys figured the club needed the extra revenue from memberships, and the offer was also a great excuse to spark up a conversation with a cutie. Much to their surprise, the local girls thought it was cool to be part of a surf club. Within a week of hatching their idea, the Great Lakes Surf Club was hosting its own nightly bonfires at the beach. By partying around the same fire pit, near the same sand dune every night, kids in search of their friends knew where the action would be.

  The excitement Lee and Larry cultivated for the Great Lakes Surf Club spilled into the start of the school year. During lunch, while most of their classmates hung out on the playground, shot hoops, or played kickball, Lee, Larry, and a handful of friends took advantage of the open-campus policy by sprinting the two blocks from Farnsworth Junior High School to the beach. Picking up their skimboards along the way, they’d spend the entire lunch hour riding waves. Because the dress code prohibited them from wearing shorts to school, they’d board with their jeans on rather than waste time changing clothes. Often they returned to school right before the final bell and sat at their desks dripping water and sand on the floor below them. Although frustrated beyond words, the teachers could only grit their teeth in silence since no dress code rules were technically broken.