Just north was a break known as the Zoo. It was located on the banks of the Sheboygan Zoo, which at most housed twenty animals. Surfers accessed the water through a service road behind a high chain-link fence that, rumor had it, enclosed one of the meanest bison east of the Mississippi River. Rumor or not, Larry’s little Pomeranian insisted on walking as far away from the fence as possible. The dog’s sense of fear did little to dissuade Larry’s giddiness about his discoveries that morning. As quickly as he could, he raced home to tell his brother about the little corner of the world they’d be able to visit all on their own.
For the next three years, Lee and Larry measured the quality of their previous day’s beach experience by how much sand they found in their bed the next morning. If they found nothing, the previous day wasn’t a good one.
Growing up on Sheboygan’s less privileged south side, Lee and Larry often had little money, and hanging at the beach was the cheapest entertainment in town. Even when ice and snow blanketed the sand, Lee and Larry braved the harshest weather conditions to enjoy the free fun from sunup to sundown. In summer they splashed in one of the world’s largest swimming pools, and in winter one of the world’s largest ice-skating rinks was just a couple blocks from their house.
Conversations at the Williams’ dinner table frequently concerned Lee and Larry’s growing fascination with the beach. Jack Williams, having grown up on the water, promoted their passion. Mom, on the other hand, couldn’t swim a stroke and struggled to comprehend the whole surfing craze and beach lifestyle that was sweeping the country. Fearing the unknown, she forbade them from stepping into the water when there was the slightest chance of snow or accumulated crust of ice on the edge of the lake—end of conversation. The boys countered her policy with cloak and dagger resistance.
One Easter weekend when they were thirteen, Mary and Jack Williams crashed out for a Sunday afternoon nap. Downstairs in the basement, Lee and Larry plotted to meet their friends, who were surfing in seasonably slushy waters. Putting on their wetsuits underneath their clothes, the boys opened the basement window as quietly as possible in hope of sneaking out. But the hinges creaked loud enough to cause the dogs to bark three doors down. Only their father’s chainsaw snoring masked their getaway as they slid their board out in front of them. Clear of any immediate obstructions, Lee and Larry headed for the water, not even considering how they’d sneak back into the house later. They thought only of catching a couple of waves. Without boots, gloves, or hoods, they wouldn’t last much longer than a couple of waves in the frigid Lake Michigan waters.
Upon arriving at the beach, Lee and Larry counted only a few brave souls in the water. Around the bonfire, which had been roaring on the shore long enough to melt a ring of sand between the flames and snow-covered beach, stood a handful of Easter Day surfers from the Great Lakes Surf Club. The fire’s glowing embers did little to comfort those who had already wiped out in the chilled waters. From the look of the waves, they’d gotten hit just as the impact of the water tore the board out from under them. Without ankle leashes, the wipeout victims—freezing hair and all—had to retrieve their lost boards, often swimming all the way back to shore. It was a guarantee to end one’s day prematurely, left to shiver, hoping to regain feeling in otherwise numb extremities. The club members congregated around the bonfire didn’t even flinch when their legs began steaming, a surefire sign the cold water encapsulating them was leaving their bodies. Even when somebody warmed up, the odds of summoning enough courage to go back out were slim. Those left to sulk around the bonfire spitefully watched the water, cheering for other wipeout victims to join them.
Still, it seemed as soon as someone set down a surfboard—because there weren’t that many around—somebody else would grab it, braving the conditions in a never-ending spiral of oneupmanship. The excitement often led those who had already wiped out to laugh lake water out of their noses when the next guy took an even bigger digger, prematurely ending his wave ride with an ungraceful face-plant. As soon as he rocketed out of the water, a blood-curdling scream that could be heard as far away as Door County preceded his panic-stricken scramble for shore.
None of that fazed Lee and Larry as they walked past the bonfire and stepped into the water. To them, there was something almost religious about surfing. It was freedom that drove them, something they couldn’t explain or experience in other places. “I’m just glad our little slice of heaven is only a few blocks from home,” Lee said as he awaited his first wave in waist-deep water.
Paddling through the shore break, they made it past the lull before reaching a second, more intimidating shore break with massive barrels that continually pounded down in the impact zone. “We’ll definitely be doing seventy percent swimming and thirty percent surfing,” Larry said. “But that’s what surfing on Lake Mi—”
With the force of a kitchen stove being dropped on his face, a distracted Larry was thrown off his board by a series of waves, nearly knocking him silly. Calculating that just one gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds, it must have seemed like nearly two tons of water had thrashed him around like a washing machine. Propelled head-over-heels into a belly flop that skipped him across the water like a stone, Larry was shaken until he finally bounced off the bottom. Regaining his senses, he popped up to the surface while readjusting the broken seams on his wetsuit.
“Whoa,” he roared. “I can’t believe I lived through that!” Shaking his head a few times to recover his senses, he grabbed his board and paddled out again.
Just as he was about to turn around to challenge another wave, he saw Mary and Jack Williams standing on the shoreline, obviously awake from their nap. Dad was grinning ear to ear, knowing his boys had been caught in the act. Mom looked far less pleased.
“Are you crazy?” she yelled. “There’s still ice on the lake!”
“It’s warm, Mom,” Larry said as he walked to shore. “You can’t believe how warm we are in here.”
Unconvinced, Mary demanded Larry unzip his wetsuit. When she was about to place her hand inside, steam billowed out, proving he wasn’t lying. What she didn’t realize was that the five-millimeter layer of neoprene separating Larry’s skin from the water was the result of a fellow surfer’s recent engineering phenomenon.
Prior to 1952, there weren’t a whole lot of options for water-sports enthusiasts to combat the cold. Several grand experiments with bulky canvas jumpers and World War II flight suits had not really worked. Finally Jack O’Neill, a hardcore surfer in northern California, stitched together a suit of synthetic rubber, called neoprene, so he could continue riding waves when the water started getting cold. As Mary learned that afternoon, the suits didn’t work by keeping the surfer dry, but rather by letting the water in and having the surfer’s body heat warm it inside the suit. From that day forward, Lee and Larry had their mother’s blessing to push the limits of surfing in even colder water, surrounded by even bigger icebergs, engaging even bigger waves.
Although she never truly understood it, Mary tried to take an interest in her sons’ growing passion, often asking what the adrenaline rush felt like. “Not everyone can do it,” Larry told her. “It’s like walking a tightrope on a windy day where there’s just that little window of when you’re riding the wave and having the courage to do it. With the goal being just over that next wave, you’re spinning that surfboard around as fast as you can and paddling hard to catch that wave to get the rush, regardless if it’s two feet or ten.”
She looked at him with a motherly mix of interest and concern. Lee stepped in. “Once you make it out there and you sit up on your board like you’re sitting on a kitchen chair, you don’t even think about the wiggles, the waggles, the chop, the wind. To get covered up or get a little head dip on a two-footer when you’re on the nose can be as big a rush as dropping down a ten-foot face and you’re just inches away from being eaten alive by that wave. Then you look around and the people in the lineup are your best friends. That’s what it’s all about, Mom.”
Mom nodded, understanding a little bit better now but still unsure.
That spring after their first winter of surfing, the Williams brothers were willing to do whatever it took to encourage the seasonal surf to arrive as quickly as possible. Applying what they had learned during the school year about Roman mythology, they decided to make Neptune, the god of water, an offering. So on a brisk Saturday evening, Lee, Larry, Kevin, Rich Kuitert, and Jeff Schultz built a bonfire on the beach. They filled an empty fivegallon paint bucket with lake water, beach grass, urine, dead alewife fish, a used condom they found on the sand, and an old rusty bed spring to signify their appreciation for waves. Within moments, the burning stench filled the air, nearly gagging them. Only a teenager focused on tempting the surf gods could tolerate the burning in his eyes and nausea percolating in his stomach. Caught up in the moment, the young surfers danced around their boiling kettle of stink, chanting made-up words as they raised driftwood spears into the air. Their offensive concoction of solemn-o-juice drew more attention from lakefront residents living downwind than it drew from the surf gods, but enough waves arrived the following weekend for the boys to feel their tribal ceremony had made a difference, justifying future offerings in the years to come.
As the snowdrifts melted, blossoms filled the cherry trees and dandelions popped up even in the most manicured lawns. The signs of spring signaled summer’s approach. While most fathers of middle-school boys marked the season by breaking in a new baseball glove or by spending a Saturday afternoon restocking a fishing tackle box, Jack Williams was left smelling the unmistakable aroma of burning wax emanating from the family kitchen.
Hosting their very own impromptu wax party with friends, Lee and Larry put the solid paraffin wax bars into emptied fivepound coffee cans, which then were placed over the stove to boil into liquid. The wax, often used for canning, smelled nothing like the scented coconut versions available in later years, and the odor lingered for days. The technique of waxing surfboards to increase traction for feet and hands had been around since at least the early 1900s, when candle droppings were wiped to a clean sheen with a cloth.
Once the wax had melted, the boys poured the liquid concoction onto their boards. They waxed the boards outside for obvious reasons. It was like dousing gasoline onto a new lawn and often resulted in a perfect white outline of a surfboard where all the wax had melted into the grass.
Taking their newly waxed board to the beach, Lee and Larry would rub sand in the glossy wax to make it more abrasive and grip-able. Although this was the trendy thing to do, the sand on the board’s surface rubbed against their skin like sandpaper, often chewing big holes through their wetsuits. Rubbing knees and toes raw, the technique left behind what are affectionately called surfer knots. Before the open wounds hardened into calluses, they often got infected from the dirty storm water and big surf churning up sediment off the lake bottom. The infections did little to deter Lee and Larry. Though swollen and sore, they were often back surfing two or three days later with a new wax job on their board.
Lee graduated from Farnsworth Junior High School that spring. Larry was held back a year in the fifth grade for what he cited as, “The teachers thinking I was so intelligent, they chose to keep me around for another year to see what else they could learn.” With the warmer weather, their focus returned to the Great Lakes Surf Club. They were no longer rookies, but rather a group of boys eager to be more daring with their surfing excursions.
Although surfing off Sheboygan’s coal yards didn’t have the glamour of Australia’s Gold Coast or San Diego’s La Jolla Shores, the boys remained as committed as ever. During the winter they had upgraded to brand new Wardy surfboards. Mail ordered from California at the cost of one hundred and fifty dollars plus an extra twenty-five for shipping, the boards were heavy, weighing nearly fifty pounds each. They were quite the behemoths for the brothers, who weighed in the neighborhood of seventy-five pounds apiece. On more than one occasion while in transit from the beach, the boards tipped off the heads of their transporters onto the concrete sidewalk, but never once did they chip or show any signs of damage. Their durability guaranteed that Lee and Larry would have no problem recouping their investment by surfing unmercifully on Lake Michigan that summer. The boards’ invincibility fueled the boys’ sense of immortality as they continually dared one another in outrageous challenges of one-upmanship.
With Kevin Groh in tow that first weekend of summer vacation in 1967, the Williams brothers, with freshly waxed surfboards in hand, stood alongside the banks of the Sheboygan River. Looking at the water that divided the city—physically, sociologically, and financially—they were all too familiar with this forced detour in their daily pilgrimage between their house on the south side and their favorite surf breaks to the north.
On a dare born out of frustration, birthed from constantly having to route themselves over two miles to cross the river on the Eighth Street bridge, the three boys stared across the river at the US Coast Guard station. Aware that the closely guarded channel was too dangerous to accommodate any sort of pedestrian traffic with ore carriers, sailboats, fishing vessels, and a wicked current, they measured up the two hundred yards in front of them. “Well, who’s gonna put their board in first?” Kevin challenged.
Lee and Larry looked at each other and then back at Kevin—a daring gaze, which was immediately returned. They all threw their surfboards into the river.
“Last one to the other side is a valley cowboy,” Lee yelled, knowing nobody wanted to be labeled as an inland surfer. That was an insult worse than “gremmie” or “dork” or “hodad.”
As soon as the Coast Guard officer on duty saw the surfboards splash into the river, he sounded the emergency claxon and bellowed into the PA system, “There are bodies in the navigation channel!”
With the emergency sirens blaring, a Coast Guard cutter jetted out of the Sheboygan Harbor toward the paddling trio with the specific instructions, “Get those people out of the water, now!”
Treating the claxon as a starting gun, the boys raced across the harbor, with the ultimate prize being to not get arrested. Unbeknownst to them, the harbor was hosting a sailboat race that day. The same waves on the lake that motivated Lee, Larry, and Kevin to surf on the north side of town that morning were too big to safely host boats dependent on wind. Once the first sailboat silently passed their waterlogged noggins, the boys’ paddling went from a steady hustle to avoid the Coast Guard to a frantic flailing in hopes of keeping their heads, literally.
The lightning-class sailboats whizzed across the waters completely unaware of the boys. When the spectators and boat skippers began to notice the human buoys bobbing in the water on their boards, they shouted at them, “Get out before you get yourselves killed!”
But the scolding and yelling only strengthened the boys’ resolve to disrupt the afternoon’s status quo. It was no longer a daring race between friends, but rather a test to see if three teenagers could out-swim, outmaneuver, and outsmart a Coast Guard cutter in hot pursuit without getting sliced apart by an oncoming sailboat—all while making it to the other side first.
The boys reached the shore within strokes of one another, navigating the choppy water and landing on the riverbank’s north side before the Coast Guard cutter or any race official could catch up. Now on foot, the three disappeared into the labyrinth of alleyways behind the town’s main street shops. Although a police dragnet would have most likely found them, Sheboygan didn’t have enough law enforcement personnel to go chasing thrill-seeking teenagers. Lee, Larry, and Kevin had pulled off their stunt and fulfilled the surfers’ mantra of pushing the limits at any cost.
Word soon traveled throughout Sheboygan’s surfing circles of their race across the river, earning them instant street credibility. Although it didn’t generate an invitation into the Lake Shore Surf Club, the incident did give them confidence and a reason to feel more accepted among their peers.
A few weeks later, Larry was heading to the beach to meet up with t
he Great Lakes Surfing Club members. After passing the Optenberg’s Ironworks factory with a skimboard under his arm, he noticed Andy Sommersberger’s red and white Dodge van approaching. Larry expected to be ignored despite wearing a Hawaiian shirt decorated with surfboards and a pair of tattered cutoffs. Instead, as he drove by, Andy gave a modest wave. Larry was stunned—and elated. He finally received the sliver of acknowledgement he had craved for nearly two years. He spent the rest of his trek to the sand in a haze, eager to tell the others but in some ways wanting to savor the moment all by himself.
Chapter Three
During one of the last days of summer vacation that year, Larry and Lee’s kook board mysteriously disappeared. Since they lived in Sheboygan, a town where theft was practically non-existent, especially of a surfboard, the list of suspects was short. No APBs blared across the police radio band. No warrants were issued to search residential homes. And no private detectives were hired to solve “the case of the missing surfboard.”
For weeks, rumors of the board’s whereabouts persisted—some serious, some nothing more than snickering wisecracks. It wasn’t surprising that the suspects were a group of upperclassmen on the eve of their senior year looking to reestablish their age dominance over the young surfers. As the Great Lake Surf Club’s elder statesmen, Lee and Larry decided to bide their time, knowing a one-hundred-pound cigar box couldn’t inconspicuously hide in Sheboygan forever.
Their investigation led them to the beach, specifically the city lifeguard station. There, perched behind the counter, along with three members of the Lake Shore Surf Club, was the surfboard. “We’ll take OUR surfboard back now!” Larry said sternly.
The biggest of the three adversaries took a long drag from his cigarette, puffed out his chest in a show of defiance, and replied in a low monotone: “No.”
Some Like It Cold Page 5