Some Like It Cold

by William Povletich

  The couple was so stoked to surf Lake Michigan, they had forgotten to check the weather conditions ahead of time. The waves that year were small. But the couple showed no sign of disappointment as Larry spent the afternoon with them, tearing it up on the little two-footers. “Surfing in Sheboygan really exists,” they hooted and hollered. “We can’t wait to tell our friends!”

  Those sorts of stories prompted visitors from around the globe to arrive in Sheboygan with boards under their arms. Lee and Larry began promoting their hometown’s attributes to national newspapers, radio stations, and television news reporters looking for the next “feel-good” story. Never once bragging about the waves, they focused on what made riding waves in Sheboygan so special—the opportunity to share their experiences and great surfing conditions with anybody willing to visit and have a good time.

  “Hey, it’s water. And since nobody owns it, we just share it,” Larry often explained, echoing the Hawaiian philosophy of surfing. “The aloha spirit is probably at its thickest here on the Great Lakes. There is no attitude here. We share everything on the beach, from beer and food to wetsuits and surfboards.”

  Larry took great pride in the fact that his son was carrying on those same attributes. It seemed the older Tanner got, the more he looked up to his father despite their occasional battles over homework. Never one to be labeled a “dedicated student” by his teachers, he always struggled through assignments, knowing that if his grades weren’t good enough he would be forbidden from entering surfing competitions. So when Tanner was assigned a report on his favorite hero, Larry offered some suggestions—skateboarder Tony Hawk, BMX freestyle rider Scott Freeman, or pipeline master Kelly Slater. He knew Tanner worshipped those guys.

  Tanner looked up from his notebook and said, “I’m going to do it on you.”

  Larry was stunned. And speechless.

  Tanner said, “You may not know everything, but you sure aren’t afraid of anything.”

  Larry smiled at his son, knowing all the while that he was terrified about raising Tanner as a single parent. For the next couple of years, he combated those fears by actively participating in his development as a student, surfer, and rebelling teenager. Larry understood how his boy was turning into a typical fourteenyear-old, consumed with all the hormones and attitude. By the summer of 1994, Tanner was already six feet tall and weighed one hundred and forty pounds. Like most teenage boys, he pushed his father away in an attempt to establish his own independence. Larry tried his best to understand Tanner’s feelings while somehow keeping him on the right track.

  On a warm July afternoon that summer, Larry was busy waxing a surfboard on his front porch. From a distance, he could hear Tanner holding court on the trunk of a friend’s car along the curb in front of their house as a handful of his closest friends joked around. Larry always enjoyed watching Tanner with his buddies. He listened as they talked about teenage stuff—girls, music, clothes, school.

  Then one of the boys jumped into the driver’s seat, thinking it would be funny to race around the neighborhood with Tanner still sitting on the trunk. As the car accelerated to forty miles an hour, the driver spun a U-turn, throwing Tanner from the car and into the street.

  He died right in front of Larry from a fractured skull.

  Chapter Eight

  As paramedics tried unsuccessfully to revive Tanner, a part of Larry Williams died on the pavement that afternoon. Watching his son being loaded into the back of the ambulance, he was consumed by anguish. He couldn’t breathe. He felt nauseated but could not vomit. His baby wasn’t supposed to die. He never said good-bye. All Larry could do was break down in tears as the ambulance pulled away.

  A few days later, Tanner’s funeral was held along the Sheboygan shoreline. Nearly seventy-five family members and Great Lakes surfers paddled out past the Elbow, Tanner’s favorite break, to hold a surfers’ version of a wake. The group arranged themselves in a circle and placed leis and flowers in the middle. When Lee swam forward to give a little speech, he made sure he and Larry were holding Tanner’s favorite surfboard. Lee’s comments about Tanner, and about the loss of a young man who held so much promise, left the group sniffling and sobbing as they spread the ashes across Lake Michigan’s calm, glassy waters.

  After the funeral, surfers from around the globe asked Larry if they could spread Tanner’s remaining ashes across some of world’s most famous surfing destinations. With Lee and Trevor’s help, Larry spooned ashes into Ziploc sandwich bags and addressed them to his friends Mark Fragale in Waimea Bay, Hawaii; Lester Priday in Australia; and Peter Pan in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Additional packages were sent to those in the Florida Keys, Huntington Beach, California, and Cloudbreak, Fiji, who knew Tanner personally.

  Tanner’s funeral on Lake Michigan

  Afterward, Larry was forced to confront the paradox of grief—wanting to be free of the overwhelming pain of the loss while grasping for any reminder of the loved one. As the weeks passed, Larry’s heartache spiraled into a deep depression. He struggled to eat and sleep, and often awoke in cold sweats from night terrors, feeling as if he could have or should have done more to prevent the accident. At work he managed to focus well enough to do his job operating eighty-ton steam locomotives but found himself lost, for the most part, in a fog of despair. He drifted away from his family and friends and turned to alcohol to drown the pain.

  Later that summer at the annual Sheboygan Brat Days Festival, a mutual friend approached Lee and Mitch while waiting in line for cheese curds. “Your brother’s in bad shape,” she told them. “He’s sitting in the middle of a field, drunk as a skunk, and speaking in tongues.”

  Lee turned to Mitch and, without saying a word, headed toward his brother. He found Larry a few minutes later surrounded by a nest of empty beer cans. “I . . . have . . . no . . . reason . . . to . . . move . . . on,” Larry stuttered as tears gushed from his bloodshot eyes.

  Lee crouched down and calmly said, “Let’s go home.”

  As they sat in the car, neither one spoke. Lee focused on the road while Larry wiped away tears and tried to contain his sobs. When they arrived at Larry’s house, Lee walked him up the stairs and laid him down in bed, fully clothed.

  “I can’t make the pain stop,” Larry said.

  Lee knew there was nothing he could say to comfort his brother. Larry’s sorrow was one he had never experienced. So he acted on instinct, leaning in to hug his brother. For nearly an hour, he held his brother tight as Larry cried himself to sleep.

  Larry awoke the next morning fully clothed, still smelling of alcohol. When he lifted his head off the pillow, his heart began its daily ache, but he refused to be incarcerated by grief for another day—which was already a lot longer than Tanner would have tolerated. Larry decided this would be the day he started moving on. After taking a long, hot shower, he combed his hair, dressed in his favorite Dewey Weber t-shirt, and decided to start the first day of the rest of his life on his favorite stretch of property on the entire planet—the beach.

  Stepping off his porch and onto the sidewalk, Larry took the first of several deep breaths that morning in hopes of keeping the rush of emotions from overtaking him. Casually striding down the sidewalk, he smiled and exchanged hellos with passers-by who were unaware that each step he took brought him back to life. The closer he got to the sand and surf, the more the lake rejuvenated his senses—the sky looked bluer, the air smelled fresher, and even the waves crashing on shore sounded crisper. Arriving in time for first light, he scanned the lake to the horizon, finding a momentary peace in its vastness. He took off his shoes and walked toward the water, sensing each granule of sand sifting through his toes. It had been months since he had been in touch with the beach on such an emotional level, and he admitted to himself, “I’ve been away too long.”

  As thoughts of Tanner cruised through his consciousness, Larry understood that memories of anything, especially a person or an event, were always less than the whole. The recollection of his son’s
death was becoming less than nothing, leaving him with fewer mental images and feelings. He could no longer remember whole thoughts, just fragments of his surf-crazed teenager getting more waves than any kid had ever gotten on the Great Lakes. Although their briefness initially scared him, Larry’s flashbacks made him smile. He couldn’t help but cherish them. Coming back to Lake Michigan served as the best therapy possible for Larry to work his way out of depression. He reconnected with what made him happy.

  Caught up in a reverie, he found himself standing in waist-high water, still fully dressed in his t-shirt and jeans. As each wave rolled over him, the grime of grief and months of inactivity seemed to wash off his arms and legs. Without a board, he paddled out, venturing farther away from shore as each stroke seemed part of an emotional journey that reunited him with the water. Aimlessly floating along the undulating waves, Larry couldn’t imagine a better way to spend the first day of the rest of his life.

  Returning to surf the lake with friends provided Larry with the best therapy possible.

  In the days and weeks that followed, surfing provided Larry’s best therapy. He spent nearly every weekend at the beach, hooting and hollering with the handful of his closest friends who had been there with him from the start. The group of guys—Larry, Lee, Kevin Groh, Mark Rakow, Mark Wente, and Teek Phippen—seemed to spend more time telling stories over beers than actually surfing. Often dehydrated and physically spent after spending nearly seven hours a day doing one of the most intense aerobic workouts known to man, the surfers felt the only thing that could refresh them was a cold beer. Insisting cheap beer tasted the best after surfing, Mark Rakow raised his empty brown-and-white aluminum can in the air and proclaimed, “From this day forward, we shall call ourselves the Blatz Surf Team.”

  When Lee, Larry, Kevin, Teek, and Mark Wente raised their cans and replied, “Here’s to Team Blatz,” they had no idea how their decades-long friendship, built on surfing, had solidified into the symbolic gesture of raising a can of Blatz beer. Taking the joke a step further, Mark Rakow decided later to sew an old Blatz cloth patch onto the back of his maroon-hooded sweatshirt. Lee and Larry thought it would be fun to start issuing team jackets. Taking plain Dickies work jackets, which looked like beer delivery truck jackets, and putting large Blatz patches on the back and a smaller one on the front, they embroidered “Blatz Surf Team” in large gold letters underneath the patch. To personalize the jackets, each surfer was given a nickname.

  When Larry decided to issue Lee the first team jacket for his birthday, he sewed “H2O Flea” underneath the front patch. Everyone had been calling his brother “The Waterflea” for years. Larry rolled up the jacket in an emptied twelve-pack box of Blatz and gift-wrapped it. That Christmas, Lee returned the gesture in a gift-wrapped, emptied-out case of Blatz that contained a rolled-up “Longboard Larry”-embroidered jacket.

  Much like the Great Lakes Surf Club of the 1960s, Team Blatz was more about being part of a group than about operating a functional organization. Without drafting a formal charter, declaring an official set of rules, electing officers, or even being sanctioned by the actual beer company in any way, Team Blatz was born. The one rule: the Team Blatz jackets could only be gifted, never purchased, leaving only seven jackets issued beyond the original group of six who toasted one another that fateful afternoon. Whenever they begin zipping up into their wetsuits, waxing their surfboards, and putting on their leashes, those surfers wearing their Team Blatz jackets can’t help but get sentimental. How often do a group of guys that have been surfing for nearly four decades still find themselves acting like teenagers about to catch their first set of waves?

  When they weren’t on the beach surfing or drinking beers, the members of Team Blatz would often socialize at their fellow surfer’s coffee shop, The Weather Center Café, on the Sheboygan riverfront. While many surfers rely on buoys, local television, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site to gather weather reports, the Sheboygan surfers looked to their friend Teek Phippen. The café combined Teek’s two passions in life—surfing and weather. While surfers often mature into amateur meteorologists, Teek found his childhood obsession with Mother Nature to be a valuable tool when he started surfing. Because he kept up with the newest forecasting technology, Sheboygan surfers turned to him when the local weatherman predicted a Canadian clipper currently clobbering the Pacific Northwest would make its way toward Wisconsin in the next couple of days.

  From left to right, Team Blatz members Mark Wente, Larry Williams, and Teek Phippen

  Teek could refine the forecast by focusing on its impact on Lake Michigan’s waves. If the storm system moved slowly, for example, the lack of wind from the low pressures would develop less pressure on the water and create fewer waves. If the front was moving fast and pushing everything out of the way while creating high pressure, the heavy winds it was generating would result in choppy waves. When factoring in that the water temperature was 33 degrees with a 26-degree air temperature, those potentially cold winds over the warmer water would produce the friction necessary for the formation of the ideal surfing waves.

  Since The Weather Center Café had only a handful of seats, it was perfect for lounging and conversing in small groups. Larry often found himself there late at night, guzzling quad lattes to avoid a flask of whiskey or a forty-ounce can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. When not debating weather theories with Teek or getting lost in a book, he often talked to a beautiful young woman from Boston named Kerry. As the conversations between them deepened so did their emotional connection. It was no surprise that Kerry and Larry soon embarked on a lust-filled courtship that was as hot as it was fast.

  Two years later, on June 19, 1999, Larry and Kerry decided to get married at Sheboygan’s Shooting Park. Since it was the second wedding for each of them, they agreed less was more. To keep things simple, word of mouth served as the main form of invitation as friends and family came from all over the Great Lakes. Guests were encouraged to wear Hawaiian shirts, board shorts, and flip-flops. While the group of around one hundred people, nearly ninety of whom were surfers, stood around the park waiting for the priest and priestess to arrive from Milwaukee, the thirsty crowd popped the keg of beer a little early. When the officiants showed up, the crowd set down their beers and watched the ten-minute ceremony. As soon as Larry and Kerry exchanged vows, champagne bottles popped and the music blared. The party rocked straight through the night.

  Rather than going on a honeymoon, the newlyweds focused their efforts and money on remodeling Larry’s house. Coexisting under one roof proved to be difficult during the first few months of their marriage. It didn’t help that the ink on her divorce papers had barely dried, or that he was adapting to someone living in his house for the first time since Tanner’s death. Nearly once a month, their wedding license managed to find itself in the trash, only to be fished out when cooler heads prevailed.

  Larry was quickly discovering the pitfalls of falling in love with a woman whose Irish temper and lack of patience would not tolerate his keeping the worn-out, stained carpet he had installed when he moved into the house a decade earlier. But the carpet, for Larry, was more than just a collection of nylon fibers—it was a time capsule, a conduit to his past. It had survived years of bombardment from ketchup stains, wax burns, and drunk-induced pukings during numerous Dairyland Surf Classics, so Larry ignored Kerry’s first handful of requests to remove it.

  “Hey, baby,” Kerry said in her thick Boston accent, “There is no way I’m buying new furniture and putting it on that crusty piece of crap. So you will be rolling up that hideous thing and redoing these hardwood floors.”

  “You sure about that, hon? I figure it’s got two or three years left,” Larry said. “We just need to give it a good vacuuming.”

  Kerry took a deep breath, knowing there was scientific proof somewhere that counting to ten in a moment of anger saves lives. Then she said, “The carpet goes—period.”

  Larry knelt down and said good-bye to his c
arpet. Since a hazardous waste removal team wasn’t available to examine it ahead of time, Kerry wasn’t sure if his tears were caused by emotion or by the aroma wafting from the carpet’s underside. As soon as his moment passed, Larry grasped the carpet’s loosened end along the far wall and gave it a hearty tug. Initially worried the topside of the carpet would disintegrate from years of wear and tear, he discovered the foam backing—hardened by numerous foods, fluids, and fungi—had cracked open and released all the smells of years past. For Larry, each odor-filled stain had a story associated with it—from the dried beer, cigarette butts, pizza crusts, and animal fur balls to more sand than a small beach could hold.

  Once the carpet was removed, the marriage flourished. They were good for each other. Larry brought perspective into Kerry’s work-heavy lifestyle, providing laughs whenever she was stressed. Kerry defused the arguments brewing between Larry and Mitch at family functions. As their relationship grew, they brought each other happiness, spending many a night talking, smiling, and whispering until their eyes closed.

  When he awoke on New Year’s Day morning in 2000, Larry knew the Y2k scare was just that after receiving an email from the Weather Center Café announcing it would be a good day for surfing on Lake Michigan. When Lee, Teek, and the rest of his usual surfing buddies couldn’t be found, Larry headed out by himself. After kissing his wife good-bye just six hours into the new year and three hours since going to bed, Larry noticed all of Sheboygan seemed eerily desolate during his drive. Parking his car near the Elbow, he grabbed his longboard from the back of his truck and ventured across the crunching, iced-over sand toward the water. Carefully navigating over the snowdrifts, respecting the slick surface, he balanced the board on his shoulder while walking toward a break in the jagged landlocked icebergs. Dropping his longboard into the ice floes that swayed above the crashing waves, he knew his window of opportunity to surf that morning would be small. With a snow squall rolling in from the north, visibility was poor. Regardless, he paddled out, losing sight of shore, and waited for his first set of waves. As snow began sticking to his wetsuit, creating the illusion he was tarred on one side of his body and feathered on the other, he sat on his board in silence until he heard a familiar voice through the whistling wind.