Soul Surfer Johnny: The Almost True Story of Becoming One with the Wave

By Bill Missett

The almost true story of how a bad boy discovers he's really a nice kid inside, through surfing, self-discovery, wild surfing adventures, and meditation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452033549

Bill Missett

Bill Missett, a retired California daily newspaper editor, lives in a small fishing/surfing village in Southern Mexico. Some 40 years ago, Bill experienced a life-saving incident of spontaneous mental telepathy while bodysurfing. That prompted more than two decades of study and investigation into metaphysics and psychic phenomena, which led to the spiritual experiences that created this book. He is married to Patrice Perillie, a prominent human rights/political asylum attorney with offices in New York City and Oaxaca, Mexico. He is the father of two adult sons, Bill III and Jeffrey. His personal interests include archaeology, artifact hunting, raising trees from seed, preparing homegrown chili spices, bodysurfing, bird watching, music and reading. He can be reached at [e-mail]

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Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter One

Bells Are Ringing

Chapter Two

Two Tickets to L.A.

Chapter Three

Puerto, Here We Come

Chapter Four

Ron Shares His Secret

Chapter Five

Life’s Turning Point

Chapter Six

Prowling Puerto

Chapter Seven

Lurch Does Puerto

Chapter Eight

Sammy’s Monkey and Other Tails

Chapter Nine

Pluking In Puerto

Chapter Ten

Fire in the Hole

Chapter Eleven

Major Mackers for All

Chapter Twelve

Burglars in the Night

Chapter Thirteen

Returning to Reality

Chapter Fourteen

Changing the Past

Chapter Fifteen

As The Puerto Grinds

Afterword

The Awakening The Soul Series

About the Author

Preface

The outrageous stories you are about to read are mostly true, but it’s hard to tell where the truth ends and the fiction begins in many instances. There is so much wild truth to be found here that the fictional passages are often tame in comparison.

In Chapter One, there really was a wayward altar boy, and his church story is true. However, for the life of me, I can’t remember his name. He was an Irish-American kid, so I call him Johnny Burke here. We went through navy journalism school together in 1960, and he told us this hilarious true story at least a half-dozen times over beers after class. After the incident in church, however, the remainder of his story is fictional – for him.

In Chapter Two, there really is a legendary gang called the Tyrony Bros., who have been terrorizing Southern California with pranks, fun and mirth for some 40 years now. The gang is still in existence, now some 400 members strong and still taking in new members.

Hats off to Craig Shearer, the real Tony Tyrony, the Undisputed Exalted Leader of the Tyrony Bros., and all Tyrony Bros. Also, a big tip of the hat to Craig’s brother, John Shearer, aka Waltah Tyrony, for his recollection of the early exploits of the Tyrony Bros., printed here for the first time. (Full disclosure: I am also a member of the Tyronys, known as Boney Cojone Tyrony.)

The Tyronys really did find a great little-known surf spot in Southern Mexico in the early 1970s, which I thinly disguise here as Puerto Tranquilo. (It’s where I live, and there are too many people here already.) As a surf spot, it ranks near the top in the Western hemisphere. It is known as the world’s largest beach break (which means it has a sand bottom) with overhead surf 300 days of the year, so they say, and 80-degree water temperatures almost year-round. It is also unforgivingly brutal for the inexperienced and the experienced alike. Those who have been there will recognize this setting, and know the true name of this now-famous surf break.

Most of the stories related are true, including many experiences I discovered on my first few trips there back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Often, Johnny Burke and others relive the experiences I had or heard about in those wild years. A few incidents, however, are from later years, and a few are fictional.

All the Puerto characters are real, or were, and some names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. There is no malice in the stories presented here, just a true record of a very real era in a very special town, which attracts many wild characters.

There really is a World Bodysurfing Championships, held annually in Oceanside, Calif., and a number of the Tyronys do compete in it – and frequently win – every year.

I’d like to thank San Diego Union-Tribune travel writer John Muncie for the use of his line, If Puerto was any more laid-back, it would fall down, from his 1994 travel article on Puerto.

Thanks to famous singer-songwriter Jack Tempchin for borrowing the lines sliding down into your love, and peaceful easy feeling from his songs of the same titles.

Special thanks to my wife, Patrice, for suggesting the explosive ending to the story, to Tommy Wilson for his heart-felt back cover notes, and to master watercolorist Gordon MacKenzie for the cover art, a birthday gift to me from Patrice.

Chapter One

Bells Are Ringing

Dawn’s first rays flashed over the purple-shrouded mountains to the east, and to the west illuminated the surf until each wave sparkled like a rock concert light show. Johnny Burke lazily rolled over on his boogie board, refreshing himself in the cool ocean water.

He was out in the rolling surf shortly after dawn, hoping to catch a few waves before work began this unusually hot summer day. Toasty Santa Ana winds whipping in off the desert blew the tops off the waves, making billowy gusts of ocean spray known to surfers as smoke surf. It was already in the 80’s shortly after sunrise.

Gonna be another scorcher, Johnny said to no one in particular.

Enjoying the ocean was a wonderful new experience for Johnny Burke, who had 16 tough years under his belt. Riding waves was also new to him, as was his entire new life in California. Just months before, he had been living in the all too familiar grind of his rough and tumble waterfront neighborhood in Fall River, Mass. Johnny, despite growing up less than 50 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, never had an opportunity to swim in it, and had seen it only once. He never went to the beach as a kid, but had learned to expertly swim in the tidal rivers that flowed through his hometown to the sea. There, swimming against the tide separated the men from the boys among the many young wharf rats who made the waterfront their turf. Johnny was one of the few who could beat the tide swimming between the abandoned docks where they hung out.

Now he was surfing in the Pacific Ocean with his new surf buddy Ron. They met when Ron rescued him from school bullies in Hermosa Beach High School, where he had unexpectedly found himself only eight weeks before. Johnny had just moved west, after growing up on the wrong side of the docks in Fall River, where being tough was a part of life. Fall River, an old seaport mill town south of Boston, is most famous for being the hometown of Lizzie Borden and her axe.

Those unkind memories were distant now, far behind him. His new California surfing life was fun, more fun than this poor kid had ever enjoyed. His sad past was forgotten in the instantaneous thrill of this challenging new sport. Never before had he experienced the joy and freedom he felt here, in the ocean off Southern California. The gentle waves lulled him into a dream state, as he remembered how he got here, so different than his prior life in the poorest waterfront section of Fall River.

Hey Bawston, he could still hear ringing in his ears. Go pahk ya cahr, he heard as he was bounced from wall to wall in the boy’s locker area at Hermosa Beach High. Over and over the taunt rang out, initiation for the new boy in town. Johnny could handle himself, but there were seven or eight of them, bouncing him from one wall to the other, banging him against the steel lockers. He was basically letting them do it, play locker hockey with him, while not resisting and trying not to get hurt. He could take this initiation roughhousing, this rite of passage.

They were making great fun of his heavy Bawston accent, which really was much more raucous than a genuine Boston accent, which seemed almost refined in comparison. His raunchy accent didn’t sound funny to him, however, for it was the only way he knew how to talk. The bullies sounded funny to him, with their Valley dude accents and expressions.

‘Bam!’ He slammed against one locker, and almost simultaneously, ‘Bam!’ he was slammed into another. Then suddenly, the gang broke and ran, as a beefy, blonde-haired senior turned the corner and dashed into the melee. He helped Johnny up, and asked if he was okay. As soon as Johnny answered, Ron Thorson said, You sure do talk funny. Where ya from?

As they walked toward class, Johnny’s rescuer learned that Johnny had just moved to Hermosa, and so he immediately asked him if he wanted to learn how to surf. Sure, I’d love ta, Johnny said. I love to swim. That afternoon, using a borrowed body board and swim fins, Johnny Burke caught his first wave, and was instantly hooked on surfing.

Hey, outside! shouted his new surfing buddy, alerting Johnny to incoming set waves. Both spun around on their boards and stroked diagonally toward the first looming wave as it rapidly approached. Ron expertly shifted his board’s course and caught the curling face of the wave as it began peaking toward shore. He rocketed off like a bullet, out of sight down the line as the wave tubed over him and sent him flying through a smooth-as-glass surf barrel toward shore.

Johnny watched this thrilling moment unfold as he duck-dived his board through the face of the wave and slid safely underwater, out the back of the wave, under the wave’s breaking lip, just as Ron had taught him. He dreamed of the day when he could surf as smoothly as Ron. He hoped it was soon, because he already knew he wanted to surf for the rest of his life. He’d caught a few smaller waves, but nothing like that perfect tube ride. But he knew he had to learn to ride the small waves first before he could learn how to catch the bigger ones.

This was Johnny’s joyous new routine, early in the morning before school if the surf was good, and every afternoon after school. Surfing came first on Saturdays and Sundays, too, before chores at home and work – or church – required his presence. He’d get up at dawn, go surfing for two hours, eat a huge breakfast, and then take care of business.

Surfing always came first. Johnny had discovered that surfing was a wonderful new sport, one which helped ease the stress and tension surrounding his sudden, mid-year appearance at Hermosa Beach High, and his wrenching departure from the familiar confines of his old home town of Fall River, Mass.

And it was all his fault.

He could see it all unfold now in his mind’s eye, as he rocked gently in the waves between the sets. He remembered the whole thing like it had happened yesterday. He had been sneaking into the house just after 5 a.m., after another wild Saturday night, when his mother caught him. She was getting ready for six o’clock mass when he walked unsteadily in.

She gave him the Where have you been, young man? and Is that beer I smell on your breath? and Is that lipstick on your face? routine, then levied the penalty for this latest mega-offense: Go to mass with her as penance, right now, to show he was really sorry. John Aloysius Burke hadn’t been to church for many Sundays, although his mother thought he was attending 10 o’clock mass every Sunday morning. Actually, he was playing pool with his neighborhood gang buddies most Sunday mornings about that hour.

Gertrude Anne Burke was a straight-laced Irish Catholic single mother who barely made ends meet, but was strong in her faith that things would get better one day soon. For insurance, she made it a point to go to six o’clock mass every day she could. She still spoke in a heavy Irish brogue laced with old folk expressions from her immigrant parents, as did Johnny to a lesser degree. She told Johnny his father had gone off to sea when he was just a baby, and never returned. Annie Burke never married. Now she was far too busy trying to make ends meet to worry about Johnny’s descent into street gang life.

She made him a stiff cup of coffee to sober him up, made him change shirts, and then dragged him off to early mass. Let Johnny tell you the rest of his story, in his own inimitable Fall River tough guy Irish accent:

"Me mudda was so holy dat she sat right in back of da nuns, like in da fourth row. Dat morning, wid me being barely conscious, she dragged me in and knelt me down and made me say a prayer. We was right in back of da nuns. So I said me prayer, and I slumped down in da pew, because I knew Father O’Reilly would be coming out soon, looking for some altar boy ta serve mass.

Den Father O’Reilly was out dere, scouting the audience, and he spied me and gave me da hook, motioning with a curved forefinger. "It was a sick feeling in me stomach as I went into da sacristy, because I hadn’t served mass in like three years, and I was never very good at it ta begin wid. Plus I thought I was gonna puke from all da beers I drank last night.

"Ya see, I was an altar boy starting at like age nine, even though da legal age was ten, but dey needed altar boys so bad dey’d take us kids early. So I’m dis altar boy for like three or four years, and den I joined a gang. Ya had ta be in a gang in my neighborhood, just for protection. If yer not in a gang, ya gonna get beat up every day.

And when ya join a gang, dere’s three things ya gotta do. Number one, ya gotta learn how ta cuss. Number two, ya gotta start smoking cigarettes. And number three, ya can’t be an altar boy. I already knew how to cuss and smoke, but I had to stop being an altar boy, like when I was 13 years old, so I could join da gang.

He followed Father O’Reilly into the sacristy behind the altar. "We was in da back, getting on our cassocks, and Father O’Reilly asked me when was da last time I’d served mass. I told him like about three years. ‘Oh, goodness!’ he said,