Soul Surfer Johnny Rips: Surfing the Edge of Reality ... in Puerto's Grinding Barrels

By Richard, Bill Missett, Mike Cunningham and Mimi Malmed

In Bill Missetts final chapter of Soul Surfer Johnnys adventures, we are taken through the journeys of many thrill seeking travelers, as Johnny and his wife Mia finally move to Puerto permanently, and their adventure begins anew.

He and Mia meet countless soul surfers who add ingredients to the secret recipe that eventually becomes an award winning course of life to be enjoyed by the two true lovers. As Johnny matures in his new home of Puerto Tranquilo, he learns to digest and learn from the stories of those who have been through what he is currently experiencing.

Missett conveys all of the life lessons the couple soaks in during what can only be described as a rich life without riches. They build a popular restaurant, a beautiful home, and more importantly, a bucket list of friends and memories.

The surf remains an important part of their lives, but in this final chapter, Johnny and Mia drop into a veritable Mexican Pipeline barrel, breathing in every detail. Luckily, a writer like Missett is able to bring us back through that barrel in magnificent detail.

We get to know so many characters from the previous chapters as well as new names. Several members of the famous crowd of Puerto regulars get to add their input this time. Their stories are told in first person, adding a great feeling of unedited authenticity. Several of the local famosos reappear, and some of the Puerto Elders walk us through the life and times of the enigmatic surf town.

Missett writes in such a way that informs, intrigues, and entertains. This is the most entertaining of his works and deserves a loud applause. To be intrigued, you must read the earlier Soul Surfer Johnny books. To be truly informed, everyone should read his earlier Awakening the Soul series.

A favorite author of all who read his works, Missett put together a great collaboration of stories with Soul Surfer Johnny Rips. However, in all honesty, we all hope that Johnny has another wave to catch through Bill Missetts eyes.

Thomas Wilson

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477268582

Richard

Richard and Adrienne Paraiso have combined their talents of research and writing together for the first time, immersing the reader in a two-week African adventure. Residing in Warfield, Virginia, they have two children in Richmond, Nicole and Leon Cabbell, with wife LaToya, and two grandchildren, Laila and Leon Jr.

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© 2012 by Bill Missett.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. The author may be contacted at [e-mail].

Published by AuthorHouse 09/11/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6859-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6858-2 (e)

Chapter 8: Puerto Works Its Magic: Surfline: Corb Donohue, R.I.P, San Onofre Surfing Legend Passes On Used under Copyright Fair Use exemption

Chapter 17: Visiting Puerto in 1969 © Copyright 2012 by Richard and Mimi Malmed Used with Permission

Cover Photo: Pipeline on Oahu, bodysurfer unknown, photographed by Allen Carrasco of Oceanside, CA., circa 1982. Allen was swimming out through the channel, looked up, saw this bodysurfer sliding down the face of a great Pipeline barrel, and snapped off this one photo of this great classic ride. Used with permission.

Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter One  Heading Home

Chapter Two  Back at Club Mac

Chapter Three  The Bruno Years

Chapter Four  Johnny Rips ’Em Up

Chapter Five  Mikey Likes It

Chapter Six  Bruno Unplugged

Chapter Seven  Mezcal Tales & Toots

Chapter Eight  Puerto Works Its Magic

Chapter Nine  Bang-Bang at Agua Blanca

Chapter Ten  Sammy Goes Crazy

Chapter Eleven  Francine’s Memory Lives On

Chapter Twelve  Drug Deals and Dope Busts

Chapter Thirteen  Finding That Perfect Place

Chapter Fourteen  Creeping ’Round Midnight

Chapter Fifteen  Bruno’s Comes to an End

Chapter Sixteen  Make Me One With Everything

Chapter Seventeen  Visiting Puerto in 1969

Afterword

About The Author

Dedication

This final volume of Soul Surfer Johnny tales is dedicated to Mike Cunningham, six-time World Bodysurfing Grand Champion, for his memories of his fantastic bodysurfing career, and his detailed recollections of early visits to Puerto.

It is also dedicated to John Shearer, aka Waltah Tyrony, four-time World Bodysurfing Grand Champion and long-time Puerto resident and visitor, for his assistance, advice, proofreading and editing skills.

With special thanks to Richard and Mimi Malmed, for their historic recollections of their pioneering visit to Puerto Tranquilo in 1969. Their full-chapter report reveals daring and humorous details of their visit to a decidedly rugged and less-than-charming Puerto, long before it became a popular tourist destination. It is a precedent-setting look at some of the exploits of two early visitors to the town we now call paradise.

Thanks to Lori Nebenzahl for her recollections of mutual friend Corb Donohue, and to Surfline for the use of Corb Donohue, R.I.P, San Onofre Surfing Legend Passes On in Chapter Eight.

Thanks to Dennis Berger, Jim Holland, Paul Lye, Frank Ozio, Jim Prewitt, John Sahadi, John Hudson, Susan Gilbert, and Susie Hirschfield for their contributions. Thanks to Christine Vin Watson for assisting Franco.

To Patrice Perillie, my lovely wife, for her recollections of The Bruno Years.

To Tim Cunningham, Mike Cunningham’s cousin, for providing information on the Ace Burns story.

To Barbara Peddle, for gathering the recollections about her aunt, Francine.

To Paul and Joanne, for their recollections of how they met in Puerto years ago, then met there again as adults, and married.

To sisters Laura and Ana, for their recollections of the twins who were born and died in Puerto.

To Allen Carrasco, professional photographer from Oceanside, California, for his gracious use of the excellent cover photo.

To Warren Sharpe of Puerto, for his assistance in preparing the cover photo.

To the Tyronys, who discovered Puerto in 1974, and started it all for so many.

To the residents of Puerto Tranquillo, where we all live in paradise.

Introduction

The first modern books to celebrate the almost unknown ocean sport of big wave bodysurfing, the Soul Surfer Johnny series of true-to-life novels reveal not only the intricacies and dangers of the daring sport, but the multitude of characters and highly skilled watermen who participate in it around the world.

The final chapter in the series, Soul Surfer Johnny Rips again takes the reader to the scene of one of the world’s top bodysurfing beaches, Puerto Tranquilo, Mexico, where Soul Surfer Johnny discovers his true inner self, and the magic of this crazy little seaside town, a beach town almost without peer.

With it comes a host of unusual characters who annually visit this town, for its wild, unbridled ‘live and let-live’ attitude, its wonderful weather, and its easy-going ambiance. In spite of 30 years of slow growth, it is still a highly desirable destination, for it remains a small Mexican beach town which only came into the 20th Century very late in the game.

So remote there wasn’t a highway to the town until the mid 1970s, Puerto Tranquilo is still difficult to reach, even by airplane. So it takes a certain amount of determination to visit it, which tens of thousands of tourists now do every year.

Soul Surfer Johnny was one of the lucky ones who discovered this little out-of-the-way paradise long before many others did, and remembers its early wild west childhood as it grew up to become a treasured place to visit, and an even more special place to call home. He must thank his Tyrony brothers for steering him to Puerto, just a few years after they discovered it in the early 1970s.

Join him in his adventures, and those of his friends and fellow Tyrony gang members, as they reveal the delights and dangers in living in this magical little town so many call Paradise.

* * *

When we last left our hero, Soul Surfer Johnny Burke, he and his sweetheart Maya Morelli were flying out of Puerto Tranquilo en route to San Francisco, where Maya worked as an attorney. They had just fallen into stunningly deep soul mate love in Puerto, and everything was evolving perfectly for them in dream-like precision.

The whirlwind events that followed brought them back to Puerto just four years later, this time permanently, in 1992. In the intervening months, they moved to San Diego, got married in a magical seaside ceremony on a bluff overlooking Cardiff Reef, and made plans almost daily on how to best permanently return to Puerto. Both felt magically attracted to the little Oaxacan coastal town.

They had considered an alternative – moving to El Salvador, but after a two-week visit in 1991, decided that Puerto would definitely be the better choice, and a much safer one at that. This decision came after Johnny was mugged by two robbers in broad daylight, while sitting in his rental car on a busy street, in plain view of at least 50 nearby citizens.

Johnny was killing time reading a magazine, waiting for Maya’s return from a business meeting, when suddenly the driver’s side door opened, and a man crawled into the car. Johnny, sitting in the passenger seat, spun around and hit the man full force in the solar plexus, which sent him reeling back into the busy street. As Johnny leaned over to lock the door, a second man opened the passenger side door, and attempted to steal Johnny’s backpack sitting on the floor, but Johnny kicked him in the face, and he also fled. That incident, along with copious amounts of poop in the surf at La Libertad, killed any ideas about moving to El Salvador.

Having experienced Puerto, they knew what it lacked, and what items were necessary to bring down to set up a household. So they made a list of what they needed and wanted, and started filling it daily, preparing for the day they returned to the place they met, the magical little Mexican town we call Puerto Tranquilo.

They were living in a guest house on an old rancho near Vista, just inland from Carlsbad where Johnny worked. The little house was a charming jumble of rooms, with seven individual spaces, and lots of glass doors and ornate windows, all built within 400 square feet. It was heated with an old cast iron stove, which would glow red when Johnny really fired it up. The house was built under an old tree, had a spacious garden area out back, and a root cellar beneath a trap door in one of the small rooms. They built a deck on the roof, where they watched the sun set over the ocean five miles away. It was the coolest house around.

Making it even more special was the fact that Johnny had lived in that same cottage several years before, and on this day was only visiting it, to show Maya where he used to live. When they pulled into the courtyard, his former landlady, a slightly crazed elderly French woman, dashed out and immediately invited Johnny to move back into the house. Move back! she invited them. Eet jus’ open up! she exclaimed in her heavy accent.

Johnny and Maya considered this invitation a magical sign from on high, and immediately agreed to move into the guest house. It was on a very private old rancho at the top of a hill in Vista, the only part of the rancho not sold off and developed in prior years. It was a sweet, magical little house at the end of a very private long, winding dead end road, where they would live until they pulled out for good, and returned to Mexico four years later, this time permanently.

The cottage came fully furnished with antiques left behind by the outgoing tenant, an elderly interior designer who had just been bitten by the Mexico bug, and took off to live in a colony of gringos near La Fonda in northern Baja. She left her past behind, with all her baggage, and she had good taste. So Johnny and Maya inherited a full household of furnishings, including a bed, armoire, trunk, tables, lamps and other items, which they eventually purchased from the designer. It was a ready-made instantaneous household waiting for them, another sign from on high that this was the right path to follow.

Johnny’s workplace was only three blocks from the ocean, and he surfed daily, sometimes twice a day if the surf was good. Johnny was now surfing the Pine Street break in Carlsbad, an excellent but little-known reef break that produced some sweet barrels when swells arrived. One of his frequent surfing companions there was a 15-year-old Joey Buran, who had cut his teeth on this great little break before stunning the surfing world by winning the Pipeline Masters as an unknown at age 21. Later, Buran got religion, became a youth minister catering to wayward surfers, and dropped out of the competitive surfing world.

Johnny was still waiting tables as his main source of income, and was making very good money. But he had also started picking up some petty cash for his occasional work writing for the local newspaper’s entertainment section. He was doing the newspaper gig primarily for the free CDs, nightclub invitations, and complimentary concert tickets he got as perks for his entertainment writing.

The record industry catered to entertainment writers in those days, and wooed them with many perks. Local newspapers were always looking for bargain local entertainment news, since few could afford to have their own entertainment reporters. Johnny did a series of freelance concert reviews of musicians performing in the San Diego area, and started getting noticed by the record firms, and the newspapers’ editors. Several months later, a newspaper staff position opened up, and Johnny was offered a full-time job as a feature/entertainment writer. It was a cut in pay, but a big step up in the world.

Maya opened a small law practice, offering free legal services to Mexican immigrants who flocked to the area where abundant job opportunities were available. She wasn’t making any money, but she was staying busy doing what she loved, dealing with one heart-wrenching case after another, all of which she attempted to resolve on the immigrants’ behalf.

Their lives are so much more difficult than ours, she said. The least I can do is help make things easier for them.

She consulted client after client, most who worked on area farms or in construction, about their desire to stay in the U.S. and become legal. Most slept in makeshift cardboard houses out in the brush, but some were living underground in hootches, caves carved out of the hills in the countryside. She never charged them a dime, considering her time and advice her contribution to the international cause of human rights.

Then three things magically happened in quick succession that directly led them back to Puerto. First, Johnny’s chiropractor put him on state disability for a back injury suffered while bodysurfing, and then the Smokesurf Kid asked Johnny and Maya to live in his Puerto house for a couple of years, rent-free, to protect his interests. Topping it all off, Johnny sold his cherry 1967 Austin-Healey 3000, which he had picked up several years earlier from a Camp Pendleton marine lieutenant who was headed overseas, to a collector from Denmark, for five times what he paid for it. In a flash, Johnny and Maya were provided with a place to live in Puerto, and money to cover their living expenses. It was obvious the universe was hard at work for them.

When those three things magically occurred within weeks of one another, Johnny bought a new12-foot utility trailer, that they immediately started packing with the household goods they needed to set up shop in Puerto. Then suddenly, they were ready to leave for Puerto. They departed, their trailer loaded to the gills, one crisp day in early November in 1992, destination Puerto Tranquilo, Mexico, more than 2,000 miles south.

They had the kitchen chairs strapped upside down on the sides of the trailer, and a ladder tied on top. Looking like Steinbeck’s Ma and Pa Joad leaving Oklahoma in the Dust Bowl days, they had a hand-drawn sign tacked on the back of their trailer: Puerto or Bust. Many drivers honked their horns as they passed on the freeways.

Chapter One

Heading Home

They hit Del Rio about five in the afternoon, and pulled into the Hernandez Motel, a modern, clean-looking joint with a lot of chrome and neon, that advertised Restaurant, Bar and Pool. Road-weary, thirsty and hungry, Johnny and Maya discovered after checking in that the motel’s restaurant and bar were closed for repairs, and its pool was empty. But they were undaunted.

They dressed up anyway, hoping they could find their way into some nice restaurant nearby where they could relax and unwind from the long drive. They put on their newest, most outrageous surf sports clothes, Johnny resplendent in bright tie-dyed blue-and white baggy surf pants and a multicolored free-flowing long-sleeve blouse, and Maya equally dazzling in a matching purple and dark blue tie-dye combo.

The desk clerk was startled by their sudden appearance in his office. It was obvious Johnny and Maya were very out of place in the rustic frontier Texas town of Del Rio, and they knew it. They hoped their outrageous attire might perk up Del Rio a little.

Where can we get a good meal and something cold to drink? they asked the desk clerk, who checked them out like they had just flown in on a UFO from Mars. They were advised to walk around the block, and go to the second house on the left. It looks just like a normal house, but it’s really a veterans’ club, they were told. It’s open to the public. Good food and good drinks, he chuckled as he said it, because he knew the place would be full of cranky old half-drunk Texas vets.

Dressed in their screamingly loud multi-colored surf clothes, Johnny and Maya approached the run-down old house, whose porch sagged slightly on one side, but looked like any other house on the block. Johnny approached the door, peeked in, heard a juke box playing, and saw about two dozen older guys seated in a clubhouse atmosphere. The only women in the place were the waitress, the bartender and the cook.

Without hesitating, Johnny grabbed Maya’s arm, threw open the club’s door, and stepped one foot inside. Ladies and gentlemen, he loudly announced, as everyone in the place suddenly stopped talking, and turned to gawk at him. They stared at the dazzlingly dressed duo in the doorway as if they had just flown in from outer space, dropping into the only sane place in the universe.

Ladies and gentlemen, Johnny loudly announced again. I’d like to introduce you to the most beautiful woman in this club, as he thrust Maya through the doorway to stand in front of him, dressed so loudly she looked like a very cute technicolor Gidget. The place blew up with excitement, as a dozen old guys crowded around Maya and Johnny, to check them out up close. Most of the men appeared to be in their 50s and 60s, but some were even older. The older ones remained on their bar stools, or in their chairs. They all acted friendly toward them, and most said howdy, even those who remained in their seats, who waved at them.

Even the cranky old guys quickly discovered these young kids were okay, even thought they were dressed like no one they had ever seen before, except on TV, and drinks flowed in their honor. Johnny and Maya were about the most exciting thing to happen to this sad old vets’ club in years.

To their surprise, Johnny and Maya learned that today was November 11, Veteran’s Day, and every guy in the club was a veteran, out wetting his whistle and telling tall tales about their days in the military. Before the evening was over, Johnny and Maya had heard stories about storming Normandy’s beaches, scary submarine duty in the South Pacific, and gory tales of European battlefield guts and glory.

Several vets sent drinks over to their table. Two seemed to be buying Johnny beer after beer while ogling Maya. Soon it was apparent that at least one guy, a middle-aged cowboy, was trying to get Johnny drunk, hopefully so he could have his way with Maya. But it wasn’t until the drunk armadillo made a guest appearance that things got really serious.

Hey, you wanna see my armadillo? the main instigator asked. He went out to his pickup truck, and walked back in holding an armadillo, which was already drunk, readily apparent from the way it staggered across the table toward Maya. He likes beer, said the cowboy, as he poured some into an ash tray, which the armadillo happily lapped up. Then the armadillo lurched off to one side of the table, and lightly belched.

Hey, why don’t we jump across the border, said the cowboy armadillo wrangler, while ogling Maya. There’s lots of clubs we can go to down there that are a lot more lively than this place. You know, dog and pony shows, he said