Soiled Shorts: A collection of Short Stories I The New Plan

The New Plan

It's the summer of 1977, I am part of this weird skate club on the south side of San Jose, we meet once a week at this local school. The only reason my friend Chris Molerin

and I joined the club was because we heard a rumor of a trip being planned for the Concrete Wave Skatepark in Anaheim. So Chris and I go to the meeting, it's filled with

a bunch of groms that don't really skate at the level that we do, not that we were anything special back then but these kids were pretty clueless. All of a sudden a guy by

the name of Alan Mercier better known as Alien walks through the door, well, we know Alien from skating a handful of local pools, so things are looking up. Then Mike Fox,

Howard Kveck and Mark Odawalt show up. These were our elders and we skated with them quite a bit, we had our own secret pool right up the street a couple miles away.

So at this point I knew this trip would be worth it. 

So the deal was, $28.00 gets you an all-day pass to The Concrete Wave, a ride there and back in a school bus that leaves at 11:00 PM sharp, no exceptions. Oh and bring

your own sack lunch. The bus ride is filled with anxiety, apprehension, excitement, stoke and about 20 irritating groms that on a normal day we wouldn't be caught dead

hanging with. The bus ride is about 9 hours long, at first it was impossible to sleep, but eventually we managed to get some shut eye for a few hours.  

I remember taking the exit off of the I-5 and pulling up to the park, everyone is completely freaking out, practically hanging out the windows. We show up around 8:00 am,

the park is still closed but they know we would be arriving so they are opening it up for us. Now you got to understand, this was the best skatepark in existence for this time

period, so we were all just trying to get out of that hell hole of a bus to get our sesh on. First things first, THE RULES; yes the rules, sorry to say but in the 70's all the skateparks

were privately owned and came with a shit ton of rules. Besides the Skatepark Rules, unbeknownst to us our esteemed skate trip organizers had their own set of rules also; 

Rule Number 1: No one leaves the skatepark.  Rule Number 2: If for some reason the bus gets delayed from leaving the park, the person or persons responsible will pay a fine

of 35.00 an hour until the bus can leave.  Rule Number 3: No one leaves the skatepark. 

(Well the fine for Rule Number 2 might as well have been 1,000 an hour because back then no one I knew had that kind of money.) 

So after the daily guidelines are dealt out we all jump out of the bus, sign on the dotted line, grab our shit and go!! I remember warming up on the long banked wall that

separated this ultra-smooth concrete from the infamous runs we saw in the pages of Skateboarder Magazine. It was so insane to be riding the same terrain as Tom Inouye,

Greg Weaver, Jay Adams, Tony Alva etc. Trying to emulate the turns on the same walls you saw in the mag was a dream come true! We had nothing that was even close to

this at the time, I think the only parks that existed in Northern California were Frederick Street in Santa Cruz and Skateboard Palace in Sacramento. So we skate the shit out of

this place for hours, it has really fast runs lined with Astro Turf, each run separated by PVC posts and netting. At the top of each run was a pseudo looking surf dude playing

traffic control cop, dressed in corduroy shorts and matching shirts. Their duty was to make sure each skater went down the run one at a time, like a water slide park or

something. My favorite run was the tight snake run, I remember hearing one of the Traffic Controllers make a remark on my skating, then the other Traffic Controller says in

an almost sarcastic tone, "Yea, that kid has been doing weird shit all day". I just ignored them and kept doing what I do. We had absolutely zero respect for them. 😊

So we skate every inch of this place for hours, then Mike and Howard let me and Chris in on the real plan. "Ok, we are gonna get out of here and search for the infamous

Fruit Bowl, are you guys in?" Hell yea we're in. So we sneak out of the park when no one is looking ( how funny is that, sneaking out of a spot, usually it is the other way

around). The crew is Mark Odewalt, Howard Kveck, Mike Fox, Chris Molerin and myself. This was basically our skate crew on the daily, minus a few guys that didn't make the

trip. So we go out to the main street where we can't be seen. Chris and I always just followed the older guys lead, we were only about 14 years old but Mike, Howard and

Mark were already out of high school, so they always knew what to do right?!! Well I should of noticed something was up when we asked “which side of the street should

we catch the bus” and Mike says, "whichever side of the street the bus comes first" Ok, sounds good to me... A bus across the street starts rolling towards us so we jam

across the street as fast as we can to meet our fateful chauffeur. So here we are in the middle of Los Angeles getting on a bus in the direction of convenience with nothing

but our skateboards, sorry sack lunches and shit eating grins on our faces. I started to get an uneasy feeling in my gut as we watched the skatepark disappear into the

distance as we started an adventure within an adventure, to seek out the Holy Grail of pools. 

So, no directions, no cell phones kids, (which means no GPS), we are on our own and under the mercy of Los Angeles' Public Transportation. We are cruising around in a bus

looking for anything familiar from the pages of Skateboarder Magazine. The fences, the Cypress trees, a sign, anything!! We heard it is at an abandoned looney bin, with a name

like TheFruit Bowl that made total sense to us.  

After hours upon hours of failure to see anything that resembled the aforementioned items, we realized we better head back before we broke Rule Number 2. Now being

lost in the greater Los Angeles area when you are 14, hungry and broke is not a cool feeling. By this time we are completely over this mission, all we want to do is get back

to the Park, skate and avoid the Penalty Fee. We get off the bus which is heading in the direction away from the park and cross the street to grab the next bus back towards

the Park. In the meantime the Skate Trip Organizers have got to know we are missing by now. We never planned that far in advance, didn't even think about that possibility.

So obviously Rule Number 1 has come into effect, avoiding Rule Number 2 is our new mission.  

We have been sitting at this bus stop for over an hour, we are starting to panic a bit, we have been gone for half a day. We are pretty much delirious at this point and laughing

so hard our stomachs hurt, that or the lack of food in them must be causing this effect. Anyway, we are sitting there and one of us got the bright idea to actually look at the

bus schedule on the bus stop sign. It all makes sense now, it's Sunday and the buses only run every other bus time that is scheduled. Oh shit...  Now we are in panic mode,

luckily the bus finally shows up and we board the bus. I haven't felt that much relief in a long time. Now we just have to get back to the park before the bus is loaded up with

everyone but us. I never had money, how was I going to pay some old bus driver that smelled of stale coffee and cigarettes if we are late. It just wasn't going to happen.

After a long bus ride we start to see the Concrete Wave coming into view. We are all smiles but none of us has a watch on so we still don't know if we made it in time. We

pull the bell cord that signals our stop and to our amazement the bus is in the parking lot is still empty, We fucking made it!!! We come skating up the parking lot and past the

bus, one of the Skate Trip Organizers tries to grab me while he is yelling, all I heard was that teacher's voice from Charlie Brown, "waaa waaa waaa waaa" Alan Mercier tells

me we are in big shit for leaving and I tell him that we already dealt with it, which we hadn't. I just jammed into the Park to finalize the last 15 minutes of our skate trip by

taking some runs. I knew we were going to have to deal with the consequences when we strolled back to the bus but I was feeling so stoked that Rule Number 2 never came

into play. Well the session is over, we get our huge scolding which we didn't even listen to and we are back on the bus for the 9 hour hell ride home. I gotta tell you, I must

have slept the entire drive home because I have zero memories of that ride. Those were the days, every day was a new adventure from first light to dark. Little did I know

what was going to happen the next day, let alone over 40 years later. 

I had this same feeling recently when I went to skate Gavin's Bowl in Sonoma with a crew of old rippers from the 70's. At this session we aptly named the bowl "The Goat Bowl."

Point being, "we have discovered the Fountain Of Youth in our lives as Skateboarders. We not only found it, we drained it and grinded the shit out of it!!"  

Ponce de Leon, got nothin!! 

Keith Meek  

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