The Closest Thing To Being Born

Egan's wife Kathy, a striking blonde who works for Signal Oil and Gas Co. in Huntington Beach, takes her husband to task for his treatment of less proficient body surfers. "You ought to be more thoughtful," she told him recently. "You don't even care about turkeys who are yelling for help until the very last moment. You try to teach them a lesson by scaring them to death. I've heard one of your friends shouting to a turkey in trouble, 'Swim for the rocks. The rocks!' You know that's the worst place to go. The turkey could be killed."

"You didn't hear that," said Egan. "You just thought you did. Most people who yell for help don't need it. I'll be swimming 30 yards from some turkey and he'll be yelling for help while he's standing up. Standing up! All he has to do is walk into shore, and he wants me to come help him. But you just ask the lifeguards how many turkeys we pull out of the Wedge every summer."

"Oh, how many do you?"

"Gee, Kath, how should I know? Plenty."

"Well I did, too, hear somebody tell a turkey to go to the rocks," said Kathy. "You're too hard on those goons."

"This is no place for beginners," says Egan. "The lifeguards couldn't do anything even if they were around. I once saw five guards trying to get to a guy in trouble on the rocks. They never reached him. I don't think they ever found the body. A lot of bodies disappear here and wash up somewhere else. They're transients who should have stayed away in the first place. But we don't want lifeguards. The Wedge is crowded enough with tourists. If people see the place is patrolled they'll think it's safe. We want to limit the Wedge to just those guys who know how to ride it."

Fred Simpson, a regional sales manager for the video products division of Craig Corp. who at 32 is considered The Old Man of the Wedge, says: "For us there's nothing to be afraid of. We're not fearless. Everything we do is calculated. We go out there because we know how to handle it. I used to go up and down the beaches hunting for surf. No more. The Wedge is like the local tavern now. We're not riding the Wedge to be killed. Of course, sometimes we get eaten. The thing is you have to draw a line somewhere. Everybody has a limit. Some people just haven't found theirs yet. I can do three big ones and then I'm exhausted. I hurt here and here and here. I go home."

One young Wedge regular was not so fortunate. In August of 1969 18-year-old Steve Meyer shot onto the inside peak of a relatively small wave and, though experienced, took a horrible pounding. He woke up in the hospital, his spinal cord severed, his body paralyzed practically from the neck down. On certain days friends carry Meyer down to the Wedge, where he can view from a wheelchair the booming surf that changed his life. Someone suggested to him that he place a sign on the back of his chair reading I AM A VICTIM OF THE WEDGE. Meyer says he is "thinking about it."

Often disagreements develop between Wedge men as to the proper way to negotiate the breakers. Some regulars, like Romanosky, ride the Wedge on a knee board, which resembles a sawed-off surfboard and is about five feet long. (Regulation boards are considered too dangerous at the Wedge.) Others prefer a belly board. "I came down here for a long time just to body-surf," says Bill Sinner. "Then last year I went to the belly board. I don't know why. It's faster, I guess. I won't say it's any better, but I just wanted to change."

Normally knee-and belly-board riders are kindred spirits of body surfers inasmuch as both groups are what they themselves call "at one with the wave." They also call this quality "reducing the medium."