SURF REPORT (Bone Detail)

SURF REPORT


( 7 AUGUST 2009)


Bone Detail. That’s what the Iwo Jima Marine said they called interment ceremonies back then. Its not in the literature, and I am not sure I want it to be. Bone Detail. Cold, perfunctory task. Dig a hole, say some words, put the Marine in the hole. Shoot seven guns three times. The bugle plays taps. You go back to the barracks or to the club just down from the south gate and kill a pitcher with your buddies.

Prince and I got our ties on and chugged down to Oxnard to Richard Phaneuf’s funeral. Pisser’s got on a weird wool pork pie hat that only The P can pull off. He doesn’t need a jacket as long as he has that hat on. The conditions were pristine, by the way, especially for 1245 PM. The wee peek at Cobblestones was delicious. White water caressed the shore as we banged down 101 in The Beast. South showing. We had our boards in back because we were driving all the way to the coast. It’s a major rule. John Phaneuf thought he might even be able to go, even though it was his father’s funeral and huge family considerations weighed in. But he deserved to go, and it might be well to recharge and step back. The actual paddling out may be inappropriate, but there is no harm in thinking you might have a chance.

We were not too late for the ceremony at Santa Clara Cemetery. Began to cut across a lawn full of gravemarkers and wondered if certain manners where being ignored. There were 70 people graveside. Phaneuf was so sharp in his black suit he could have been an undertaker. Or a corpse. Borrowed a fancy Hugo Boss from a hereby anonymous friend. Monika was a beautiful mourner. She put herself down nicely by falsely bragging about her New York shoes being worth a month’s rent.

The service was too long to be considered perfunctory, but it was nonetheless rote. Prince and I wondered why the priest began to stroll around the crowd, still spouting, shouting to God with our backs to him. What went wrong when the lady Navy bugler fiddled with her electronic taps horn, which began to play the tinny recording before she could put the bugle to her lips? Bummer, honey. But the riflemen made up for it. Why did the ceremony suddenly turn makeshift, with tractors suddenly roaring up, hardhats doing things perhaps better suited to the suddenly disappeared clutch of fat officials? The confusion on handling Lt. Colonel Phaneuf’s ashes and sudden evaporation of protocol made the penultimate moment clumsy. Memo: devise something more subtle than a Case 2750 backhoe dumping dirt into the grave. And while were on it, the cemetery folks might fix up the east end of the grounds. It would be nice for those visiting the most recently deceased if they did not have to stare at an unkempt construction zone. The piles of dead branches are not symbolic. The good thing is there is obviously a lot of room left at Santa Clara for the rest of us.

Prince and I hit it to the yacht club for the reception. We both served long terms in Texas, and we can’t escape the lure of barbeque. Chased a seagull off the grill. I never had a Coors Light before. Had two. They are pretty good. Prince had seconds on the barbeque and explained that the French meaning for the word, which describes a steel spit entering a pigs mouth at the beard or barb end, and running straight through the animal to the que, or anus. I held off on the seconds.

We chatted and observed some USMC memorabilia. Lt. Col Phaneuf was a credit to his generation. Common people do not rise from enlistment private to battalion commander. I felt like I got enough from the event and feared becoming involved in too many vapid interchanges, and Pisser was ready to go so we flew to our errands, scored the shade cloth from American Horticultural and were two minutes late getting to Cal Pine for the boxes.

We drove back to Nuckleheads and watched the rollers crumble over on the broad sand at low tide. That south was definitely showing. I texted Phaneuf, telling him it would be good better-like in two hours, just in case everybody at the wake went their separate ways before the sun went down.