Three Pool Rhumba

Burning Road

I came to skate this pool because my mom told me my dad had engineered, grown and seeded it back in the day. I promised her I’d find it and skate it. Her image flickered in and out of focus hundreds of miles away. I wasn’t sure when I’d see her again, so I was pretty much ready to promise her anything.

“Don’t forget to skate it,” she whispered, her voice dry and raspy. “Pull off a front side air in the shallow end, then a frontside five-oh to switch crooks. Just for me. You’ll find it. It’s over there. Up the hill from the orchards. Not far from the break they used to call C-Street.”

I felt like I had to agree and promised her that I’d do it. I kept saying that over and over again as her image started to flicker out of focus.

She whispered, “Don’t ask him for a thing. Just go skate that pool. He set that up, owed us that and a lot more but never offered us a thing. Don’t let him forget that he forgot us. Make him pay for forgetting us. For abandoning us.”

“Ok, mom. I will.”

I never thought I’d keep that promise but then every time I dropped into a bowl, rolled onto a ramp and felt gravity pulling me down, I’d lose my focus and find myself racing down a faded blue wall. As I climbed any vertical surface, I’d feel myself surrounded by that blue bowl, flying toward the pink tile and a fractured coping that I’d seen only in picture and short videos. That pool intruded on my dreams and little by little, I started to take the steps that would lead me to that man my mom called her husband, my dad. That’s how I came to skate this pool.

##

The devil’s wind was blowing. One of those hot winds that dries out as it races down the snow-topped Sierra Nevadas to the east, through the California deserts on its way to the ocean and the edge of the world. On days like that the wind put you on edge as it dried out your skin and got you itching to do something. You knew anything could happen.

On that day, the horizon melted into the shimmering surface of the road. The air poisoned by the smell of parched earth, thirsty orchards, broken concrete and a memory of lemon blossoms.

Burning road. Burning road. All along they flowed...

“What’d you say that bowl you’re looking for’s called?”

“The Blue Furnace.”

“You sure it’s the Furnace?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. You sure it’s near here?”

“Totally. Ventura, Saticoy, Santa Paula, Fillmore, Santa Clarita, Valencia. Just left Saticoy and that bowl’s just outside of Santa Paula.”

“Any idea why this place is so sorry?”

“It’s the now dude. The NOW.”

I thought I’d see this place the way my dad described it. He’d get all nostalgic describing it across time and fading memories and between sighs. He was always nostalgic about Ventura, nostalgic to leave the cold winter months for the subtle change of seasons and sun-baked skin. But he never went back. I’m here in his place, looking at this through his eyes.

Long rows of Eucalyptus trees sprout on either side of the lemon trees. Supposed to serve as windbreaks, he said, keep the air still, make the orchards easier to heat in the winter when the cold air could freeze the blossoms and destroy the crops. But the new new orchards didn’t need that heat. They were engineered to sequester carbon and produce three-four crops of lemons per year.

Driving out of Saticoy on Telegraph Road toward Santa Paula, the suburbs give way to lemon and avocado trees, he said. Certain times of the year, the air would grow rich with the scent of the blossoms. And Sunkist would send the best lemons to Japan and China where they could charge ten dollars each. Was a lot of money back then, for sure. My dad always talking, never listening, his voice more of a whisper, a secret conversation.