Early morning in old Montauk

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willli
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Early morning in old Montauk

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Joshua owned a kneeboard. I remember it was a Hansen with an offset blue stripe. It might have been a belly-board, but whenever he bothered to take it out he rode it on his knees. He was not known as a kneeboarder though. He was much more familiar riding his “Black Cat” longboard. Dora was a distinct role model for him. Riding the long lefts at Ditch Plains, he took great pleasure in dancing around the kooks in his best imitation of what he had seen Dora do in surf movies. Despite the remote nature of Montauk Point, it grew a core group of surfers and Joshua was one of the best. He did love to surf, but some days he had other things on his mind.
On the morning I’m about to describe, just before the fall duck hunting season, there was a nice swell in the 5-7 foot range brushed with 10mph off-shores creating long lines in the ocean visible even from Joshua’s house set on a hill a mile distant from the shore. It was breaking dawn, the sun not yet above the horizon, and we excitedly loaded the boards on Joshua’s 52 Chevy 4 door. Although it looked stock, the previous year he acquired a small block 8 from a sprint car that ran the figure 8 at Riverhead raceway, coupled to a solid Muncie 4 speed stripped from a corvette. Joshua always said he wanted to race and his favorite place to prove it was the gravel roads threading through the former coastal gun now radar installation, Montauk AFB, aka Camp Hero. “Lets check the surf at the point!” had a meaning to Joshua completely different from normal drivers.
The base commander at Montauk liked his breakfast at dawn. Even though the cold war radar mission had been terminated in favor of newer and better technology, his being the “eyes” of Nike missile ABM sites scattered along the East Coast, his radar was still operational. The coastal gun emplacements had long since been removed, though their underground reinforced concrete “pill boxes” remained. The base commander loved fishermen, especially striper fishermen. His dream was too catch a trophy fish with fly fishing tackle he had sent from his home in Missouri. The surfcasting regulars often had breakfast with him, and enjoyed relatively unrestricted access to the coast the base occupied. That this same stretch of coast produced some of the best surfable waves on the entire East Coast was not something the commander even cared about. Fishermen that Joshua knew who had dined with the commander said his face would actually contort into red and purple furrows of rage when he saw surfers paddle into distant view off the points of his coves. He would yell for his driver and they would rush down to the commander’s jeep, racing off in a cloud of gravel and dust to a position on the cliffs above the offenders. He would stand in the back of the jeep, megaphone in hand, shouting orders to the surfers.
“You are trespassing on UNITED STATES MILITARY property! Trespassers CAN BE SHOT! You are to return to the shore immediately!”
Now you can imagine the response from the surfers, safely out of reach, their car hidden in the bushes just off the base perimeter, having hiked along the base of the cliff, over and around the massive boulders, out of sight of the watchful commander. A distant “f**k you” might be heard over the roar of the breakers, wafting in to the commanders ears. Such disrespect for military authority! On more than one occasion he unholstered his sidearm and fired it wildly in the air, which might spook an outsider, but not Joshua, a homegrown Montauk waterman. He knew full well the procedure was to call the local police, who by unspoken agreement forged in local bars long ago, when the military came into Montauk and condemned the land they now occupy that they promised would be returned to local owners at the end of WWII when the German submarine threat ended and the coastal guns were no longer needed for national defense. Joshua knew they would take at least an hour to arrive. Joshua grew up with the most likely constable, John Law.
I can’t imagine growing up with a name like John Law, and then actually becoming a police officer. But nobody in Montauk paid it much mind and it actually helped with the annual summer invasion of tourists. Threatening to call “John Law” to quiet a noisy party at 2AM, while meaning to a local that this was an inconsideration that would reverberate throughout the winter resulting in an immediate compliance, to the tourist it almost seemed a hokey joke. But John had his own way of dealing with things and he was more apt to show up at a noisy party wearing linesman gloves and carrying electrical cable cutters. If the tourist was too drunk to understand the message, or threatened John with his big shot out of town connections, the “Do you have any idea who I am?” type of people. Lets say it was lights out. The electricians loved John. Just about everyone who grew up in Montauk loved John. And they knew his hot button. Poaching. He absolutely would not bend when it came to the crime of poaching.
Now Joshua had the ’52 all fired up, and really tightly strung to the racks were our boards. Wetsuits were already donned, and while he had a nice 3-point racing harness tightly securing him in his racing seat, also from the sprint car, the passenger bucket had not yet been secured to the floor as it didn’t fit the tracks of the former front bench seat. Riding “shotgun” was an experience like none other in Joshua’s ’52. We pulled away quiet enough, motoring toward town like any other car. We passed the local pancake house packed with fishermen fresh off a stint of night fishing, and Joshua pointed to a parked police cruiser
“That’s John Law’s ride. Bet he’s been up all night keeping an eye out for “shorts”. Be damn near 2 hours before HE picks up a call.” We quietly cleared town.
The first curve past the rise in the road leaving town Joshua “dropped the hammer”, downshifting to second and flooring the accelerator, the ’52 hesitated a moment spewing clouds of acrid burnt rubber before leaping forward. This pushed the seat of the front passenger back, tipping him wildly into the rear seat, where he would flail helplessly like an overturned turtle. That Joshua timed each shift perfectly with the near successful effort of the shotgun passenger to right himself, flinging him back helpless with each surge of speed added a new word to the vocabulary of anyone riding with him the first time, often unintelligible but definitely expletive. Finally gaining an upright position the shotgun will see the trees whipping by unusually fast and a check over at the instrument cluster reveals a speed approaching 120mph. Brakes are not enough to slow a car at this speed so methodical downshifts are performed, now flinging the shotgun forward with each chirp of the tires as the engine helps brake the car from speed. Neither Jim nor I chose shotgun, preferring the relative bliss of the rear seat and kicking the front seat forward on its back, wedging it under the dash, creating a nice space with a clear view out the front windshield.
Joshua insists he had the car well in control when it slid through the turn off of Montauk Hwy onto the access road leading to the North Gate of the AFB, the one that was always open but marked with a HUGE “No Trespassing sign and the much smaller words “This is a National Security Installation. Violators will be shot.” He ran through the gears as the road changed to gravel, throwing downshifts and the ’52 emitting a throaty roar and sliding through the curve just in view of the base cafeteria window where the commander was quietly sipping coffee. Witnesses relating the incident later that night at the Shagwong Bar and Grill said his coffee cup crashed to the ground and he unholstered his side arm and shot a hole clean through the glass, attempting to hit the intruders. Enough was enough! He sounded General Quarters!
We could barely hear the commotion as we slid right and left across the rear bench seat, seeing nothing but cattails and scrubby trees flying by and the sound of tires straining against loose gravel to keep their footing. We flew down the access road our bodies becoming airborne at the crest of each rise only to bounce off the doors and each other on the dips as the ’52 careened down the narrow path that led to the rim of the cliff overlooking AFB cove. The radar installation loomed above and behind us, and the cove was breaking even better than the last hurricane, smaller, but lined up perfectly. We looked off to the west at the Ranch and saw a break so perfect that not a wave sectioned, one after another peeling into the Ranch cove. Standing outside the car with the motor idling, we could hear a din of claxon and siren intermixed with men shouting.
“Look at the Ranch! It’s going off!” was all Joshua needed to say. We piled back into the rear seat in time to get thrown to the floor as the ’52 spun its tires in reverse spitting gravel over the rim of the clay and boulder cliff. We were off on the rim road, which wove a path toward and away from the cliff edge, racing toward the little used path that led to the West gate and access to Deep Hollow Ranch road. We slid to a stop in front of a formidable apparently locked steel gate. Joshua got out of the car and calmly walked up to the high tensile “super lock” padlock that was the key to opening the gate. He gave it a simple twist revealing a neatly cut shackle that concealed the unlocked reality of gate security. Joshua didn’t do it, he simply knew of it, interacting with the young airmen who would quietly sneak out the west gate, using this path past the commanders keys to “have a drink and feel normal” at the Shagwong Bar and Grill. We opened the gate, pulled through, and closed it behind us, restoring the lock to its apparently locked position and motored almost at idle to the overgrown path leading out to the cliff overlooking the Ranch, now safely off base property.
Back at the base, the commander having issued a call to General Quarters, ran for his jeep, ordering his driver to pursue the intruders. But he didn’t give any orders to the airmen on duty and since General Quarters had NEVER been sounded in their entire tour of duty at the base, within a minute or two the general consensus was the radar had picked up incoming missiles and WWIII was erupting, giving them only 15 minutes to get underground in the 6 foot thick reinforced concrete underground former coastal gun emplacements. It was panic as families in the base housing rushed to the huge blast doors big enough that a bus could drive through. Everyone on the base save the small crew actually looking at the radar screens was rushing underground. The claxons and sirens continued ringing, adding crazy to the urgency. People were falling down running for their lives. No one went to their assigned posts, because there were none. But it was every man and family there knowing exactly where to survive a nuclear blast that led to the complete emptying of the surface so that in a few minutes there was no one left save the three airmen watching radar screens and the commander and his driver who were racing toward the rim of the cove. All this was verified at the Shagwong that night and during the day as the wives of airmen shopped in the village. The commander stopped his jeep at the rim, picked up his field glasses that were mostly used for checking for signs of stripers, and instead scanned about for signs of surfers.
John Law was sitting comfortable at the pancake house with a nice stack of blueberry pancakes steaming in front of him, and the pancake house’s homemade blueberry syrup which was only given to Montauk residents off to the side. They didn’t make enough to offer it to the general public, so if they knew you, and liked you, you would get some. Two fishermen walked in who had hung on thru dawn and told John that his sector car radio was squawking for him, and there sounded like a lot of commotion at the base, sirens and such, making a huge racket that would probably scare the fish for a week. Now John had been up all night and wasn’t about to leave his stack soaked in homemade blueberry syrup for ANY call, least of all an emergency at the base! But some of the fishermen went out to listen to the police radio crackling “URGENT” “JOHN PICK UP!” so they went in to tell John, but he just kept eating, remarking “WWIII wouldn’t keep me from these fine pancakes!”
A buzz quickly spread through the pancake house, the sound of men talking in low voices about matters no-one really wanted to face involving why alarms were sounding at the base, and what could be so urgent that dispatch wouldn’t leave John law alone, and WHY did he mention WWIII? These men had been up all night with nothing but fish on their brains and now there was something much bigger than the one that got away staring them right in the face, but none dared get between John and his stack, knowing full well their fishing days would hang in the balance. Everyone in the pancake house watched every bite that John took, as if he were a lion eating a kill, observed by every scavenger waiting for an opening to a morsel of conversation. The waitress approached him and the anticipation could have been cut with a knife but ‘More coffee?” wasn’t enough. Sweat beads were pouring from men’s brows, one fellow fell out of his chair when John stretched back in his chair, clearing his handi talkie from his belt and slowly turning it on. “John here. Come on” “John, it’s the base John, backup is on the way. Something BIG is going on out at Hero and we can’t raise anybody there! You don’t think this is IT do you?” John didn’t get a chance to answer as a wave of now completely deranged fishermen swept him out the doors of the pancake house, falling down over each other as they raced for their 4X4 rigs, bent on saving themselves in the catacombs of the base. The contrail of a high flying plane didn’t help matters, as salty minds swore ICBM’s were heading for Washington DC. A general panic began spreading through the village of Montauk. There was nothing john Law could do about it so he joined the crazy caravan heading to the point.
The base commander didn’t even wonder why the sirens continued to ring, so intent he was at finding the damn surfers who interrupted his breakfast. His field glasses focused on three shapes clad in rubber making their way over the rocks in the distant cove just off his base. He ordered his driver to take him to the West gate. With a gleam in his eye he said he was going to end this trespassing once and for all!
The growing caravan of fishermen now frothing with fearful determination careened through the North gate driving right up to the blast doors that led underground. They began pounding on the doors, but they were locked from the inside, the airmen and their families figuring their survival depended upon it. A man named Charlie offered to smash them with his truck, the biggest of the lot, and they all cheered as he smashed his truck into the doors designed to withstand a 500lb bomb. But alas it was to no avail. The doors didn’t budge. And a collective despair began to emerge, worse than a weeks worth of fishing without a bite. But then John Law slowly drove into view and the men rushed to greet his car, their eyes revealing their crazy purpose, as if he was Moses about to part the doors and save them from this beautiful day. He walked past the blast doors and onward to the radar building, never so much as looking back at the crowd following him. He walked up the steps and opened the door and walked in, turning as he did to the crowd following him with a raised hand indicating stop and wait, and he disappeared within.
Deep inside the radar building there was a dark silent room with radar screens. The three airmen assigned were sitting at their screens as John Law approached. “Hey John, you here for the tour?” was ventured by one. “Anything going on? Any incoming ICBM’s” “Naw, just another boring day in Montauk” “You know the alarms are ringing?” “No” “Know how to shut em off? Or where the base commander is?” One airman got up and walked with John from the room, and each door they passed through led to a louder sound till finally the outside door where from the top step the airman beheld the multitude of Montauk residents and fishermen filling the base. They parted to let John and the airman through, and he walked to the control room and pulled the switch. The sirens stopped and from the sweet silence John’s voice boomed “Those who want to stay and fish, FISH, the rest of you GO HOME! The base is just having a DRILL!” For that moment John Law was in charge of a United States Military Installation, and it felt GOOD to tell his people they were free to fish this forbidden land. The sight of some hundred men walking toward the cliff, surf casting rigs in hand, about to freely fish a spot that had been off limits since the government condemned this beautiful place in the name of national security brought tears of joy to the eyes of anyone who witnessed it. In the distance the sound of a gunshot could be heard. “Damn poachers” John muttered as he walked to his car. He drove back out the North Gate and turned toward Deep Hollow Ranch.
As I said, the one thing that REALLY got John hot was poachers. He drove up the ranch road at a deliberate pace and could easily see where cars pulled off the road onto the small brush and weed obscured path that led to the bird sanctuary and the rim of the cliff. Another shot! He reached back and took his shotgun from its holder, letting his cruiser glide to a stop in the tall grass as he stepped free and calmly walked toward the sanctuary. Another shot! Definitely the rim. John walked toward the sound.
Joshua was pissed! On his last ride he felt something hit the nose of his Black Cat and as he paddled out we could hear him complaining, swearing damn poachers were in the sanctuary and a stray shot hit his board! We had heard the muffled sound of gunfire, but that was not unusual so close to duck hunting season, and out in the water sounds carry for miles. We each looked closely at the damage and agreed Joshua should keep surfing, largely out of our selfish desire to continue cashing in on the best waves of the year. Unknown to us, the base commander was lying prone at the rim of ranch cove, using his field glasses as a crude gun sight while he tried to steady his hand so his 45 was more effective for distance. And now he had the three of us sitting close together. He squeezed off another shot. Sitting together, a big splash erupted between us accompanied by a report of gunfire. Joshua cussed a blue streak, now swearing he was going to find out who was poaching and castrate him. Our eyes peered toward the rim of the cliff and could barely see what transpired next, although later that day we were asked by John to swear to statements HE prepared, as witnesses to a crime, and were happy to do it.
John could see the uniformed man lying in the tall grass peering through binoculars and holding a 45. What he was shooting at couldn’t be seen. The only thing in view was three surfers, one of whom he knew well, Joshua, cause he passed his car as he walked in. But Joshua’s cussing could be heard for miles, and as John surveyed the scene he realized there were no ducks grouped in the water, just those three surfers. John was standing over a man with a loaded gun, so he leveled his shotgun at the man’s chest and quietly said “Sir”. The commander turned expecting to see his driver and instead came face to face with the two barrels of John Law’s shotgun. John spoke again “Sir, surfers are never in season, no matter how you feel about em. Better leave the gun right there and get up!” Reality suddenly flooded over the commander, his whole career washing before him. “ I guess I just lost it.” was all he said as he extended his hands to John expecting to be cuffed and arrested for attempted murder. But John picked up the gun, admiring the standard issue 45, ‘Can I keep it? I’m going to cite you for poaching in a bird sanctuary. There’ll be a hefty fine. Don’t dispute the ticket, and when word gets out you’ve been poaching, lets just say you won’t be able to get even a cup of coffee from this town! Those three boys out there will be sworn witnesses. You’ll probably request a transfer. I went to school with one of those boys out there. And fishing is now legal in Camp Hero!” The commander wholeheartedly agreed as he accepted the ticket for poaching and walked toward the West gate of his base. “You have a hellava mess back there” John called after him.
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BillL
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Post by BillL »

Willi,
What a great summer read,you had me in stiches! Keep up the stories,you sure know how to weave a tale. Thanks, Bill
DrStrange
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Post by DrStrange »

Lot of fun reading it. Kind of reminded me of "war games" with the Camp Pendelton marines sneaking into Trestles many years before it was opened to the pubic I mean public. Never got shot at though. But we did bribe our way out with Mom's homemade meatloaf sandwiches given to a homesick marine once.
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Rob
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Post by Rob »

Good story, Bill. Image

I know - and remember - The Base quite well.
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Mike Fernandez
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Post by Mike Fernandez »

Great read Will, are you a writer?
I am a traveller of both time and space, a weaver in and out of dreams, I see worlds seldom seen.

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Coldsalt
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Post by Coldsalt »

I had to break out the old 100-ton test maps to get a berring on everything... thanks so much for a great read! Stoked for days on that little gem.
Make new tracks!
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