Remembering Ron Montapert
Not an April goes by without me thinking of Ron.
We weren't exactly pals, but we weren't enemies either ... which is a bit
surprising when you consider what went down between us.
It was around 1963 when I first met Ronnie and I was spending a lot of time surfing "County Line" - the
soon to become popular surfing spot just south of the LA-Ventura county line.
When I started surfing there back in the late-50's County Line wasn't nearly as
crowded as it became just a few years later - probably because of it's distance from any population center and the amount of time and gas it took to get there.
The Line broke on just about any west coast swell and had several individual breaks, including the point (which had the best waves, but also kelp and some daunting rocks that lurked just below the surface), the beach (short, fast rides and bruises), "Harrison Reef" (never tried it) and what somebody named "County Line Bombora" - a steep takeoff to nowhere that only broke when the swell was over ten feet.
Other County Line regulars included Ernie Tananka, Richard Roche, Joe Moore, Darryl Kniss, Paul Fritz and local Malibu surfers like Nolan Brewer, Steve Perrin and Luman Bailey. On the odd
occasion you might even see someone paddle out like Fred Beckner, Dewey Weber, Mike Doyle, the Aaberg brothers, Tom Morey,
Bob Cooper or the exotic, incomparable, "Tiger Lil" on her
tiger-skin motif board. Other than that, the place could go for days without anyone riding the waves - even in a good swell.
Eventually, I got to know the family who owned the County Line Store and that became my second home.
Before I knew it I was considered a "local" and got the unenviable nickname, "The Mayor of County Line."
There was no beach hierarchy at County Line back then. The people who made the effort to surf there were only interested in surfing and there were virtually no tourists or other beach users other than fishermen. However, the new wave of surfing wannabe's who emerged after "Gidget" wanted to make their mark - especially the "Valley Cowboys" who descended on the civilized coast like hordes of hayseed barbarians.
Since there was already a well-established hierarchy with a well-defined social structure at places like The Pier (aka Malibu), the incursion of Valley surfers was well confined, and
newcomers either made an effort to fit in and became absorbed in that structure, or they were made to feel most unwelcome and sloped off to other surfing beaches.
One of those beaches was County Line. Ron and his entourage were from
"The Valley."
Ron was a natural leader, if only because he looked like one. He was physically impressive, good looking and built like someone who'd been born with
all the right genes
and worked out in a gym to hone his assets. He wasn't tall, but had wide, wide shoulders, a washboard stomach and was all muscle. He was also hung like a prize bull.
The only reason I know this is because, while most of us would modestly change clothes behind a towel or car door, Ron would brazenly change up on the highway, in the parking lot, or wherever he happened to be, without any attempt to hide his nakedness. As he used to say when he let it all hang out, "When you've got it, flaunt it." And flaunt it he did.
Strangely, I don't remember ever seeing Ron on his own, or without the small group of friends he appeared to travel with.
In a way they were his fans, his supporters and his audience. He always arrived with an instant crowd.
So, even though there was no hierarchy at County Line, Ron seemed to have a need for there to be one and, since I was known as "The Mayor," I became a target for his incessant bullying.
Fortunately, he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I was usually able to figure a way around our numerous confrontations becoming physical. Which was good, because if he had taken it into his mind to push me into a fight, I'm sure he would have wiped the floor with me.
Unless ... unless he made me angry and I lost my temper.
Normally, I'm a pretty easy-going person, but I have a huge weakness that I try very, very hard to control. If I lose my temper, I go berserk. And not just a little berserk ... totally.
Just two examples, both at Lincoln Junior High School. The first involved one of the school bullies, who was big and ugly and used to terrorize anyone he could. After taking his shit for over two years I was still taking it in my last year. Even though I'd shot up to
well over six foot tall I was still frightened of him.
It had become a habit.
Then, one day while we were walking up the stairs to class, he goosed me from behind so violently that I thought my rectum had been ruptured. And I snapped ... whipped around and, with all my body weight behind the punch, clobbered him in the forehead as hard as I could.
The bully tumbled backwards down through the other students like a sack of potatoes to the landing below. He didn't move and, thankfully, the berserker in me quickly fizzled out.
Of course I got into all sorts of trouble, but since he was well known as a bully and the students who saw the incident came to my defense, all I had to do is attend a meeting with the principal, my class counselor, my parents, the bully's parents and the bully himself - who had a prominent lump on his forehead that he carried around like a deformity for what seemed like weeks.
That incident instantly made me off-limits to the rest of the school bullies and I was even able to convince a couple of them to stop
hassling other students just by asking them firmly. But what happened next scared the holy living shit out of me.
The "A-9 Walk" was a brick walkway in front of the administration wing of the school and only students in their last semester were allowed to congregate there. It had a low wall between the walk and the grass beyond and I was sitting on the wall one lunchtime when a fellow student I'll call "Gary" - who was about my age, but a half a year behind me - sneaked up, whacked me hard on the butt and tail bone with an indoor tennis racquet (like an oversized ping-pong racquet with
nickel sized holes on the face) and it hurt like crazy.
I lost it, hopped over the wall and chased the poor guy into the main hallway of school where I cornered him against some lockers located under one of the stairwells and proceeded to beat him senseless.
Apparently, I was still beating Gary when some teachers tried to intervene and pull me off him. By the time they did, I'd nailed a
geography teacher, injured two coaches and damaged several lockers.
I narrowly escaped being expelled for that, but it wasn't that possibility that concerned me the most. I had completely lost control of my temper and almost killed someone who was simply playing a prank, albeit a painful one. I'd also injured three other people in the process.
Somehow, I got through high school without losing it like that again. Usually by defusing potentially dangerous situations by
making jokes or self-depreciating remarks at my own expense.
In fact, I was able to avoid another incident like that until one day at the beach when Ron managed to push me over the
edge.
I was laying in the "Pit" at Malibu Pier enjoying the heat of the sand after a good session in the water. Since it wasn't a place where Ron and his gang frequented, I was surprised to see them arrive and figured I could avoid them by rolling over on my back pretending to sleep. Silly me.
I could hear Ron say, "There's Feigel ... let's go say hello." My eyes
were closed, but I could tell that someone had moved between me and the
sun, which was a major breach of beach etiquette.
"What's happening?" asked Ron in a mock friendly tone as he put one foot on my crotch and pressed down, increasing the pressure. "Having a little wet-dream or something?"
His pals thought this was funny.
In retrospect it was more a question of feeling humiliated than self-defense - like someone kicking sand in my face. Something suddenly snapped and I did a half-kip off the sand in an attempt to bring my
right leg up in a sweeping arc that would allow the side of
my foot smash him in the side of the head and take him out with one
blow. Not a nice thing ... pretty vicious actually, but it made sense to
a berserker.
Except I hadn't taken Ron's quick reactions into account and as my foot approached his head he started to move back so that the only part of me to connect
was a jagged nail on the big toe of my right foot that caught him on the cheek below his
left eye and sliced open a
deep gash that immediately started gushing blood.
By that time I was on my feet and everyone was stunned, with Ron standing there holding his face, blood streaming through his fingers and down his chest. "You've taken my fucking eye out, I'm blind!"
he screeched. "Fucking look at what you've done."
Ron took away his bloody hands and it was clear that the only damage was the cut. So I told him - more calmly than I felt, "Look Ron, if I really wanted to take out your eye, I wouldn't have missed. It's just a cut." And he looked at me as if it was the first time he'd ever actually seen me.
"How the fuck did you do that?" he asked.
"Just something I learned," I replied, trying to look like I really meant it.
My flash of temper had truly fizzled out and it was a good thing that Ron
and his friends were in shock and didn't want to retaliate or I'd have been mincemeat.
Wanting to make an exit ASAP, I made a brief bow like the ones I'd seen in a karate class I
once visited, handed him the towel I had drying on the fence and told him to press it against the wound to stop the bleeding. Next I instructed his pals to take him across the street, get some ice from the liquor store next to the Malibu Inn, wrap it in the towel and keep that on the cut until they could get him to a doctor. Then, trying to look as much as I could like a
bad-ass martial arts expert, I took my board from the fence and went
back out for another surf.
It was weeks before I saw Ron again and when I caught him looking at me from across the parking lot at County Line I suddenly thought he might want to make up for lost time. Instead, he went to this car, brought over my towel - washed and folded - and put out his hand.
"OK?" he asked. "Yeah ... OK." I answered, shaking his hand and trying
hard not to look at where I'd cut his face.
From then on he treated me with a certain respect and I returned the compliment. Although we never hung out with each other, we didn't avoid each other either.
The cut had only left a faint scar.
As surfing's popularity increased and beach culture changed, so did
County Line. Every day saw an influx of new people, many of whom had no
idea how to conduct themselves in public, let alone at the beach. Some
came to observe. Others to enjoy. Still others to prove themselves in a
new arena and Ron helped to keep the peace.
There was a particularly dense German who arrived at the beach one
day. He was around six foot eight and a remarkably clumsy goofyfooter
who couldn't surf worth shit. His entire repertoire consisted of taking
off in front of everyone he could on every wave he could, adopting a
hysterical wide-leg stance that made him look like a large insect and then
falling off backwards. Good surfers and learners alike were injured by his antics.
But the idiot would
pick fights with anyone who criticized his lack of consideration and was
too stupid to know he was the one who'd caused the problems in the first
place.
I remember him squaring off with Ernie Tanaka one day after Ernie
had come out of the water after a collision with the German and called him a "dork."
"Vas es DORK?" he yelled, circling Ernie with all the grace
of a tree trunk. "Vas es DORK? You call ME DORK?!?"
Since there was a very real possibility of the beach being closed to
surfing by Ventura County because of complaints about the conduct of
some of the newer surfers, Ron and I moved in to calm the situation
before Ernie decked the fool.
"Dork means that you've got to be more careful when you take-off
on a wave," I offered.
"Yeah," said Ron, running a hand over his face to wipe the
smile. "You've got to look first to see if
anyone else is already on the wave so you don't get in their way. That
way you don't make people angry."
"Oh ..." answered the Dork slowly as his brain engaged his
mouth - or tried to. "Vhy es dat?"
It took a while, and Ron and I had to avoid looking at each other or
risk laughing ... but we eventually got through to him and it
turned out that he was just extremely thick. Thankfully, he gave up
surfing that winter and took up skiing.
Ron also did his part to keep the status quo in ways I could never
have accomplished. When tempers flared on the beach he'd have a quiet
word and the parties would go their separate ways. Or when newcomers
caused trouble or stole things he'd somehow ensure they left quickly and
never came back.
He also made a point of watching my back and made sure his troops
gave me support when I needed it.
I'd been given the word by the local Ventura County sheriff's deputy
that the County was planning to close the beach to surfing and surfers
for the summer unless we did something to prove to them we could be
trusted. So, with the help of the United States Surfing Association, Surfguide
Magazine and the County Line surfers, we organized a beach clean-up
that turned the trick.
No doubt about it. I might have been called "The Mayor,"
but it was Ron and his friends who ran the beach.
Ron Montapert on a small wave at Secos
with me paddling out in hopes of another set (top left).
Taken by Leroy Grannis and scanned from the original edition of the Surfing Guide to Southern
California.
One summer's afternoon a year or so after our encounter at Malibu we both found ourselves at Arroyo Sequit (aka Secos) just south of County Line and cemented another brick in our relationship.
For years there hadn't been a lifeguard tower at the beach but that summer the State of California had decided it needed one for the lone lifeguard they'd assigned to the patrol beach. It turned out to be a
well known competition paddler whose name escapes me, but I remember that his brother was also a paddler of renown.
What nobody had expected was that this lifeguard would turn out to be a total prick.
Ironically, Secos had never developed the kind of them-n-us hierarchy that was prevalent at Malibu or occurred later at County Line.
So we'd enjoyed Secos for years without any problems until the arrival of this pushy, officious, swaggering, self-important storm trooper who wanted to make it clear that this was now HIS beach and the sooner we all knew it the better.
Alas, on a stunning day when big surf was breaking perfectly off the rock and the waves were being held up by offshore Santa Anna's
for steep takeoffs and long rides the little prick put up the "black ball"
- the flag that tells everyone they're not allowed out in the water.
No one could believe it. We tried talking to him about his decision and not only did he arrogantly ignore us, he warned that, if we did go out, he'd arrest us when we came in. Then he made his biggest mistake. He also
threatened that he'd call the County Sheriff and have us thrown in jail.
Call the County Sheriff? But there was no phone in the tower and I knew from talking to
some local deputies I knew that there was no radio contact along this stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway either. This may have changed since then, but the PCH from just before Secos all the way north to Pt Magu was known as a "dead spot."
"OK call the sheriff, you puffed-up dork," I suggested.
"Don't push me," boasted the lifeguard.
"Or you'll do what?" someone challenged. "Arrest us all? Ha ha ha ... go
ahead."
"I'm warning you ..." he shot back.
While the lifeguard was glaring at one of the others, Ron picked-up a
fist-sized rock and threw it at the
side of the tower where it made nice, satisfying noise. Others followed his lead and our lifeguard
was forced to retreat into his tower and batten down the painted plywood hatches.
His muffled threats from within his fortress made us even more determined. "You'll be sorry ... just you wait until I get out of here." It was beginning to sound less like a threat and more like a plea. It was pretty funny. To us anyway.
Ron organized it so everyone took turns going out to surf and coming back to watch the tower. Nothing was said, but every time the lifeguard attempted to open the top of his Dutch
door to peak out several more rocks would fly and he'd quickly duck back for cover.
Finally, as the sun set and we were sure he wouldn't be able to see our retreating license plates, Ron and I nodded at each other, got up
- followed by Ron's mates - and we unleashed a fusillade of rocks that hit the tower like the wrath of God.
We never saw
even the hint of a black ball flag from that day onwards.
"That was really fun," said Ron as we headed towards our cars.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Let's do it again sometime." 
* * * * * * * * *
Second Lieutenant Ronald M. Montapert started his tour of duty in Vietnam on March 1, 1969 and was killed by "Multiple Fragmentation Wounds"
from a landmine in Kien Ho Province only 6 weeks later on April 15th. He was a member of 9th Infantry Division and only 25 years old.
God bless you, Ron. Requiescat in pace
Ronald M. Montapert
Vietnam Memorial Wall - Panel 27 West, Row 089
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