That’s Frank the Bait Guy, who decorates his shack every Christmas like it’s Rockefeller Center, who dresses up at Halloween and gives out candy to anyone who comes by, who holds an annual Children’s Fishing Contest and gives prizes to every kid who enters.

The locals love him because he sponsors a Little League team, pays for uniforms for a local kids’ soccer team, even though he hates soccer and never attends a game, buys an ad in the program for every high school drama production, and paid for the basketball hoops at the local park.

This morning, he gets the bait for his early customers, and then there’s the usual lull, so he can relax and watch the surfers who are already out on the Dawn Patrol. These are the young, hard chargers, getting in a session before they have to go to work. A few years ago, that would have been me, he thinks with a slight pang of jealousy. Then he laughs at himself. A few years? Get real. These kids with their short-boards and their cutback maneuvers. Christ, even if you could do one of those, you’d probably just throw your back out and be in bed for a week. You’re twenty years out from being able to compete with those kids-you’d just get in their way, and you know it.

So he sits and does his crossword puzzle, another gift from Herbie, who had turned him on to the puzzles. Herbie Goldstein has been on his mind a lot these days, particularly this morning.

Maybe it’s the storm, he thinks. Storms bring up memories like they drop driftwood on the beach. Things you think are lost forever, and then, suddenly, there they are-faded, worn, but back again.

So he sits and works the puzzles, thinks about Herbie, and waits for the Gentlemen’s Hour.

The Gentlemen’s Hour is an institution on every California surf spot. It starts around 8:30 or 9:00, when the young guns have hustled off to their day jobs, leaving the water to guys with more flexible schedules. So the lineup consists of your doctors, your lawyers, your real estate investors, your federal worker early buyouts, some retired schoolteachers-in short, gentlemen.