Joseph Houk's LiveJournal

                 Johnny Surfazio had just finished the last coat of wax on his board when he heard the car pull up. He looked up at the clock on the wall of the garage and saw that it was already 4:30. "That late already?" he said to himself as he carefully picked up his surfboard and put it on the rack next to his workbench.

                Ever since they had retired a few years ago from teaching at Pepperdine University, Johnny's wife Cindy had been working at the day care center at the school. It was a short commute to their home here in Santa Monica, and the extra money gave them money to supplement their retirement checks.

                Of course, he hadn't exactly slacked off in the ensuing years; he had sold his idea for a GPS unit for surfboards to a local board manufacturer in 2003, and the money from that had bought this place for the two of them.

                He had just finished cleaning up when Cindy came through the side door. She had a puzzled look on her face.

                "John," she asked, "do you know anyone who works at a TeraCon company based in Dallas, Texas?"

                "Doesn't ring a bell," he replied as he kissed her in greeting. "I vaguely recall dealing with a semiconductor company based out of Plano when I was trying to find parts for the GPSurf."

                "Well, you got a letter from someone at that place," she said, handing him the envelope. He shrugged and took a paring knife from his bench to slit open the letter.

                "Hey, there's a check in here!" he exclaimed. "And there's a letter attached, too."

 

 

                "That's strange", he said as he looked again at the letter, then at the cashier's check.

                "What is?" Cindy asked as he peeked over his shoulder at the letter.

                "The letter and the check are both dated 1965, but the envelope is postmarked two days ago." He looked at the check again. "The check is drawn from Chase Bank… I don't think they were around back in '65."

                "The check is printed out electronically, too," Cindy replied. Just then, something else fell out of the envelope. Cindy bent down and picked it up. "Hey, it's a photo of the gal from the letter."   Johnny took a look at it.

                "Oh, yeah," he said. "That was that one strange lady who I gave surfing lessons to when I worked at that shop on Ventura Beach the summer I graduated." He studied the photo of the blonde standing next to a board in a wetsuit. "She gave me that card, but never told me what it was."

                "There's something written on the back," Cindy said as she turned the photo over.

 

                P.S. – I forgot to activate the Starbucks Card. It should be ready to use by now. –CW.

 

                "Huh," Johnny said. "Now that I think about it, she was one of the people who was assigned to the project of developing the chip for the GPSurf. She had this strange, glowing pendant." He shrugged. "She didn't look that old when I saw her."

                "When you were pitching the GPSurf?" Cindy asked.

                "No, when I gave her those surfing lessons," he replied. Cindy did a double-take.

                "Back in 1965?" she asked. Johnny nodded.

                They both looked at each other. "Nah," they said in unison.

(Cassie Wells appears courtesy of Thomas Overbeck and Times Like This)

So I finally broke down and joined LJ. Yeah, yeah, I know. I already do most of my blogging over at my Blogger page, jwhouk.blogspot.com, so it's not because I haven't done any writing online before.

I guess this is more or less a "presence" page. Which isn't as bad as it sounds, really.

As my LJ photo is my "baseball card" picture (the "C" stands for "Cerveceros", or "Brewers", by the way), I can live with the Baseball theme for the page. If anyone knows anything about a hockey-style theme, feel free to drop me a line.