The Gray Flannel Beachcombers

Robert Caldwell, 27, college graduate, Navy veteran (nickname: Bullseye), well-paid junior account executive at a large Madison Avenue advertising agency, had an hallucination while returning to New York on a train. He was pooped. He had seen five accounts in four days on a tight schedule. Two nights he had drunk too much. His throat was sore, both from smoking and from the beginnings, he thought, of his second cold of the winter. He was looking dully out of the train window at the industrial slums of New Jersey when he suddenly spotted a sea of tropic green, a dazzling white beach, palm trees and a man in white duck pants, bronzed and barefoot. The man was himself.

In Pennsylvania Station, he left the overheated train, fought through the crowd to the taxi ramp, and, after a 15-minute battle, beat out a middle-aged woman for a cab. His feet were wet; there was a dismal, driving rain.

When he got up the next morning, he had a sharp pain in his stomach. He had the vague feeling that it was the beginning of an ulcer. At the agency, his boss rejected an entire planned campaign with three words ("It doesn't sing"). He went back to his desk and doodled a palm tree on a memo pad. Again he saw himself on the white beach beside the green sea. He tried to remember the feel of strong sun, something he had missed for several years. Then he got up, and with the well-chosen, acid phrases he had formulated in times of annoyance, he quit his job.

Three months later Robert Caldwell, known now simply as Bullseye, was one of the accepted beachcombers of Oahu, along with Steamboat Joe, Panama, the Duke and Coconut Willy. For white ducks, he used his Navy whites. He was bronzed and in terrific shape from surfing and swimming. During the day, he helped a friend build surfboards on the beach. Two evenings a week he followed an extension course for which the GI Bill gave him some extra change. Occasionally he went out with friends and drank out of pineapples whose insides had been partially replaced with rum. No slouch with the fair sex in New York, he found an almost bewildering success on the beach: a wide variety of women at little expense, with none of the "city-type, built-in resistance. Girls who come out get into the spirit of the Islands pretty quickly. It's the soft air."

Far from being fiction, Caldwell's retreat is a case study. The procedure may sound familiar, but his style of beachcombing is something relatively new. In days recorded by Conrad and Maugham, the beachcomber was disreputable: a rum-sodden, debt-ridden outcast who dodged the arrival of ships. Today's beachcomber welcomes ships and planes because he lives, not off the beach, but off the people on the beach. He is eminently respectable; his white ducks are cleaned and pressed; his presence at a party is welcomed. Chances are that he is an ex-executive who got tired of winter winds, a complex existence, tight schedules and an irascible boss.

Take Coconut Willy. A graduate engineer, Willy weaves hats near the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki. They are handsome, complicated hats, with birds and houses and sometimes little people on them. A simple coconut hat costs two dollars. The complicated ones cost up to 20. Willy was an assistant engineer at Hickam Air Force Base when he picked up hat-making as a hobby. It wasn't long before he saw a way of life that permitted him to be on the beach all day – as a manufacturer and retailer of coconut hats.

Coconut hats were invented by a beachcomber about 50 years ago. The idea of decorating them with birds came from China or the Philippines. Willy has been making them since 1947, has sold hats to all sorts of people on the beach, from movie stars (Van Johnson, June Allyson) to generals (Omar Bradley). Red Skelton paid him $17.50 for a complex creation. Trader Vic's in San Francisco and the Flamingo, in Las Vegas, are good customers, but he has turned down offers from Bermuda and the Bahamas because "international trade is too complicated for a carefree beachcomber." It takes Willy about 20 minutes to manufacture one of his products. One day a single customer bought 11 hats for $10 apiece, but usually Willy doesn't do that well. His most appreciative customer: Lily Dache.

Talmadge Wilson was an English instructor before he took to the beach. Now, as an ice cream vendor, he carries a basket of atomic bars and popsicles along the beach, together with odd volumes of his favorite reading (Dylan Thomas, John Bunyan, William Blake). He's been in the sun for about two years, was attracted to it originally because he loves to surf. When the waves are really up, he lets the ice cream go and takes his board out. This year he was in the finals at the world surfing championship at Makaha, on the other side of Oahu. His beach status even led him to his wife. He met her when he sold her a fudge bar at Waikiki.

The most reputable-looking beachcomber anywhere is Winthrop Deane, who manages to look grave and responsible even in the swimming suit in which he now lives. For this there's good reason: Deane spent almost a decade looking grave and responsible as a Montgomery Street (in San Francisco) and later a Wall Street investment banker. He went to work in the San Francisco financial district after his release from the Navy (lieutenant commander, South Pacific) and moved to what he calls a "Wall Street bucket shop" in 1947. About a year and a half ago he gave it up and made a run for the sun, but it was no Moon and Sixpence flight: he took his wife and small daughters along. He now has a small house on the island of Maui which was formerly someone's weekend home, and a sloop in which he sails practically every day. His living is not a complete break from his former line, nor is it directly connected with the people on the beach, like Bullseye's and Coconut Willy's. In a way, he is closer to the original ideals of beachcombing, for he picks things up along the beach and sells them. Only the things that he picks up are not mere flotsam, they are local products that can be expanded into a wide market, like the small guava fruit company he helped to capitalize for expansion.

"I'm certainly a refugee, you can say that. I suppose I'm even a beachcomber, if that's a refugee selling occasional and haphazard goods and services.

"About a year and a half ago I don't suppose you'd have been able to pick me out from the mob on the 7:43 that reads the paper on the way in, then takes the subway from Grand Central to Wall. I had a house in upper Westchester. I was married and had two small daughters, Janet and Nancy, just starting school. Four or five times a year my wife and I would go sailing on the Sound. Some of the people in the office had boats, and we'd crew for them.

"Then I was sent out here to write up a small airline that was seeking some additional capital and wanted us to underwrite an issue for them. I spent a couple of days on the beach when I was through, and then a few more on Maui visiting some of the new friends I'd made. On the plane back I started thinking: what the hell am I working for? I spend over eight hours a day in the office and three nights out of four I take work home. You have to, to keep up with the next man. All right. Of those eight hours, I was working almost three to pay off Uncle Sam. I was working another day a month for the New York Central – a train I spent over two hours a day on, five days a week. From portal to portal – car to the station, train to New York, subway to the office – it took over an hour and a half, almost four hours a day. I saw my daughters only on weekends. I was making a good salary, but with the present cost of living I had to keep running faster and faster just to stand still. Even on a respectable income, we were scrimping: in that league, it was hard not to. When I got home, I told my wife, 'We're selling the house and moving to Maui. We're getting out of the rat-race.'

"So we came out here. There's an easygoing crowd of people, and some small businesses that are expanding, or trying to put new products on the market. The demand is not only in the States but through the whole Pacific; air travel means a growing economic life. I should think the same thing would apply to the Caribbean, especially with the terrific tax set-up in Puerto Rico. A young fellow with initiative can do pretty well. He may not make quite so much money, but he's not working part time for the government so much, and he lives damned well – especially the bachelors.

"Anyway. I met a kamaaina [old-time resident] who wanted to start marketing guava juice, and I helped him to get his capital. One or two of these things come along every couple of months, and I put in a few weeks' work and a trip to the mainland coast, where I pity the pale people I see on the streets. The rest of the time I sail and watch my barefoot daughters dive into the blue Pacific after school. The other day we asked Nancy what she wanted to be when she was older. She said she wanted to be a seal. I told my wife it was a lot cheaper to bring up a seal than a debutante."

Deane is probably the most established of the beachcombers, but his move indicates a willingness to face a few uncertainties that is characteristic of all beachcombers.

Not all beachcombers, of course, are come-lately refugees. Some, like Bobby Krewson, have a different story to tell:

"I'm 24 and I been on the beach all my life, except the time I was in the Coast Guard. I got 28 surf boards – most I made myself – and I rent 'em by the hour, day or week. Takes about four days to make a board. If I'm selling it, I usually get about $85. Don't print that – you'll have competition runnin' over here. I live pretty good. I teach 'em to use the boards, too. That can be especially interesting because out by the reef, when they're first learning, girls are always losing the tops to their suits. I always insist that they wear bathing suits with straps – if they're over 50. The (concluded on page 66) Beachcombers (continued from page 32) best student I had was Lou Costello. He had a terrific stance. His balance was great – he always stayed on the board. The only trouble was he wouldn't take the board into the water. He did all his surfing here on the sand.

"Most of the year I make money with the boards. Vacation time, there are so many girls around, I give up making money – I make coeds."

Bobby's last point is one prospective beachcombers will have to consider. For perhaps nine months a year, beachcombing can be at least a little like it used to be – an independent life, relatively quiet, with rum, cigars and sunshine. At the beginning of summer, however, a lemming-like herd of unattached females descends on the islands, in search of tans and tropical romance. Usually they find both, and the beachcomber, being in the midst of the quest, has to give up his quiet life for a while.

This annual migration, which would have been abhorred by old-style beachcombers, is not an innovation. But recently, the numbers of girls have tripled, then increased tenfold as tourist-class air fares became lower.

How does the harried executive get to be a high-class beachcomber? Bullseye Caldwell offers prospective refugees this advice:

"I'd say first, don't burn your bridges, because you might not like it. It's a temptation to tell the boss off like I did, but it's better if you ask him for a leave of absence. Old war wound acting up, that sort of thing.

"Second, to tide you over you ought to have some savings, or be able to draw on unemployment insurance or some extension of the GI Bill.

"Third, you ought to have an idea of what you're going to do. You don't have to worry about this too much until you get out in the sun and size up the situation, but a high-class beachcomber isn't a bum. He's an artisan who can sell charm, goods or services while in a swimming suit, whose work is fun. Generally, even if he relaxes completely, he'll apply the lessons he learned in business to beachcombing.

"Most important, he has to get rid of the American success bug – getting ahead, piling up cars and apartments and extra suits of clothes. You don't get ahead here, but you don't have to, because you only wear shoes about once a week. In a way, you're ahead, anyway, because a guy who has a girl, a good supply of rum and cigars, and a beat on the beach has got everything a man ever needed. The sunset's all his. He's got it made."

Graduate engineer Coconut Willy contemplates one of his dizzier chapeau creations, the profits from which enable him to while away leisure hours in a more romantic manner.

Graduate engineer Coconut Willy contemplates one of his dizzier chapeau creations, the profits from which enable him to while away leisure hours in a more romantic manner.

Surfboard-whiz Bobby Krewson teaches the dry-land prelims of his sport

Woody Brown does a brisk biz hauling coeds in a catamaran.

Above, the solitary beachcomber may at any time stumble across unusual lava formations on the beach.

Below, ex-Madison Avenue nabob Bullseye Caldwell strolls the 400 yards betwixt his new home and place of business.

Day's end flnds a sportive beachcomber and friend out for a sundown dip.