Pescadero Memories

Email John Vonderlin (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

To read earlier “Monty Parker” posts, please click here

and here

Hi June,
I was caught by surprise last week when out of the blue the following email arrived. To say it provided a heartwarming answer to a minor mystery that has been bugging me and others for quite a while would be an understatement. Enjoy. John.

**********

Hi John,

I am here to crack the mystery of Monty Parker, although I must admit it brings me a lot of sadness to be putting an end to his newly created cyber life.

Monty Parker was born in New Mexico under the name Alton Monty Parker.  The AM Parker that you found in New Mexico with the same birth date is most likely the mystery man you were looking for, but, the AM in the AMBS Beach sign does not stand for Alton Monty.

All the effort put into deciphering the meaning of AMBS beach was thoroughly amusing and I enjoyed all the effort and creativity that was put into your speculations.  I never thought of our sign as a mystery and its great to see my childhood memories of my father grow into a coveted story.

I am one of two of Monty’s children and the rappel site used by the Merry Pranksters is the entrance to our “secret beach”.  When I was about 6 and my brother was about 10, my dad took my brother and I to the “secret beach” for the first time.  He carried a thick and heavy rope down the poison oak filled path from Hwy 1 while my brother and I followed with our Golden Retriever Chelsea.  Then he attached the rope to the same stakes that are still there to this day and tossed it over the edge.  I don’t remember being scared or nervous about climbing down the cliff but I think that is because my father never showed us fear and was constantly taking my brother and I on extreme adventures.   Then he lowered the dog down in a duffle bag and we all climbed down the rope one by one.  When we got to the bottom we started our exploration of every nook and cranny and this is when our passion for our “secret beach” began.  After that day no other beach would ever suffice.

We had about 6 years of adventures at the secret beach with my dad, but he didn’t always take us with him.  On June 3, 1995, my dad and a few of his friends went abalone diving at our “secret beach”.  Monty was an avid diver and had been Navy Seal trained so he was a very capable swimmer.  After their day had ended and his friends headed back up to the car, Monty went on “one more dive” by himself.  His friends reached the car and my dad never returned. After waiting for some time they went to find him which proved unsuccessful.
Hours later a surfer discovered his body up the coast. The autopsy showed he drowned although the cause of his drowning was unknown, and to this day, still unknown.  Only speculations have been made about what could have caused Monty Parker, a very capable and experienced diver, to drown.

I am not exactly sure, through all the chaos of my father’s death, who put up the sign, but I think it was my father’s friends that were with him that day. The sign was put there shortly after my father passed and over the years began to be overgrown.  I hadn’t been back to our “secret beach” for over two years now and I was overjoyed to see that it had been moved to a more accessible spot and that it had been cemented.  Thank you, from my entire family, to whoever put the time and effort into preserving my father’s memory.

And for the meaning of the sign… AMBS beach is an acronym for my immediate family names: Ashaleigh (me), Monty (my father and the “mystery man”), Brandon (my brother), and Sherry (my mother).

There is a lot to the “mystery man”, his life, and his death.  He set off on numerous adventures over his 48 years and made thousands of friends.  I only know a small portion of his tales and am amazed by every one.  Its nice to know that I could fill in the blanks of at least one of his adventures though the adventure of our “secret beach” seems so plain compared to the escapades he faced before I was born.

In conclusion, your mystery man was an adventurer that never turned down a challenge and always kept people on their toes.  There was no whining allowed and no time for sitting around. He constantly pondered the purpose of life and was always trying to learn more by doing.

I find it incredibly touching that my father’s life survives in your thoughts and imagination and want to personally thank you for creating a new and happy memory for me.

Officially A Mystery: Who Was Monty Parker? Larry Fitterer and John Vonderlin are seeking
the identity of “Monty Parker,” whose name, birth & date of death appear on a post at secluded “AMB” Beach on the South Coast.

Hi June,

After our expedition down to Acid Beach

Larry suggested we drive south to the Prankster rappel spot where he remembered there being a mysterious sign dedicated to “Monty” Parker. I hadn’t seen it on my first exploratory trip there and he was curious if it was still there. It was. I hadn’t noticed it because it had fallen over into thick bushes sometime in the last 15 years. That and the fact that the Prankster Rappel spot was about a hundred feet north of where I had assumed it had been. Who was Monty Parker? What killed him so young? And who is AMB’s Beach, his favorite spot in the world, named after?

My theory/ guess is A.M. Parker may be Catholic and have assumed some confirmation name like Barry. No evidence of that, but the odds of his two first initials being the same as the first two letters of AMB Beach is about 625 to one. I always like to bet on those kind of odds.

It looks like early May will be our next trip to Acid Beach, and this time we plan to swim from Acid Beach to The Notch. It was too deep and the surf was too big to wade through on our last trip. Boogie boards and better protection for my camera are being planned for. Might bring a ladder to get up to the ledge leading to the ocean-side of Warm Water Lagoon. We might even be able to make it over the double arch.

Enjoy John

Email John Vonderlin (benloudman@sbcglobal.net)

———

Meanwhile Larry Fitterer, also curious about the provenance of AMB Beach told John he was on to something. He had found an “AM Parker,” who lived in New Mexico. The birth and death dates matched those found on the monument at the beach.

Said Larry: I’ve wondered whether “Amb” is an abbreviation. Guessing that it might be short for “Amber,” I queried zabasearch.com and found an Amber Parker living in Santa Cruz. Perhaps she is Monty’s daughter.

————

John to Larry:

Hi Larry,
Just wanted to thank you for joining us on our expedition. I’m heading to Stockton early tomorrow to see my granddaughter play a game of baseball, my last bit of “vacation” while Larry, my brother is here…I hope you’ll join us on our return trip. Enjoy. John

———-

Hi John,
I am glad you and Meg were able to ascertain the northern “route” into Acid Beach. Next time we go out together, perhaps we can make the journey halfway down (without ropes), though I would probably be reluctant to venture must farther even with safety ropes. Still, the halfway point does provide a pretty spectacular view of the cove and surrounding area.

I spent some more time the other day thinking about “AMBS” I wondered if perhaps Ambs is a surname… As it turns out, Ambs is indeed a surname; German, in fact. There was only one hit for that name in the Bay Area, an Ambs, who by my reckoning, had moved to Maryland.

I wrote to him last week and queried him about the sign. He responded promptly as follows:

‘Dear Larry, thanks for your email. I actually visited this part of California several times in the 90s and lived for a brief period in California but the sign is not my product. It’s most likely not related to me. Thus, I cannot help you with the history of that sign. Ambs is actually a German name and originated in the southwest part of Germany’.

The mystery continues…

Hi June,
I’ve made two successful trips to Acid Beach in the last week. Both were dangerous and exciting, but extremely rewarding. I need some time to organize the stories, but I thought I should share a related item to a previous posting now. After the climb down into Acid Beach and the more perilous climb out, we visited the so-called Prankster rappel spot south of there that I’ve written about previously. Larry F., was able to find the Amb’s Beach sign he mentioned in his email.

It had fallen over and was hidden in the underbrush, but still bristling with mystery. I’d love to know who Monty Parker was, what killed somebody so young, who must have been extremely physically fit to rappel down the cliff to reach “his” beach, and why and who went to the effort to memorialize him in such a touching way?

It turns out the spot I thought was the rappel spot, what I considered a sure trip to the Emergency Ward, was not the actual rappel spot. The actual spot was about a 100 feet north and had three different pipes and a chain sunk into a subterranean concrete block that had been used as anchors to secure a rope at various times. While the cliff was not as fractured as where I thought the site had been and there was no stream to slicken the footing, if the Pranksters used this spot to access the beach below, somebody must have had some serious technical climbing skills. Much more on this soon. Enjoy. John

P.S. Check out this Y-shaped double arch, or is it a triple, on the south end of the tiny cove between Warm Water Lagoon and Acid Beach.

Hands down, this is the best arch on our coast. Next trip I’ll have pictures from inside it. On the north side of this fifty foot wide cove is this other sea arch/tunnel leading to Acid Beach.

If you don’t mind getting your feet wet or if there is a minus tide of more then one foot, you can walk all the way through this. I can think of no fifty foot stretch of the California Coast that rivals this tiny, unnamed and almost unreachable cove.