Transcript for the Piece Audio version of The Rocks at Rock Bottom

HOST: THIS IS THE STORY OF A MAN WHO HIT ROCK BOTTOM WHEN HE WAS ACTUALLY SURROUNDED BY A WHOLE LOT OF ROCKS. HE WAS LIVING IN A SMALL VILLAGE IN SPAIN AT THE TIME -- IN A FORMERLY VOLCANIC AREA. INSTEAD OF SAND, THE BEACHES ARE ENTIRELY MADE UP OF SLATE AND SEDIMENTARY STONES THAT HAVE BEEN WASHED BACK AND FORTH BY THE SEA. HILLARY FRANK TELLS THE STORY.

Jerry and his wife had split up and he moved to this little village, leaving everything behind ? his young son, his home. He was about as low as he'd ever been.

Tape ? [:30] thoughts were running around in my head wouldn?t stop ? like broken record ? and when I lay down at night and tried to sleep the most absolute ridiculous little thing going around in head and couldn?t divert my attention from it. And I found that walking on beach, hunched over looking for flat rocks, picking up a handful, throwing them, the motion, and the fact of throwing hard as well, this relaxed me a great deal

Jerry started skipping rocks at the beach five or six times a day, for at least a half an hour at a time. The bay at this beach was shaped like U. Jerry worked on one side of the U and lived on the other. He had to walk along the shore to get home...and on his way, he'd stop to skip stones. Over time, he began walking less and skipping more.

tape ? And one night um -- it was during the tourist season, which means that this little bitty village fills up with tourists from all over the world ? and right at sundown...gorgeous weather and the bay was like glass and I stopped at the base of the U, which was downtown ? where the plaza is, and I was in my own private world of walking and skipping...the stones just were flying -- it was an extraordinary night ? i had no peripheral vision, no sound occurred to me ? all of a sudden the stones were flying out where the boats were moored, like 120 meters, actually hit a couple of hulls. Surprised the heck out of me -- and at one particular point a stone just flew and bounched and bounced and bounced and kept bouncing and kept bouncing and I?m standing there agape and all of a sudden when it quit and sank there was this spontaneous burst of cheers and applause, which absolutely startled me ? and it was like someone slapped me on the shoulder in a dark room or something ? i turned around and there must've been 2 or 3 4 hundred people about 60 feet behind me in big crescent.

YOU DIDN?T NOTICE THEM?

No! No! Not at all! didn't have a clue

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DID YOU TURN AROUND AND TAKE A BOW?

No, no! I was embarrassed. No, I just slinked off the beach and got out of way. It was like whoa! B/c it was very private moment. All sudden you realize ? hi, we're candid camera. so i stumbled down the beach ? there was a cafe outside --and I sat down at one of the tables and ordered a coke or whatever and realzied that I was shaking so bad I couldn?t hold my drink still.

[music]

tape ? [2:07] well then i couldn't go anywhere in the village cause every night i walked and every night i skipped but i couldn't find a place that i could skip that nobody could see it ?

WHY WAS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU TO FIND PRIVATE PLACE?

Well because. I don?t know. I suppose that um? coming out of a depression and a funk in one?s life is sort of a private thing, we all sort of brush that off right? And put on smiley face. At this point in my life things weren?t okay. They weren?t going well. and what was going well i enjoyed to do privately and that was throwing rocks in the water. I didn't want to share my pain ?
So then made conscious decisions, do I quit skipping cause this is not what i had in mind? Or go theatrical with it? And sort of solved itself. what happened was, eventually, I be skipping and children ? german kids, french kids, spanish -- would come up to me in absolute orchestrated order stand in line and one by one, giving each other time and room, they'd come to me and bring stone and ask me to skip or ask if they could skip or show them how to hold it and that went on for a while. but then the older ppl started getting in line as well ? this became a nightly ritual ? and i was now being introduced in the village as the stone skipper

Over time, Jerry learned to enjoy skipping rocks in front of an audience and a few years later, when he moved back to Texas ? where he's from ? he learned that there was actually a Guinness World Record for rock skipping: 29 skips. Jerry knew he could beat that record -- and eventually, he did. With 38 skips. Or at least, that's all the camera could catch before the rock skipped out of the frame. Jerry says that back on the night he became the "village stone skipper" at the beach in Spain, he probably got well over 50...which just seems unimaginable. For most people, even getting three skips is tough. Jerry says, it's really all about physics ? that you need to learn to rotate the stone, and get it as parallel to the water as possible ? while also throwing it down.

tape-- [:23] it's just like basketball- or tennis ball -- if in gymnasium and i got one end and you got other & you said throw me the ball i'd just throw it to you and that's one thing ? now if you said make it bounce 30 times before it gets to me, I?ll throw it towards you but also have to throw it down on the floor pretty hard for it to bounce that many times

Jerry also says, the size of the rock is important. It needs to be almost the size of the palm of your hand, and uniformly thick.

tape: [:30] If someone said skip oreo cookie 20 times, I couldn't do it ? b/c there's not much mass to oreo cookie ? so and i've tried that

YOU?VE TRIED TO SKIP OREO COOKIE?

Yeah. I did a show one time and they brought out basket of things, from bagels to cans of tuna and by the way bagels best skippers in that food group ? and if it's frozen i can skip it pretty well

So...you need to have a decent sized stone...and be able to throw it down ? but probably the most important element in getting a stone to skip far is being able to throw it hard ? like you would if you were angry. And anger, after all, is what made Jerry so good at this sport to begin with.

tape: [1:10] When I find self headed down a road of depression or anything I look for pond and flat rocks. Worked for me once and will work again.

SEEMS LIKE PERFECT COMBINATION OF MEDITATION AND AGRESSION. AND RELAXATION.

I'll tell you something, Hillary. I had 4 stone skipping events over 4 years and during course of events I met a wide spectrum of people. One guy came up to me, from chicago, ? he worked with at risk delinquent children and had told me story of how these kids ? one of their favorite pasttimes was chunkin rocks through factory windows from the alleys and all in chicago. and so instead of round rocks in an alley, he found flat rocks in a pond -- And he said absolutely phenomenal the effect that stone skipping had on these children.

It does seem ideal. For all those times you want to punch a wall...or a person ... just to take a breath, walk to a place where the water lies still...and there's an abundance of flat, smooth rocks.

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