1955
A Memorable Year in Surfing
Photo courtesy of Tim Maddux.
Aloha and welcome to this chapter in the LEGENDARY SURFERS series on the surfing year of 1955.
Contents
Hobie Alter
Summer 1955
Catalina-to-Manhattan Beach Paddleboard Race
Lifeguards & Paddlers
Mike Doyle 3
Rincon, Winter 1955-56
Phil Edwards on the North Shore
Sunset
Laniakea, November 1955
Outside Reefs
Buffalo Keaulana
The Bronze Bull
Index
"And I still, to this day, subconsciously spot pop bottles lying alongside
the road anywhere I drive, the training of my younger years. Now
I don't have to pick them up any more. But someone is."
-- Phil Edwards
"Greg once passed me in a race going so fast that I felt like I was
going the other direction. He just streaked by me. It was ridiculous.
I was ahead at that point, and the next thing I knew, he was fifty yards
ahead of me. Came out of nowhere. I don't know what he was
doing, but he was doing it fast."
-- Ricky Grigg
"So as soon as we got out of the water, we'd run right over by the fire
to get warm. When the fire burned down some, we'd wrap potatoes in
tin foil and toss them in the coals. By the time we remembered to
pull them out, they were usually charred black, but we'd crack them open
anyway and eat them with salt. After surfing all day, those potatoes
were a feast."
-- Mike Doyle
"Doc Ball himself sent me a signed copy of California Surfriders.
I received that book in 1956, and it's still one of the most precious things
I own. Even today, every black-and-white photo in that book is as
beautiful to me as the first time I saw it."
-- Mike Doyle
"Those were carefree, happy times. It was like living a whole
era to ourselves. Sea, air and landscape in a dreamy passing of days
spent riding waves and reflecting upon the goodness of life at this stage,
living with just the basics. For me the poetry of days has never
equaled that time. The early years in the Islands had drama and dimension
and certainly were adventurous. But 1955 was sheer poetry -- halcyon
days, looking at them now from a tranquil distance."
-- Greg Noll talking about the winter spent surfing
Rincon
"We stole pineapples from the fields to make an alcoholic beverage called
Swipe which knocked you out; speared fish, and shared a lot of 'Primo'
beer along with great guitar music. I'll never forget watching Swipe
being made and my friend Buffalo spitting into it, saying that made it
ferment more quickly.
"There were three or four wooden framed shacks covered with tarps.
It kept the rain out, but not the mosquitos. Our time passed as intended,
having fun."
-- Fred Van Dyke on life on the North Shore
"We were pioneering a new area," explained Van Dyke. "Aside from
making pacts to retrieve one another's board, we never knew whether we
would get back to shore. After a wipeout we did not know which action
would get us to the beach fastest. Most often we chose the comfort
of the rip and waited until someone paddled a board out."
-- Fred Van Dyke
"From then on, Greg never go in water diving unless I go first.
Now we both look at each other, say, 'Anybooooody?' One who goes
in first has to find out if anybody stay home."
-- Buffalo Keaulana
The Civil Rights Movement in the United States began in 1955 when black
people in Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted segregated city bus lines.
In less serious matters, Rock 'n Roll music burst on the American scene
with Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock." Less explosive
music of the year included: "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "Davy Crockett,"
and "Sixteen Tons." Graham Greene's The Quiet American was
published and so was Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
For surfing, it was a time when the North
Shore of O`ahu was being pioneered and, back on the Mainland, the golden
age of Malibu was emerging and Rincon
began to be actively pursued. Many of the surfers of those days remember
the time with extreme nostalgia.
Hobie Alter
According to Phil Edwards, about the time he first started shaping boards,
Hobie
Alter began doing the same.
"Along a parallel course," wrote Edwards, "Hobie Alter had begun building
balsa boards in his garage and selling them. From the start, Hobie
had a sort of magic touch. More and more surfers were swinging over
to the Hobie boards. He finally got to the point -- at $65 per board
-- where he could open up a shop at Dana
Point."
"First thing I did was move in. We made surfboards by day, Hobie
and I, and by night I would throw an unfinished board across two sawhorses,
lie down and pull a blanket over me, and sleep. Balsa boards are
really not all that bad for sleeping on; after a few nights of this, you
get so you can roll over; sleep on your side, stomach or back without falling
off. If nothing else, it gives you a certain feel for surfboards;
you know their every nuance of bend and shape. You haven't lived
until you have slept on one...
"All this taught me several things: (1) how to shape surfboards
better, (2) how to scare away burglars -- the sight of a guy rising off
a surfboard with blanket draped around him was a little like a corpse rising
off a slab, and it scared the hell out of them every time, and (3) it is
better if you put each leg of the sawhorse into a bucket of water to keep
scorpions and other bugs from climbing up and eating you at night.
"With a Spartan routine like this I made money. When I was fifteen-and-one-half
years old I had a 1940 Ford. Pretty dandy, considering the fact that
I couldn't even drive the thing (uhh, legally) for another six months.
And I still, to this day, subconsciously spot pop bottles lying alongside
the road anywhere I drive, the training of my younger years. Now
I don't have to pick them up any more. But someone is."
Summer
1955
"In 1955," Sonny Vardeman recalled, "when we graduated from high school,
we were finally old enough to be lifeguards, and several of us took the
test together. Greg had lied about his age a couple of years before
and got in ahead of us. This was during the Korean conflict, and
the government was drafting heavily out of our senior class. Greg
joined the Coast Guard Reserves. Meanwhile, I took my first trip
to the Islands that October, with Steve Voorhees, Bing Copeland, Mike Bright
and Rick Stoner. To avoid the draft, Voorhees and I joined the navy
at Pearl Harbor. Copeland and Stoner went into active duty in the
Coast Guard.
"After a service break of a couple of years, some of us came back and
went to college. Greg continued with the lifeguards and making surfboards
out of his garage. Greg was a pretty curious guy. He'd learned
a lot from watching Velzy and Bob
Simmons. He was constantly on Velzy's tail, watching his every
move. This is how he learned about shaping balsa-wood boards.
"Greg built me a couple of balsa boards. There was such a demand
for surfboards then that you'd have to look someone up and beg them to
build one. Materials were hard to get, even if you knew where to
get them. The labor and skill involved in building a board wasn't
easy.
"Bing Copeland, Rick Stoner, Mike Bright and I started messing with
surfboards, too, in my folks' big, two-car garage in Hermosa Beach.
Bing and Rick shaped while Mike and I glassed. It was a bad scene.
We had sawhorses lined up and down the alley, and my dad was getting mad
as hell. He finally kicked us out, saying, 'You guys are running
a commercial enterprise down here. If you're going to be in business,
find yourselves a shop.' This is how Bing's and Rick's shop on the
Strand evolved. They became partners.
"By that time, Greg had outgrown his garage operations and had gone
up on Coast Highway in Manhattan Beach and opened a shop in 1956, after
he and Beverly had gotten married. They were in Manhattan Beach for
a brief time, then they set up shop in Hermosa, on Pier Avenue and Coast
Highway.
"I started a fiberglassing shop with Mike Bright, called
Surf Fiberglass.
We specialized in fiberglassing and did work for several surfboard makers,
including Greg, Dewey Weber and Hap Jacobs.
As their businesses expanded, they eventually started doing their own glassing.
In the sixties, I jumped in with my own surfboard shop in Huntington Beach.
Throughout the sixties, Huntington Beach was hot. The sixties were
surfing's boom days.
"Part of the reason for the boom was that surfing had caught on on the
East Coast. Hobie and Dewey did promotional tours on the East Coast
and came back with hundreds of orders for surfboards. During that
time, each of their shops was turning out hundreds of boards a week.
"Then it began to slow down. After shipping thousands of boards
to their Eastern accounts, the East Coast shops got a little careless with
their accounts. Some of them started making their own boards.
In the later part of the sixties, East Coast business turned sour.
At the same time, the Vietnam War was escalating and all the young men
went off to war. There was a general downturn in the surf business.
A lot of the board manufacturers on the West Coast were severely hurt.
Jacobs and Bing sold out. Greg hung on for a while and eventually
dissolved in the early seventies. By that time, I also had closed
up shop and gone back to lifeguarding full time."
Catalina-to-Manhattan
Beach Paddleboard Race
"I was around seventeen when I won the Catalina race," recalled big
wave surfer Ricky Grigg. "They
took a picture of the first six finishers with the trophies all lined up
in front of us. It was George Downing, Tommy
Zahn, Charlie Reimers, Bog Hogan, Greg Noll and me, all standing there
together, and there was one muscular guy who was flexing. Guess who.
The rest of us were so tired, we were just hanging there. Greg would
just gag me. He was always hamming it up.
"Greg once passed me in a race going so fast that I felt like I was
going the other direction. He just streaked by me. It was ridiculous.
I was ahead at that point, and the next thing I knew, he was fifty yards
ahead of me. Came out of nowhere. I don't know what he was
doing, but he was doing it fast."
Lifeguards
& Paddlers
"A lot of early surfers like myself started out lifeguarding and paddleboard
racing," wrote Greg Noll. "I entered my first paddling race when
I was thirteen, along with Bing Copeland, Bev Morgan and the Meistrell
brothers. We all won our class.
"I was eighteen when I entered the first Catalina to Manhattan Beach
Rough Water Paddleboard Race in 1955. The race started in Catalina.
Each paddler was followed by a boat for the entire thirty-two-mile distance.
They hand you food and drink on a pole while you're out in the water on
your paddleboard, so that you don't have any contact with the boat.
My boat got screwed up -- the captain didn't think any of us would make
it anyway -- and we ended up off-course. We recalculated the distance.
As it turned out, I paddled 52 miles that day. Lost nine pounds,
but came in second.
"Ricky Grigg beat me. His boat had a directional finder that bombed
him right in...
"When we started going to Hawaii for the winter surf, lifeguarding gave
us the means. We'd work through the rest of the year and save as
much money as we could to live on in Hawaii. As lifeguards we were
dedicated to two things: making rescues and having fun. When
it was time to work, rescues were taken very seriously. The rest
of the time we screwed around. You can't get away with that anymore.
Today you're supposed to be serious all the time..."
Mike Doyle
Meanwhile, gremmie Mike Doyle was starting to branch out away from his
home break:
"I had a good neighbor... Herb Dewey," recalled Doyle. "He was
married, about thirty, with his first kid. Herb had picked up surfing
in the army, over in Hawaii, at Waikiki. He had a big paddle board,
and he used to take it down to Corona Jetty on the weekends. I told
Herb there were surfers at Manhattan Pier, which was news to him... Herb
got all stoked at the thought of having a surfing buddy, so when I bought
my new surfboard, he bought a new board, too. Herb took me under
his wing, and we went surfing together almost every weekend.
"One day in the summer, Herb and I stopped at the Velzy
and Jacobs shop in Venice. We had been up and down the South
Bay looking for surf... Velzy listened to us complain, then said, 'These
are all winter breaks along here, fellas. You gotta go up to Malibu.
That's a great ride in the summer. I just heard it's breaking six
feet right now.'
"We thought Velzy was putting us on, but Herb and I drove up to
Malibu
anyway, and sure enough, Velzy was right: Malibu was breaking set
after set of long, ruler-perfect waves. That was when I first realized
that it wasn't enough just to know how to surf. You also had to understand
the seasons, the weather, the swell direction, and the wind pattern.
Surfing was more than just kicks in the water. In order to be any
good at this, you had to understand how your home planet works.
"After that, Herb and I started surfing at Malibu every weekend... We
would stop first in Culver City, at the old rail yard, and load up the
back of Herb's '52 woody with railroad ties. As soon as we hit the
beach, we'd start a big smoky bonfire that stank of creosote. There
weren't many wetsuits in those days -- sometimes when the wind was blowing
hard, we'd wear a little wool sweater out in the water, but that was all
we had. So as soon as we got out of the water, we'd run right over
by the fire to get warm. When the fire burned down some, we'd wrap
potatoes in tin foil and toss them in the coals. By the time we remembered
to pull them out, they were usually charred black, but we'd crack them
open anyway and eat them with salt. After surfing all day, those
potatoes were a feast."
"All through those... high school years," continued Doyle in Morning
Glass, specifically 1953-54, "I had a recurring dream of waking up
in the morning and seeing the ocean out my window. I craved being
near the water, and all I ever thought about was escaping to the one place
where I thought I could be free and happy.
"I tried to find as much literature as I could find about the ocean
and surfing. There were no surf magazines in those days, but in the
school library, in a copy of National Geographic, I found a photo
of Waikiki, probably taken from an airplane or helicopter, showing a couple
of surfers riding long, clean rollers. The water was so clear, you
could see the coral bottom. The only beaches I had ever seen were
the South Bay beaches, with sandy bottoms and murky water. But Waikiki
looked so beautiful, it didn't seem to me like a place that could really
exist. I kept trying to find the flaw in the photo, like it was some
kind of trick. Every day for weeks, I went to the library to stare
at that photo. I was in love with it, and I finally decided I just
had to have it. So one day after school, I went to the library, found
the copy of National Geographic, slipped it between two of my textbooks,
and walked out with it. At home I hid it under my bed, and every
day for two years, I would take it out and stare at that photo of Waikiki,
planning for the day I would escape."
These were years before surf media of any kind. The few exceptions
were Tom Blake's book, published in 1935,
and the pictorial glossy of Doc Ball's, published in 1946.
"One of the older surfers down at Manhattan Pier told me about a book
called California Surfriders by Doc Ball.
It focused on surfing in the 1930s and '40s, in
San Onofre, La Jolla,
and Santa Cruz -- all places I'd never been before. I looked for
the book at the school library and a couple of local libraries, without
any luck. Then I told my mother about the book, and after a few phone
calls, she learned that the Los Angeles County Library had a copy of it.
She drove me to downtown Los Angeles so we could check it out.
"I took Doc Ball's book home and studied each picture for an hour at
a time, scrutinizing each grain in the black-and-white photos, the way
the water flowed over the board, the way the wave was breaking -- every
detail -- until I could feelw what it was like trimming across a wall of
water. I studied each of the surfers' styles, their hand movements,
the way their feet were placed on the boards, and I came to understand
that each surfer in that era -- Hoppy Swarts, LeRoy Grannis,
Pete
Peterson -- had his own individual style.
"I saw that the surfers in the book had a wonderful camaraderie that
I didn't have in my own life. They were healthy and joyful, and they
enjoyed being with each other. I could see a community spirit there
that I wanted to be a part of.
"But more than anything else, I saw from Doc Ball's book that surfing
is as much an art as it is a sport. Before I had developed any elements
of my own style, I came to appreciate that surfing at its highest level
isn't supposed to be a macho struggle to defeat the wave, it's a form of
dancing, with the wave as your partner, almost like ballet.
"I was heartbroken when that book finally had to go back to the library,
already days overdue. But my wonderful mother, seeing how enthralled
I was with the book, somehow managed to find out that Doc
Ball was running the Life's Highway Ranch for Boys, in Fort Seward,
California. She wrote him a letter telling him how much her son loved
his book, and a few weeks later, Doc Ball himself sent me a signed copy
of California Surfriders. I received that book in 1956, and
it's still one of the most precious things I own. Even today, every
black-and-white photo in that book is as beautiful to me as the first time
I saw it."
Rincon,
Winter 1955-56
"In 1955," recalled Mike Stange, "after working another season on the
beach but being laid off around October, Greg, Billy Meng, Jim Fisher and
I decided to spend a winter in the Santa Barbara area, near
Rincon.
We rented a house in Carpinteria and had a great winter of surfing.
Bobby Patterson and Mickey Munoz visited frequently, and during the week,
the six of us shared day after day of perfectly shaped six-to-eight-foot
waves.
"Those were carefree, happy times. It was like living a whole
era to ourselves. Sea, air and landscape in a dreamy passing of days
spent riding waves and reflecting upon the goodness of life at this stage,
living with just the basics. For me the poetry of days has never
equaled that time. The early years in the Islands had drama and dimension
and certainly were adventurous. But 1955 was sheer poetry -- halcyon
days, looking at them now from a tranquil distance."
"Rincon, 1955," recalled Greg Noll. "Midnight raids on the squash
fields. The house so full of produce you couldn't walk through it.
Glassing a board on the antique table of an old English guy named Floyd
-- somebody got shit-faced and shot up the house. Fisher and his
hearse with the chicken on the roof. All these images come back to
me in a blur when I think about our winter in Rincon.
"... Billy Meng... really had the gift of gab, came across like a real
hayseed. He called everything 'she' or 'her.' Everybody who
ever knew him loved him. Especially the ladies. He was a real
hit with the ladies.
"While we were in Rincon, we'd drive around in Billy's beat-up rusted-out
old car. He'd never make a full stop at a stop sign. He didn't
want to wear out the brakes, so he'd shift down to second gear, coast up
to the stop sign and roll on through. And he never drove the damn
thing over twenty-five.
"Except for one time, and we got pulled over by a cop. The cop
comes up to the window and asks for Meng's license and registration.
Of course, all Meng had on him was a pair of shorts and sandals.
He never carried anything else on him, not even identification.
"Even though we'd rented a house together, Meng practically lived out
of his car. It was full of junk, under the seat, on the floor, in
the glove box. He told the cop in his country-boy accent, "I know
she's in here someplace," and started rummaging around. Meng pulls
a pair of pants out from under the seat and hands them to Mike. He
reaches back into the back seat and comes up with a snorkel and mask and
hands those to me. By this time he's edged his way out of the car
so he can grub around in the junk on the floor.
"Meanwhile, Mike and I could see that the cop was getting a little amused.
He's standing there, patiently, while Meng keeps pulling all this crap
out of the car and piling it on top of me and Mike. 'I know she's
here somewheres,' he'd say, and rummage around some more.
"He finds his army discharge papers and reads those to the cop.
No go. So Meng crawls back into the car again, pulling out more piles
of junk. 'Gosh, she's got to be here.' After several minutes
of this routine, even the cop is holding a pile of Meng's stuff.
The cop finally calls a halt.
"'I tell you what you'd better do,' he says. 'You'd better get
back in HER and start HER up and you'd better get HER the hell out of here
before I start writing HER up. Because I won't stop writing for a
week!'
"He didn't have to tell us twice. We were out of there in a flash.
We looked back at the cop. He had pushed his hat back on his head
and was laughing as he watched us drive away."
Phil
Edwards on the North Shore
"In 1955 the North Shore was semi-pristine," wrote Fred Van Dyke, who
had moved there from Santa Cruz.
"Try to imagine having the North Shore practically to yourself. It
wasn't always scary stuff. There were hot, offshore winds, five to
ten foot surf days at Haleiwa where only Henry Preece, a local surfer,
Buffalo Keaulana, Pat Curren, two or three locals
and I rode wave after was alone...
"At that time, many local families lived right on the beach at Haleiwa,
now known as the Surf Center; then called 'Alii Beach' (for the noble class
of the Hawaiian monarchy). It was a definitely slowed down and relaxing
place to camp and surf.
"We stole pineapples from the fields to make an alcoholic beverage called
Swipe which knocked you out; speared fish, and shared a lot of 'Primo'
beer along with great guitar music. I'll never forget watching Swipe
being made and my friend Buffalo spitting into it, saying that made it
ferment more quickly.
"There were three or four wooden framed shacks covered with tarps.
It kept the rain out, but not the mosquitos. Our time passed as intended,
having fun."
In this environment of a still-quiet North Shore, 15-year-old Phil Edwards
made his first trip to Hawai'i in 1955, focusing on both Makaha and the
North Shore.
"'Three weeks,' said my mother, who knew my every mood and could read
the glint in my eyes from a block away. 'If you're not back in three
weeks, I come and get you.' And she meant it.
"I took the plane," Edwards recalled. "None of that routine with
the nut-brown, doe-eyed girls waiting there at the airport, gently swaying
their bronzed hips to steel guitars and hanging orchid leis around everyone's
neck.
"'How do you find Makaha?' I asked.
"They know a loser when they see one. I sure as hell did not look
like a Shriner. No lei. One of them jerked a thumb.
"'Other side of the island,' she said."
"In the Islands," wrote Chris Aherns in Good Things Love Water,
Edwards "happened upon a surfer headed for Makaha, and begged a ride from
the man whom he recognized as Pat Curren.
The man didn't recognize the kid, but agreed to take him along with him.
As they drove, Curren was silent, never initiating conversation, and speaking
only to answer Phil's many questions with a simple yes or no."
Curren dropped Edwards off at Makaha, where the he surfed with some
of the locals in small waves that grew to head high. Late in the
day, "a beaten up '36 Ford rolled up with a large stocky man at the wheel,
and a passenger hanging half way outside of the car window.
"Makaha was a tightly knit community in those days where everyone knew
each other. The sight of any haole, especially a young boy with a
surfboard and a suitcase, was so unusual that the men had to pull over
to check it out... Phil recognized that it was his old friend, Walter Hoffman.
The other man, who was built like a wild animal, was named Buzzy.
Trent. The boy had heard the lifeguards from home say that he
was one of the best big-wave riders in Hawaii, a man who had pioneered
big surf at Makaha and on the North Shore.
"Once he realized the boy's homeless situation, Hoffman picked up the
suitcase and threw it into the car. Trent helped the kid put the
board into the trunk. On the way home, Trent spoke excitedly about
a new swell that was about to hit the island. Then, without warning,
Hoffman pulled over to the side of the road and asked the kid to sit in
the driver's seat. 'Do you know how to drive?' he asked.
"'No,' said Phil.
"'Well, it's easy,' said Hoffman, as he illustrated the use of the clutch,
gears and brakes... after a few near misses with palm trees and houses,
he knew enough to become a surfer's chauffeur. He was directed down
old dirt roads and up dead-end streets, and then up a winding road, and
up over an overgrown path until they arrived at an abandoned army installation,
an old semicylindrical metal shelter...
"The land near the shelter was completely wild and overgrown.
Nailed up near the door were the dried fins of big fish that had been speared
and eaten by the men, and cooked over the much-used rock pit near the door.
Inside, the place was sparse but roomy. Walter introduced the kid
to another man, Leslie Williams.
"That night after a dinner of fish which Buzzy had speared, rice, and
sweet pineapples stolen from the fields, the kid lay on an old army cot
thinking, 'In one day I went from having nothing, to having a great place
to stay with some great guys.' He went to sleep smiling.
"The next morning he awoke early with a warm wind that came through
the mountains, and whistled through the gaps in the tin roof... The crew
were soon up too, and Buzzy spoke in a staccato voice, wringing his hands
and saying, 'Maybe Sunset today. Maybe Sunset today.'"
Sunset
"In 1955," recalled Fred Van Dyke
in his book Thirty Years Riding The World's Biggest Waves, "there
were no helicopter rescues or lifeguards. There were no computerized
surf reports. There were hardly more than ten guys surfing the entire
North Shore, and most often you couldn't find anyone to surf with you.
"When we first went out at Sunset,
some of the local people called the police and fire department. The
firemen yelled at us through loud speakers and ran waving us down to the
shorebreak. They floundered; their heavy boots filled with water.
They were not trained for rescue as [they are] today. We found ourselves
rescuing them.
"The local people warned us with tears in their eyes: 'Don't go out,
you'll drown -- sharks will eat you!'" In the long ago days,
the northern end of Sunset Beach was called Paumalu,
and it was a well-known surfing area well before European contact. Duke
Kahanamoku knew of "its perfectly formed underwater reef, a spawner
of big steep waves. There the great swells sweep in from fathoms
of blue water, then make a fast, wild break when they slide over the shallow
area. Nine-to-twelve-foot heights allow surfers to ride their boards
a full quarter-mile."
"Sunset Beach... offers a tremendous challenge for those who attempt
it," wrote Ricky Grigg and Ron Church in their book Surfer in Hawaii.
"A fast-shifting and deceptive peak makes it a very difficult right slide
to line up. Sliding to the left, though sometimes possible, will
carry a surfer over a very shallow reef where extremely turbulent water
is found. Frequently, cleanup sets make swimmers out of surfers.
The inside wall at Sunset sucks out over a fairly shallow reef and thus
breaks with fracturing power on the sharp coral bottom. One of the
strongest riptides in the Hawaiian Islands churns just inside the break,
running parallel to the beach a short distance and then turning and heading
out to sea through a deep channel. Many boards and several surfers
have taken their last ride in this rip."
When Phil Edwards made
his first trip to O'ahu, he surfed Sunset the second day he was on the
island and he rode in good company. Chris Aherns told the story,
beginning with the ride to Sunset:
"The men in the car discussed their equipment, and found general agreement
that Curren made some of the best big-wave guns in the islands. 'Yeah,
I love his boards,' said Trent, 'but he's so damned quiet that I never
know what he's thinking. You know how he is, sitting outside at Sunset
without saying a word and then, when you think he's nearly asleep, he'll
catch the biggest wave of the day.' There was admiration in Trent's
voice as he spoke of Curren.
"Coming out of miles of pineapple fields, Phil saw the North Shore for
the first time -- a powder-blue sky dotted by white clouds, and surf breaking
for as far as he could see. It looked small to him, and he was surprised
by the reaction of the other surfers. 'Floor it,' said Walter before
Phil hit the gas.
"'Let's go, let's go,' said Buzzy nearly frantically. The kid
drove down the thin highway, past small tin-roofed homes and well-kept
fields, some of which were being cultivated by men using nothing but a
plow pulled by an ox. They drove past miles of empty surf, perfect
waves fanned by offshore winds formed symmetrical, blue triangles... They
continued to drive without seeing another surfer anywhere until Phil was
told to pull over onto the shoulder. Here they faced a long, wide
beach.
"The kid looked out and watched a clean wave of about four foot break
fairly close to shore. He thought, 'This looks like home; I like
this.' Walter [Hoffman] and Leslie [Williams] got out of the car
and grabbed their boards. Buzzy gave a loud hoot, and stood next
to the kid, and said with serious joy, 'Look at that, man, look at it!'
Phil followed Buzzy's eyes far away past the medium-sized surf of the shorebreak
he was watching, to a place on the edge of a massive rip, where a huge
peak toppled in slow motion.
"Seeing that Walter and Leslie were already on their way out, Buzzy
grabbed his board and ran to catch them, outdistancing them as he committed
himself to the river of a rip, and then paddling over to the big peak....
Phil grabbed his board, and fearing to look toward the sea, he paddled
out with his head down... The kid paddled hard for the outside where the
others were sitting, looking like dots...
"Phil sat in the pack with the others and looked around for the mushy
peak he had seen from shore. A wave approached quickly and Phil spun
around and knee-paddled for it, just as he had always done in California.
The strong offshore wind blew him back over the top and out of the wave
as drops of warm water pelted his skin. Walter looked with concern
at Phil and told him not to knee-paddle into the waves saying that if he
did, he would never make the drop. Phil dropped from his knees and
laid flat onto his board and scanned the horizon for sets.
"Not even Buzzy seemed calm now. They all huddled, waiting quietly
for a long time until the next wave approached, a beautiful peak, a gift
to the kid who began to stroke in early from a prone position... Eventually
they all made shore and sat together on the sand for a while, verbally
replaying their rides.
"Buzzy spoke for them all saying, 'Hey, did you see Phil out there today?'
Hoffman smiled proudly. Buzzy gave the kid a warm slap on the shoulder.
"... After lunch they decided to check out the surf at Haleiwa.
The waves looked clean and fun, similar to ones Phil had ridden in Dana
Point. This was his chance to show the others what he could do.
He paddled out quickly without fully assessing the conditions, and with
the intention of showing off... Unlike Sunset, the worst was not over after
the drop, however, and he looked out to see the wall stretching down and
away from him. The wave found sufficient depth to break, and broke
hard, causing the kid and his board to fly in separate directions.
"After being held down in the darkness, Phil came up gasping and pushing
back the thick foam. Another wave was upon him now, and he dove down
deep, back into darkness. He came up and faced a third wave, and
a fourth, and found that he was being pulled out to sea and down the beach."
"I was so far offshore you wouldn't believe it," recalled Edwards.
"Not that this is particularly bad. Under the right conditions, a
little deep-ocean swimming never hurt anybody. But the rip was pulling
me farther out and I was making the grim mistake of all first-timers: I
was fighting it like crazy and I was exhausted.
"Finally, I lay with my face sticking out of the water, looking up.
I could hear the sound of paddling. Dip, dip, dip. I rolled
my eyes over to one side and saw that someone had come out on a board to
get me."
"On the beach," continued Aherns, "the men watched as the boy tried
to swim against the powerful rip. They knew that it was hopeless
and so they asked one of their Hawaiian friends to go out and rescue him.
Phil felt a little smaller as he drove back to Makaha..."
He even wrote about it in a child's primer-style:
This is a riptide. See it rip.
Rip, rip, rip.
See the surfers out in it.
See them being pulled along.
Pull, pull, pull.
See the funny man try to swim against it.
See how he can't do it.
Son of a bitch.
"I had been walking along the beach with a gang of friends," Edwards
recalled of another Sunset Beach riptide incident. "--we were stoked
by Sunset Beach and wondering, idly, where our next meal was coming from.
And we came upon this little Hawaiian girl. I mean little: She was,
say,
a four-year-old, wearing big, dark eyes and a wisp of colored calico, and
the sun shone on her like bronze. She was playing in the shorebreak,
in water that occasionally boiled up around her knees. So we stopped
and watched her for a minute.
"Suddenly, without warning, she jumped about this high and scampered
into the beach and motioned us to come along.
"Swoosh! Along came a slashing wave, carrying with it the riptide.
It would have been, had we been standing in it, about waist high.
But... Had we been standing in it, the rip would have snatched us up, tumbled
us along to the outgoing river and sucked us out to sea. And this
kid hadn't even been looking over her shoulder.
"What she had done was to develop -- at this tender age -- a native
Hawaiian sense of timing. She knew instinctively the riptide was
there; and she also knew that an occasional big one will creep up and kidnap
you."
Laniakea,
November 1955
Fred Van Dyke had come over from Santa Cruz, California, and was one
the big wave surfers who helped open up the North Shore. A notable
time in his recollections was November 1955:
"Buzzy Trent, who often surfed alone at Sunset,
organized an all-out attack on the North Shore in 1955. Pat Curren,
Buzzy, my brother Peter, George Downing, Wally Froiseth and I drove up
to an untouched surf spot in November of '55. The day was glassy,
and no one was out. Cylinders tubing at 20-foot plus for 200 yards
lined the point. We didn't know if we could get out.
"Buzzy said he had dived in the area the previous summer... finally
everyone waxed his board.
"Bud Browne... climbed to the top of a water
tower... and set up his camera... no waves under 15 feet all day."
It was this first known surf session at this spot that resulted in Laniakea
getting its name as a surf locale. Bud Browne had seen the name "Laniakea"
on a sign on a house close by.
"We were exhausted when we drove back to Honolulu," continued Van Dyke.
"Two days later Bud Browne got his films back and
we screamed and yelled at wave after wave, 15-20 foot walls 200 yards long
rolled by on film. In those days we could measure pretty accurately
the size of waves by looking through a view finder, and using pieces of
paper to measure our stance. Then you multiplied the stance by the
number of times you could put it against the wave."
"We were pioneering a new area," explained Van Dyke. "Aside from
making pacts to retrieve one another's board, we never knew whether we
would get back to shore. After a wipeout we did not know which action
would get us to the beach fastest. Most often we chose the comfort
of the rip and waited until someone paddled a board out."
Outside
Reefs
"Alonzo Wiemers and Buzzy Trent
took me to the North Shore on a day in 1955 when all of the outside reefs
were breaking -- exploding. Thousands of tons of white water crashed
and blew up with the force of the bottom reefs, and tradewinds scanned
the broken wave faces...
"We drove to Sunset to find it completely closed out. No decision
needed there except to turn around and drive to Makaha.
"Laniakea was breaking a mile out in the ocean, so we passed on to Haleiwa.
Stopping there, we went into a little coffee shop -- Jerry's -- fronting
the sea. From the window we saw the outside break at Haleiwa.
It was a snowy mountain avalanching, cascading forward; tons of soup filling
the horizon. If it looked huge from three quarters of a mile away,
what would it be like up close?
"We finished our coffee and headed back to the car. Buzzy took
one more look and said, 'Let's just paddle out and look at it, before we
go to Makaha.'
"I looked at Alonzo. He had a pained look on his face.
"Buzzy asked again. Alonzo looked at the avalanching break.
The view on his neck reddened. 'Yeah, sure. We'll just go out
and give it a little check. What do you think, Fred?'
"'Uh, sure, sounds good to me.' It looked big, but from shore,
just like any other break -- except for its huge size.
"We drove to the Alii
Beach, where we could wax up and paddle out through a small channel on
the edge of the boat harbor. Pat Curren was sitting on the beach,
his board tucked under his arm.
"'How does it look?' Buzzy asked.
"'Good to me,' answered Pat. Buzzy and Pat picked up their boards
and headed to the shorebreak.
Alonzo looked at me and said, 'Well, you wanted to ride big waves.'
"'Yes,' I answered, feeling my throat and tongue dry, my heart racing.
"'Yes, let's hit it.'
"We paddled and paddled. I changed from knee paddling five times
before I could really see the size of the outside reef break. It
was an entirely different dimension.
"Lining up, I backed off on the first wave. Buzzy and Pat caught
it and disappeared. The set ended, a lull filling in the silence.
I looked over at Alonzo drifting toward Kaena Point.
"Relaxing for a moment out there was my first mistake. Number
two, not turning around fast enough. I looked seaward and saw, like
a heard of galloping horses, a set of waves racing across the horizon,
their manes waving wildly in the wind.
"They crossed the outside harbor channel and climbed skyward.
They were moving mountains, and I was sitting directly in front of their
forward momentum. I paddled frantically outside, barely making it
over the first one, only to be confronted by a second even larger wave.
It sucked out, vacuuming ever higher. I paddled, and as I slid backward
down the face, I hit the bottom of that force, peal tailblock first, and
slid off, all thirty feet plus cascading down upon me, and my board placed
less than a foot away from my head.
"The initial impact drove me deeply into darkness. I told myself
to relax, but whitewater wrenched at my arms and legs. I waited for
the wave to abate -- let me go as other waves did, but not this one.
"When I had waited long past the time to fight for the surface and air,
the soup dispersed into churning blackness. There even was a moment
of seemingly suspended time.
"I felt as if this might be it. What a fool to lose life this
way! In the utter darkness I stroked my last struggle for the surface,
and bumped my head full force into lava. The soup had driven me into
a cave. I was trapped.
"I threw up water and surrendered. It wasn't so bad after all.
I had chosen to go out; it was my fault.
"That was all! And then, just before dizziness prevailed completely,
I saw sunlight down by my feet. I was upside down, had lost all equilibrium,
and had swum down instead of up, bumping into the bottom.
"Surfacing, I got a breath before the next wave broke upon me and repeated
the same driving spin cycle. This time I was pushed in toward shore
and surfaced to face a near-mile swim through breaking waves, rips, cross
currents and shallow reefs. Twenty-feet high soup carried me over
an exposed reef still half a mile out in the ocean, but I made it to the
beach. Dragging myself out of the water, I felt much the same sickness
as that day when I nearly drowned in the surf off San Francisco.
"Flippy still tries to get me to go outside Haleiwa, to 'Avalanche'
on big days, when the North Shore regular spots are all closed out.
I always say 'No, no way!'
"His usualy reply, 'God, Van Dyke, Avalanche is an old man's dream for
riding a truly big wave. It's a cinch. It's got the drop and
it was made for guys like you and me.'
"I think to myself, 'Not this old man, Flippy.'"
Buffalo
Keaulana
"One day," Richard "Buffalo" Keaulana recalled, "I go scuba diving with
Greg and my Chinese friend Norman Mau. On the way out, we're talkin'
up some shark stories. We come by Yokohama Bay and anchor about half
a mile out in about seventy to eighty feet of water. We there to
pick up lobsters.
"We gear up, with Greg on port side and me on starboard. At count
of three, both of us supposed to let go of the boat and jump in the water.
We reach the count of three. Greg let go of the boat. But I
stay there, still checkin' everything.
"Greg go down about two feet, then he go under the boat to see if I
also underwater. He come up on the boat railing and see me.
I look him straight in the eye and say, 'Anybody stay home?' meaning, 'Any
sharks?'
"From then on, Greg never go in water diving unless I go first.
Now we both look at each other, say, 'Anybooooody?' One who goes
in first has to find out if anybody stay home."
The
Bronze Bull
"There was one rescue that only a few people know about," revealed Laura
Noll, Greg's second wife. "Greg was out at Makaha and noticed that
a young boy, about ten, was in trouble. Greg quickly paddled over
to the boy and took him to shore on his board. A few months later,
a woman and her son arrived at the factory in Hermosa Beach with a package
for Greg. They went into his office. The boy handed Greg the
package and said, 'Thanks for saving me that day. I would have drowned
if you hadn't helped me.'
"Inside the box was a small bronze bull."
Sources Used In This Chapter:
Bev Morgan, Billy Meng, Chuck Quinn, Craig Stecyk, Dale "The Hawk"
Velzy, Dave Rochlen, Dave Sweet, Dempsey Holder,
Dewey Schurman, Flippy Hoffman, Fred Van Dyke, George
Downing, Greg Noll, History of Surfing, Jim "Burrhead" Drever,
Joe
Quigg, John Blankenship, John Elwell, Kit Horn, Leonard Lueras, Leslie
Williams, Lindsey Lord, Matt Kivlin, Nat Young, Pat Curren, Peter and
Corny Cole, Phil Edwards, Preston
"Pete" Peterson, Reynolds "Rennie" Yater, Ted Thal, The
Surfer's Journal, Tom
Blake, Tule Clark, Walter Hoffman,
Woody
Brown.
Related Resources
TOM BLAKE: The Journey of A Pioneer Waterman
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