My early surfing took place exclusively in Orange County. That was only because Seal Beach, Surfside, Huntington and Newport beaches were, at 25 miles-plus from our house, the closest rideable waves from our Montebello home base.
I have enjoyed great surf in all of the aforementioned surf spots even though some of them have deteriorated in quality through manmade sand-flow disruption or been completely destroyed by marinas.
I still remember the little town of Surfside, where good, uncrowded surf peeled on sandbars until the Army Corps of Engineers in their wisdom dredged the bottom and turned the break into something only a take-off-and-die bodysurfer could love.
The waves of Long Beach were only a memory by the time I arrived on the scene, but I was forced to relive the story when Dana Point was suffocated by tons of boulders.
But that is not why I quit surfing in Orange County. It had more to do with me being lazy and wanting to sleep in. You see, most OC surf spots blow out by noon, and rarely glass off in the evenings. Surfing was a morning glory there, and afternoons were spent skateboarding the HB pier, playing poker in the sand or panhandling unsuspecting tourists.
That all changed for me in the early ’60s after my parents rented a beachfront cottage in Newport Beach for a week. A group of older surfers lived next door, and on some afternoons they looted our piggy banks in games of five-card stud.
Broke, we received the consolation prize of hearing surf stories of faraway places like Oahu, Baja, Malibu or Rincon. One day they told us about this place called Beacon’s where, in the words of one of the card sharks, “the ocean, even in the afternoon, is like looking into a glass of water.”
I could not imagine afternoon waves without a ripple of chop on them since OC was regularly clobbered most late mornings by winds equivalent to a biblical plague.
My dad, who was the most accommodating and wonderful father a kid ever had, agreed to drive my brother Dave and me to this Beacon’s place. By late morning the next day we were sharing dead glassy shoulder- to head-high waves with maybe half a dozen other surfers.
By October 1964 I had a driver’s license and weekends meant Malibu, Rincon, Baja or San Diego’s North County. After looking around, we found far better waves than the fun oatmeal rollers of Beacon’s, and soon discovered faster, better waves at other beach breaks in the summertime, while anticipating Swami’s returning to life each winter.
I quickly discovered that North County was one of the few places in the world where you could simply pull your car over, point your board toward the horizon and paddle out anytime of day.
The rent was cheap (my first house in Cardiff had an ocean view and cost a whopping $100 a month, of which my share was $33.33.) I survived by working one day a week at the Penny Saver newspaper.
It nearly killed me that I was unable to surf on Thursday afternoons. That wasn’t so bad unless the surf happened to be up. Then, I would slide out during my lunch break and catch a few waves before returning to stuffing flyers into newspapers.
Oh well, somebody had to do it.
