It was the summer before driver’s licenses. The summer before serious dating. It was the summer of my two besties, Val and Sue, on the warm white sand at Pearl Street beach in Laguna. Our skin turned the color of maple syrup, our bodies pressed down on blue striped towels, and our mouths filled with tuna fish sandwiches, dill pickles, potato chips, and icy lemonade. We drizzled lemon juice on our hair, cajoling the sun to make us blonder. Easy for Val and Sue, blonde from birth, their locks turned summer white, while my dark sienna flamed reddish highlights with a few strands of gold.
Val brought decks of cards, and we played endless hours of hearts, chattering about boys and parents, and our upcoming sophomore year. She was the tallest at 5’5” and freckled, Sue in the middle somewhere with permanent rosy cheeks, and me, the short one, at 5’ with the more golden skin. We were a trio, both in the water and on the sand.
“Coop,” Val asked, “you got oil?”
I reached in my beach bag and handed her the bottle of Monoi Tiare coconut oil, our ticket to a dark tan. On the front of the bottle, a buxom Tahitian girl clad only in a lei. The fragrance was enough to transport our imaginations to any tropical island. Scents of pikake and plumeria wafted around us as we smoothed the golden liquid onto our shiny skin.
“I’ve got the new Seventeen.”
I spread the magazine on my towel so we could read the headlines together. “Swinging Fashions for Summer Girls”, and “Can a Girl Change a Boy?” On the cover, a smiling teen with bobbed sandy hair and teeth as white as the crocheted top she modeled.
“Find the dresses,” said Sue, our fashionista, already plotting what to wear our sophomore year.
I leafed through the pages to photos of skimpy shifts with puffy little sleeves in various shades of pale green and linen white, not sure at all how they might look on me. Following the fashion pages, an interview with Peter, Paul, and Mary discussed the trio’s fall touring schedule, and an article on how to have clearer skin held our attention, as we fingered our pimples hoping they weren’t too noticeable.
After we’d baked to a toasty crisp, I grabbed one of the shiny black inner tubes from the pile we’d made earlier, and tossed it toward Val’s legs.
“Catch,” I said just before it bounced off her feet.
“Coop,” she cried. She sat up and brushed off the sand. “You are a brat.”
I retrieved the inner tube, raised it over my head, and tossed it toward her slender body. She deflected the rubber donut with her fist, her waist-long hair twisting around her body as she glared up at me, shielding her green eyes with a raised hand.
“You’re going to pay for that!”
She jumped up as if to chase me, followed by Sue. The three of us grabbed our inner tubes and raced to the water.
We were lucky. Inner tubes were prized possessions, and Val’s dad owned a gas station with an endless supply of patched jobs, the remnants from customers who needed new tires. He pumped them to their max, so tight a dime would bounce off the surface.
We heaved the tubes into the foam and jumped in after them. Our fingers curled over the edges of their donut shape, and we pulled ourselves up into the middle. Leaning forward, so part of the tube rose in the air, we kicked our feet to get beyond the break line.
Sue got caught pushed backwards and we yelled at her to hurry up. We floated beyond the waves, legs wrapped over the top of the tube, butts hung down in the center. We watched seagulls glide and squawk, as the cool 72° Pacific splashed around our bodies.
“Here comes a set!” Val cried, and on the horizon, we could see the bump of an incoming wave. We kicked ourselves closer to the shore, and as the wave began to break on us, we tumbled over and over in the sandy foam to the beach. Sputtering with sand encrusted hair and lips, giggling all the way, we pushed ourselves back out into the water, where we repeated the roll and churn until our fingers turned blue.
Nothing mattered that summer but my friends, the color of our hair and skin, and our play in the ocean. The troubles at home temporarily forgotten, the politics of the impending Vietnam war far far away.
After the tubes, we graduated to surf matts, saving our allowances to purchase them in town at a beach accessories shop. The inflatable channeled rectangles had ropes strung across the front to hang on. Mine was tomato red and Val’s was an ultramarine blue. Instead of crashing over the tops of waves, the matts let us catch the front and ride the foam toward shore, bouncing with every lump and bump of the choppy surface. The canvas rubbed rashes on the inside of our arms, but we never complained. Our faces pressed so close to the water, we felt as if we were flying, the spray rushing into our faces and blew over our heads.
Next, boards on wheels.
Not a board you could buy in a shop like today, but one cut from a sheet of plywood with my dad’s saw. I sanded the rough edges into a narrow oblong shape, and painted it bright glossy white, the only paint I could find in our garage.
My mother looked on in horror as I took my precious roller skates and tore the wheels off of them.
“But those skates cost …” she started to say.
I cut her off before she could finish her sentence.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m still gonna skate, just on a board.”
She gave me one of those looks, the kind I ran from before she could ask another question.
Once I pried the wheels off the shoe skates, all it took was a hammer and some nails to attach them to the board.
Tucked under my arm, I carried my prized board across what was left of the dusty chaparral that had previously surrounded our hilltop house. A new subdivision had carved up the slopes, turned the gopher mounds, snake holes, coyote dens and raccoon paths into flattened parcels ringed by asphalt cul-du-sacs and street signs. Houses had yet to be built, so the streets were mine to bike, and now skate, with little to no traffic.
My first run was on the flats. I set my pretty construction on the pavement, put my right foot in the middle of the board at an angle and pushed for speed with my back foot. When I was moving fast enough, I put my left foot on the back of the board and rolled down the street. The board was not much designed for turning, but going straight ahead she was perfect. Whee! My hands were tingly, heart racing, and rolled to an easy stop where the street ended. Behind me, one of the slopping hills beckoned. My next ride.
I carried my board to the top and looked down. The longer I looked, the steeper it got. It wasn’t as steep as our driveway, but still … My heart pumped, my mind raced, pushing pin points of fear out to the edges.
I sucked in my breath, put my foot on the front of the board and hopped on. Woosh! Down I went, toward the concrete culvert at the bottom. My hair flew behind me, a tiny scream slid from my lips, the lamppost a blur, and suddenly I realized I had no brakes, and the curb was getting closer and closer. Just before it hit, I leapt off, tried to run as fast as I’d been skating, took a tumble into the dirt lot, shoulder first, and rolled over a couple of times. I banged up my knee pretty good, there was blood trickling down toward my socks and a slab of skin was hanging. When my board smashed into the curb, the nails popped out and the back wheels tore off.
I sat in the dirt, dazed, and looked around. No one had seen me, so no embarrassing moment. Dust covered my shorts and shirt, and my hands were as skinned up as my knee. But damn, I’d done it! I’d skated down the hill! I picked up the pieces of my board, injured but smug, and limped home. Mercurochrome and Band-Aids would fix the scrapes, but I needed to work out a braking strategy.
Val and Sue did not share my skateboard interest, but the beach still held us together. Boogie boards arrived on the scene, the next iteration of water propulsion apparatus after surf matts. Designed by Morey Pope, who lived in Laguna, the Styrofoam boards were like matts, but shorter and firm, and not filled with air. We slid our feet into fins, and kicked our way through the shore break. The feeling was different. We were more in control of our speed and direction. We could sit inside and catch little rollers, or make our way outside and line up for a turn on a large face and lean forward, legs pumping up and down for extra speed. We could carve turns and even try some tricks like spinning the board in a circle. The boogie boards were faster. More maneuverable. Like graduation from middle school to high school.
Things started to shift our sophomore year. Val and Sue became closer, our trio more their duo, while I drifted. Lots going on besides my charging hormones. My parents took bickering to new heights with mom throwing plates or dinner and Dad rarely home. I discovered through the tom-tom drums of gossip, that a girl in my junior class and her younger sister, were bragging about my dad. How he spent the weekend with them. Where they went. What he had bought them. It was extra complicated because the older sister was also a friend of Val and Sue. They were caught between wanting to tell me and wanting to shelter me from the information. And if to tell me, how?
There were whispers, and the kind of hush-hush in front of lockers where conversations abruptly stopped when I walked past. I felt the brunt of something I didn’t quite understand. As if being a teenager were not complicated enough. I mostly ignored what was going on, pulled a little closer into my own shell. The beach became my refuge, a watery haven where family issues whooshed away with the offshore breezes. At least I could pretend.
Along with all-things-shifting, I moved my hang-out from Pearl to Oak Street, a different crowd of kids, a mix of high school and college, and a different wave, one that curled both left and right, and broke just off-shore. The real deal, the fiberglass surfboard, landed under my body that summer, along with an even darker tan, more like light molasses, and gin rummy games instead of hearts.
Surfboards certainly weren’t new, but were changing rapidly. First made by hand in the Hawaiian Islands, the boards had been carved in the late 1800s from local trees, such as Koa. Surfing was considered a deeply spiritual act, from art of riding waves to praying for surf. The chiefs used surfing as training, and to settle disputes among themselves. There were two types boards, the ‘Olo,’ rode by chiefs or noblemen, and the “Alaia,” rode by commoners. They weighed up to 120 pounds, and ranged in length from 10’-16’. The most famous Hawaiian rider, and the first to tackle a wave in Australia, was Duke Kahanamoku. He is often considered the father of surfing.
In the late 30s, balsa wood began to replace redwood, dropping 60 pounds off 100-pound boards. Balsa was soft and light, while redwood was tough and durable, so design construction shifted to sandwiches, strips of redwood ‘stringers’ glued between pieces of balsa running the length of the board.
The first fiberglass board was made by Pete Peterson in 1946. Using post WWII technology, he crafted a hollow plastic mold with a redwood stringer, sealed with fiberglass tape. Bob Simmons followed, utilizing fiberglass technology by creating a Styrofoam core with rails, coated in fiberglass.
Boards had been through several iterations before the 60s. One of earliest experiments cut the heavy wood boards in half, starting a trend to shorter boards that continued for over a century. Fins were attached to the bottom for better stability and mobility. Rails were shaved for more radical maneuvers.
The boards on the sand in front of me at Oak Street were a mix of fiberglass and balsa, the history of surfboards and shaping combined in one pile, sans the early Hawaiian models. Their lengths ranged from 10’ down to 6’, with relative weight. To me, they were all beautiful and honestly, I had no idea how their differences affected their performance.
I’d spent hours watching the boys surf while sitting on the beach, analyzing their paddle strokes to match the speed of the wave, then glide into place and then push themselves up to stand. They looked graceful, powerful. It looked both easy and difficult. I wanted to try.
One of the guys in the water rode a wave all the way to the beach, and laid his board on the sand in front of me.
“Coop,” he said, all smiles and nose drip.
A light flush flashed my cheeks. Greg was 18, tanned muscle, with a shag of salt-crusted shoulder-length sun-bleached hair. He was long limbed, had a washboard stomach, bicep carved arms, and stood at least a foot taller than me. I knew he had a girlfriend, but still… I had a secret crush on him and sparkled on hearing my name.
I mustered my nerve.
“Can I try your board?” I asked.
“So you wanna be a surfer girl?” he asked. A quirky smile turned his whole face up, and the palest blue eyes washed washed over me.
“Why not?” I said, hoping he didn’t notice the squirming effect he was having on me.
“Go for it,” he said, and pointed to his board.
I didn’t hesitate. I picked up the nose of the long board, heavier than I expected, and dragged it to the water. Once I got it flat, floating, and waist deep, I laid down and started to paddle. It wasn’t any harder than a boogey board. Just no kicking, all arms. I pulled up next to a couple of other surfers, studying the way they sat, the way they watched the horizon. The way they studied the waves as they headed toward shore. Greg stood on the beach watching me and I did not want to look foolish.
“So how’s this work?” I asked the guy closest to me. Deep auburn hair hung around his tanned shoulders. A turquoise blue and silver St. Christopher medal sparkled from a chain around his neck.
“Paddle ‘til you feel the water moving under you and stand up.”
Sounded simple enough. I watched the guys catch a couple more, then took my turn. A tiny bump, just big enough I thought, and I lay down on my belly and started pumping my arms. I felt the shift in the water, from me paddling against the flow, to the wave moving underneath me. I pushed my hands down on the edges of the board and promptly drove the nose under water. The board pearled, drilling downwards, tossing me head first over the edge. The board flew into the air on the front side of the wave and rolled over itself toward shore. I got washing machined in the foam and came up sputtering. My top was askew. Before standing up, I tucked my breasts back inside the top’s triangles and tried to wash the heavy sand out of my bikini bottom.
Undaunted, I swam to shore, recovered the board, tried not to look at Greg’s smirk, and paddled back out. Second wave. Same damn thing. Shit. How could those boys do it so easily?
This time when I swam to the beach, Greg had recovered his board from the sand and held it out to me smiling.
“Move farther back on the board,” he said. And when you push up, shift your weight back to your feet, off of your hands.”
I nodded. My mouth full of salt, sand grit between my teeth. Unsure of anything to say, except thank you, and grateful for his words of instruction.
He handed me the board, I cocked my head and batted my eyes (such a 15-year-old thing to do), flashed him a smile, and paddled back out. When it was my turn, I shifted my weight back like he had instructed, and popped to stand. Salt water whooshed past me, the wave broke behind me and I was on my feet like the other guys. The wave was short, closed out and crashed over me, but I hung on to Greg’s board this time and paddled back out. I repeated the cycle five times until it felt comfortable, like I had a rhythm.
“Surfer girl,” he said when I returned his board.
“That was too much fun,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“I’ve got an old board,” he said. “You can have it.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope. I never ride it. It’s yours.”
I tried not to bounce up and down, but my excitement was obvious.
“Pick up this afternoon if you want. In fact, you can store it at my house. I live just up the street.”
My body twittered, eyes pinned to his eyes. I knew I would toss and turn that night, replaying the day, the way Greg’s eyes had danced when he looked at me. The fluidity of the water, the roll of the curl. The fact I’d stood up without falling. I could hardly wait for the next set of waves.