I was sitting here looking at the screen on my trusty old coal-powered computer contemplating what I was going to tell you about today. It’s the last column of the year, so obvious choices would be a re-cap of the year gone by or possibly a list of my personal “new year’s resolutions.”
Off the top of my head I can’t really pinpoint anything “revolutionary” that took place in ’23. And my only real resolution is to make it to ’25. So, nothing there.
So, in a moment of inner clarity, what I decided to do was just pick a random surf memory. A few came to mind, and I am going with this one. I will call it “The Day that I Ditched.”
I was lucky as a kid to have grown up in Surfside Colony. Our home was right on the beach. This allowed me to surf close to all the time.
During the school year, I was able to get in a good hour before school and all the time afterward until it got dark. School was where all the chicks were, so I never really felt the need to ditch school to go surfing. Except for the one time I did.
It was the winter of 1961-62 at Huntington Beach High School, I was a freshman. There was a little grassy knoll behind the snack bar where some of the surf crowd hung out. Actually, all of the surf crowd. It wasn’t all that big a group at that time.
We did have some good surfing talent there though: Rich Chew, Robert August, John Boozer, Bill Fury and a few more. Also, Denny Buell and Tommy Leonardo.
Denny was a senior, super good surfer and a solid “ladies’ man.” Tommy Leonardo was known as “Top Mouth on the Coast.” That dude was so sarcastic that his reputation went far and wide. He was an excellent surfer too, you just didn’t wanna get on his bad side.
So, it’s a beautiful clear day with “Santa Ana” offshore winds blowing. A really good south swell running, too. It’s lunch time and Denny, Tom and I arrive at the grassy knoll at the same time. Denny has this gleam in…
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