Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Wind an Sea Surf Club...The Early Days

Parrafin Chronicles In honor of the 50th anniversary of The Wind an Sea Surf Club, we are publishing several excerpts from the book Paraffin Chronicles, written by PaddleAir’s Herb Torrens, a charter member of the Wind an Sea Junior Division.

Big Names from Wind-an-Sea

Late that winter, a guy named Gary Cook moved to Newport from Pacific Beach. Cook, a smooth and stylish goofy-foot, had been in several magazines and won a couple of contests in San Diego. Nice guy, too. He was immediately accepted into the Newport echelon, and like everyone else, was quite taken by David's prowess on the surfboard.

When Easter Week of 1963 rolled around, a bunch of Cook's friends came to visit from La Jolla. Probably came for the famous Newport partying that used to go on during Easter Week. They called it Bal Week back then, because hordes of tourists mobbed every inch of Balboa, and Newport. The main thoroughfare, Balboa Boulevard, would be bumper-to-bumper from morning to midnight. There are lots of stories about the goings-of of Bal Week. Wild parties, wild people, wild music and wild times. And, most of it was true as I recall.

One blown-out afternoon during Bal Week, we were hanging out at my house. David Nuuhiwa was there, and we were just doing kid things like trying to reshape the nose of this old Gordie with a shovel. There was a party going on next door and over the back fence we could see a bunch of guys drinking and talking. One of them was Gary Cook. He sees us and what we're doing and he motions to his friends. They check us out and start laughing.

Then Cook tells us to come over and meet some of his friends. We stayed on my parent's side of the fence, no use getting in any trouble. Right? So, he says "guys I'd like you to meet a couple of my friends. This is Mike Diffendiffer, Butch Van Artsdalen, Dave Willingham and Mike Hynson."  We look at them and say "yeah right." You have to realize, we are a bunch of little smart asses. Anyway, we call bull shit on them and they sort of get mad. Diff even takes out his wallet and shows us his I.D.

We were still skeptical. Plus, we'd never even heard about any Mike Hynson. That upset them even more. So Diff says that if we don't believe them we should come with them to the premier of a John Severson movie that night and see all of them on the big screen. We say: "Is it free?"

Sure enough, that evening we all pile into Diff's stationwagon and go down to Laguna Beach High School to see "Going My Wave". John Severson, himself, let us in. We were all somebody's little brother. Okay, you're probably thinking what kind of parents would let their 14-year-old boys go down to Laguna with a bunch of 20-somethings who had been drinking all day. Well, it was just a different time, that's all. I wouldn't do it today with my kids. No way.  But that was the way it was then.

What a heady night for us walking in with a bunch of big-name surfers. The movie, indeed, starred all the guys we were with. The highlight came when they all went out at Pipeline. It was only the second time anyone had ever ridden the wave. Phil Edwards rode one wave there for a Bruce Brown movie, but he really just rode the wave in survival mode. This time, these guys ripped it. Willingham and Hynson going backside on huge waves. And, of course, Butch getting the tube ride that defined tube riding at the time. When the movie was over, we were all believers. And, Hynson became one of our new heroes.

That night helped set the stage for what came next. Actually, it took a while. It was the following summer, when those same guys and their friends formed Wind-an-Sea Surf Club for the first-ever Malibu Surf Contest. No, I wasn't on that infamous bus-ride, nor was David or any other junior for that matter. Good thing too, from what I hear.

Okay, I should explain that for those of you who have not heard about "the bus ride."  The story goes something like this. The wild bunch at Wind-an-Sea decided they wanted to surf in the first-ever club contest at Malibu. Hey, it was Malibu! So, they formed a surf club on the spot, and rented a bus to drive them to the contest. What went on during the bus ride has grown to legendary proportion. Let's just say, they all had a really fun time and, miraculously, were still able to win the contest the next day!

Actually, after Wind-an-Sea's success in the contest, the crew got the idea to form a real surf club. A respectable surf club.

This was at a time when surfing was considered sort of a degenerate life style. The whole surf bum thing, probably extenuated by the character Kahuna in the movie Gidget. Society had a rather dim view of surfers in general. Our parents, for the most part, thought surfing was a phase and that we'd grow out of it. So much for that.

Wind-an-Sea Surf Club

Wind-an-Sea Surf Club, a titan at the Malibu Contest, became an instant force. Surf clubs were not yet popular. Mostly cliques of locals who had somehow pooled enough money to buy jackets or sweatshirts. Newport had the Newport Surfers in the early '60s. There were also the Dapper Dans from South Bay, Swami's from Encinitas, and there were a few others.

Wind-an-Sea President Chuck Hasley was quick to see that a sustained effort might help improve the surfing image. Of course, he wanted to have fun, too. And, Wind-an-Sea Surf Club was always fun. Chuck helped organize a junior division. He gave senior members the task of hand-picking a crop of hot up-and-comers to join the club. Gary Cook was one of the Wind-an-Sea Seniors.

Cook, still living in Newport, asked David and I to join. It was a giant step in a direction that led me away from my Newport surfing roots.

Other junior surfers from up and down the coast were asked to join, again hand-picked by one of the Wind-an-Sea seniors.  We got word to report to a meeting in Pacific Beach at a restaurant called Uncle Suzie's. It would be a long trip, on a school night if I remember right. My parents were supportive, as always, and somehow my dad arranged to car pool with some of the other parents. I don't remember how David got there, but I rode down with Howard Chapleau and Billy Hamilton. My dad and I drove down to Laguna and from there we all piled into one car with Billy's mom driving.

What a ride. I knew Billy and Howard from the beach, although not that well. Howard was a little older and was one of the kings of Doheny. Great drop-knee cutbacks. Billy was my age. Billy could do it all, and, just to piss guys like me off, he always had this big smile on his face. I remember surfing with him at Doheny, and he'd run up and hang ten, big smile, just looking at the rest of us as if to say "top that!."  It was a good show. Yeah, he had style, and still does.

That ride down to Uncle Suzie's took forever. No freeway in those days. Down the coast highway through Blood Alley, the stretch of road from San Clemente to Oceanside. It was three lanes. Cars going either direction could use the middle lane to pass. Oh yeah, it was named appropriately. Head-ons were an everyday deal on Blood Alley. Then you had to go through all the little towns in North San Diego County. Oceanside, Carlsbad, Leucadia, Encinitas, Cardiff, Del Mar. They just seemed to go on and on. Torrey Pines Grade was a big deal back then. It was a giant hill that cars and trucks had to chug up. Finally, you went over the top and down to La Jolla and Pacific Beach.

We were beat by the time we got there, but then the pure energy of the group took over. Man, what a scene. Here were about 20 or 25 of the hottest kids on the coast all in one room. Peter Johnson, Dickie Moon,  David Rullo, Jon Close, Larry Strada, Francis Thompson, Hank Warner, Hugh McIntosh, Ricky Ryan, Denny Tomkins, Mark Hammond and Curt Slater, just to name a few.

What a night. The energy was unbelievable. Probably the most famous junior then was Peter Johnson. He had been featured in the movies surfing Waimea Bay when he was about 11. And, of course, he was known as Phil's protégé. But, in that room, he was just one of the gang. Everybody was hot. Everybody had something to prove. What a great feeling.

We not only formed a pretty good surf club that night, we formed bonds that will forever hold us together. Those of us that are still alive will always have a special feeling for each other. Like I've said, the bonds of surfing last a lifetime.

Under the direction of President Chuck Hasley and advisor Thor Svenson, we created the Wind-an-Sea Club Junior Division. Jon Close was elected president. Our agenda was to dominate the USSA surfing contest circuit, and for awhile we did just that. Contests became the focus, and my parents would drive me up and down the coast every weekend to surf. Everywhere we went, the Wind-an-Sea juniors made an impression. And, we had the time of our lives.

Next Installment: “The Juniors go to Makaha”

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