Surfing Sixties

A feature article in the morning paper about surf legend Bob Holland led me down memory lane.  Everybody who toted a surfboard on the Outer Banks in the sixties knew the name. Years before he made it into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame, he was making a name for himself as an east coast champion.  The kids I hung with were into surfing and were lucky to be a beach local from Memorial Day to Labor Day.  Some of us had family cottages, some stayed with friends and some worked jobs that provided lodging (of sorts).  I swear Pat and Julia spent an entire summer in a camper parked in my family’s driveway.  Where there’s a will, there’s a wave.

I started surfing on a chunky orange board I bought from Nancy Wood Foreman.  When Bob Holland teamed with partner Pete Smith to open Smith & Holland Surf Shop in Virginia Beach, I bought my first real board, a 9.5 ft. Hansen Superlight.  I was stoked!

We lived and breathed surfing and the waves were better then.  Maybe it was the position of the sandbars, maybe it was the wave gods, but we almost always found rideable waves.  You could find our crowd on any given day at dead low tide, somewhere between Hatteras and Corolla searching for the waves. Many mornings we were in the water just after sunrise and ride a few before breakfast. A favorite time was just before twilight when the surf often got glassy.  Our evening surfing slowed a bit after an incident with a shark.  There are no causalities to report, just a little too up close and personal.   Sharks aside, not much else could squelch our dedication and enthusiasm…we ignored jellyfish, sea nettles, sting-rays and bone numbing cold water.  I broke my foot one morning and didn’t feel it until lunch due to the freezing water temperature. 

Those were the golden years of surfing.  West coasters had been testing the waters for decades, but in the mid-sixties the sport took off and ignited the east coast in a hot frenzy.  Fueled by top 40 hits by The Beach Boys and dozens of surfing films, we fell into the scene with complete allegiance.  We followed the weather reports and storm predictions.  We skipped school, drove endless miles up stretches of isolated beaches and waited out the red warning flags flying during gale force winds.  We looked out for each other. 

I recall one incident with sober clarity.  It was at the tail end of a storm when the surf was glassy, but the waves were still huge.  Several of us, including myself, George and Allan (my brother) paddled out at the Nags Head Fishing Pier.  It took a while to get out, past the big swells rolling in one after another, and when we finally stopped paddling and turned to sit on our boards, the beach was a long, very long way away.  We were as far as the end of the pier.  Every wave seemed deadly…too big to take off on.  It grew later and darker.  My mother had put the beach towel on the roof to signal it was time to come it now.  I saw it, we all saw it, but we were scared.  Someone decided we should all take off on the same wave.  So, that’s what we did.  Nobody made any effort to stand up. We all caught that wave and rode it like we were riding a raft. 

Surfing’s still big, but it will never impact an entire generation of teens like it did for us. The sixties spawned a culture that made zinc oxide a symbol of belonging .  It forever changed beach fashion and almost invented the bikini. Surfing symbolized our freedom and gave us the rush we so needed.  It was the perfect time.