Waves

Young beach bums from Anaheim,California hitch-hiked back and forth to the ocean every day during the summers in the nineteen thirties. Some beach boys went to Huntington Beach where the shallow water caused las olas waves to break far out in the water. The waves were close together and sometimes weak so that they petered out, which made it more difficult to body surf. The swells of sea water moved swiftly toward shore. Boys put a fin on one foot and left the other bare for better footing as they walked out to catch the waves. The fin helped them swim faster to catch a ride and to help keep them going with a weak wave.

Daredevils dove off the high pier at Huntington Beach. Some did flips and spectacular dives off the high perch. My brother Vic and I jumped off once when we about fourteen. We sank thirty feet under water and held our breath a long time as we swam to reach the surface. Looking up through the salt water the surface appeared to look white. Water swept us closer to the barnacled wooden posts that held up the pier. We should have allowed the tide to wash us to the northern side of the pier, but we were afraid of passing through the pilings. Under water the wooden posts were covered with sharp black barnacles. We exhausted ourselves fighting to reach shore against the tide while swimming away from the posts and angling toward shore.

Corona Del Mar was a popular beach because it had clean white sand, great waves. We changed clothing in a public toilet usually on a cement floor wet from other bathers. Corona Del Mar is a Spanish word meaning Crown Of The Sea. The beach had a snack bar where you could buy excellent hamburgers hot dogs and soft drinks. Pretty high school girls and boys wore skimpy bathing suits. They put mineral oil on their skin to prevent sunburns. Some people mixed iodine with the oil to start a tan faster. Others let their skin burn. They took baths in vinegar water at home to stop sunburn pain. Later the burned skin blistered and peeled off leaving the body splotched with red and white skin that would later darken to a tan.

Boys and girls bleached their hair with laundry soap and peroxide. They let the sun turn their hair white, red or blond. You could tell beach boys by the bleached color of their hair and their dark tanned skin.

Corona Del Mar was my beach. Cliffs protected it. A curved narrow, poorly paved road twisted down to the white sand. In the early thirties the poorly paved road was not easy to drive on. My dad sometimes had to make two or three runs at the road with his car to make it back up to the top. Wide enough for only one car, if cars faced each other, the top car had to back up to the top to let the bottom car pass by. Below the road, there was a long sandy beach that gradually sloped to the water. Just to the right of the sand was the rock jetty protected also by a cement walkway. Cliffs reached to the water a half mile to the left of the jetty. Waves pounded rocky reefs below the cliffs. There was a great deal of seaweed in the water and covering the rocks during low tide. My father hooked a big fish there while fishing with my Uncle Walt. The fish fought so hard the men traded off hauling it in. Back in Anaheim at our house on south Broadway street, they showed the fish to other fishermen but nobody knew what kind of fish it was. The fish looked like a bass and was about three feet long.

I met an older surfer who told me about Corona Del Mar before the jetties were put there. He said waves broke from almost a mile out and rolled into the entrance of the natural shallow harbor. He said people brought long surfboards from Hawaii. Many felt the surf at Corona Del Mar was the best in the world. He said putting up rock jetties and dredging had ruined the waves for the long -boarding sport.

The jetties were built during the depression in the thirties. Government workers in the W.P.A. program started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt did much of the work. Boulders were brought from the mountains where they were blasted from granite hills and carried on trains or trucks to the sea. Some of the rocks still have holes drilled in them where blasting powder or dynamite was used. Other rocks were mined at Santa Catalina Island. The heavy granite rocks were floated on barges pulled by tug boats. These rocks were dumped in up to sixty feet deep water to form the breakwaters. I remember walking on old railroad tracks that had carried flat railroad cars loaded with granite boulders that were used to build the Jetty. At the end of the jetty they had erected a lighthouse where a loud whistle blew. The wooden railroad ties rotted. Steel railroad tracks eventually rusted away, but the rocks are still there.

The best waves came in close to the south side of Corona Del Mar breakwater. On stormy days the waves crashed over the top of the jetty. Shore patrol boats came and warned fishermen to leave before high tide came in. During storms, men and ships were crushed by the waves and sharp rocks. Rock fishermen sometimes lost their lives.

As a small boy, I braved only the small waves. At sixteen, I joined the big boys to catch stormy waves that crashed over the top of the jetty. Once I was caught in a rip-tide that quickly carried me out toward the end of the jetty. I was not foolish enough to try swimming to the rocks of the jetty. I watched others wait, and then swim to the jetty just after a wave had passed. After climbing on a low rock, it was essential that they quickly climb to the top before the next boomer washed them along the barnacle covered slippery rocks, which could tear at their skin or break their bones. As I was being swept out toward the open sea, a lifeguard used a long surfboard to rescue me. We both paddled hard with our arms to make it back to shore. The outgoing tide swept us seaward when we relaxed. Coming in to shore was slow and hard work.

Most of my friends body surfed. As a wave crested to break, we swam hard to move with the wave. If the wave crashed, we were often thrown to the bottom where we waited for the wave to pass before surfacing in the foaming water. A strong wave could bounce us on the hard sandy bottom. Sometimes we were thrown out in front of the wave. While flying in the air we could spin before bouncing on our chest on the back lashing water. Swimming to catch a wave was good exercise. When a wave overtook us, we put our chin to our chests, hunched our shoulders, and rode with one knee bent and the other foot trailing in the water. I’m not sure why we held one foot in the air. If the wave pushed you so your head was exposed in front of the wave, you could lift your chin, open your eyes and see where you were going. If the wave covered your head, you had to tuck your chin in again to stay with the wave.

A good ride took us from the beginning break to two inches of water at the shore where we often scraped our chests on broken sea shells or little rocks. Feather edged waves were fun to ride because they crested gently, and we slid down the wave from top to bottom and rode the white water. Standing in water not too deep, we caught and rode waves without having to swim the crest. We learned to wade to perfect spots to catch each one.

Groups of older boys sat on the sand looking out to sea. They looked out past small swells until a large one broke over the end of the jetty. Then they knew some big waves were coming. Waves came in sets. Often the strong breakers came in three at a time. Swimmers ran toward the water and belly flopped on shallow water. Then they sped straight out. By running out on the jetty, a person could dive in and meet the first giant breaker. Late swimmers from shore caught the second or third wave. After the three large waves had passed, the smaller ones came.

Few surfers used surfboards near the breakwater in those days. They knew too many good expensive boards had been splintered by the rocks. Some swimmers brought tightly woven pillows from home. They used seawater to wet the white material, filled the pillow with air from the wind, then quickly closed the loose end by twisting and holding it. This homemade devise was used as a belly-board float.

Plywood belly boards were cut and painted at home to ride waves. Some boards were cut in a three foot diameter circle. These were used to ride the washing water as it returned seaward. A person threw and skimmed the board on the surface of the receding water. Then they ran down the sloping wet sand and jumped on the sliding board as it continued to skim along the surface. Much practice was needed to keep from falling. Sometimes the board bucked up just as they hit a wave, and the upthrust made it easy for the rider to do a back flip in the air. Sometimes they stepped off the plywood before hitting the wave. Many surfers were athletic and you could watch them walk on their hands or do other tumbling tricks on the soft white sand. Some boys formed pyramids by stacking on top of each other either kneeling or standing.

In the forties, it was not legal for girls to wear bikinis. The police stopped them. But the police could not stop a girl from losing the bra part of her two piece suit in the waves. Every once in a while one of the bathing beauties who was very proud of her new breasts showed them off to boys in the water. The girls pretended it was an accident, but we youngsters figured they did it on purpose. Although the girls showed off their breasts, they wouldn’t let us touch them.

Sometimes wind, especially the Santa Ana Wind, interfered with the surf. Strong wind coming past cliffs from inland beat down the surf and made the water’s edge placid like a small lake. Sometimes there were no waves at all. But out to sea we saw the blue waters danced on by foaming spray and choppy waves.

There were a few people who rode long boards. The waves were especially good at Dana Point. Some of the kids made their own boards. The boards were much heavier than those you see now. In a high school of a thousand, I met only three Anaheim students that rode the big surfboards. It was a new sport for Californians that most of us could not afford. You needed a car or truck to carry a board to the beach, which was located twenty miles from Anaheim. Beach bums were too broke to have a car. Some guys collected pop bottles they sold for two cents just to buy food for lunch. My friend Tom Berg spent summers living on the beach when he was young. He learned to fend for himself.

Body surfing small waves on weekends was the most fun for me. Big crashing waves like the ones frequently seen at the wedge by the Newport Beach jetty were dangerous. The wedge was a place where waves crashed against the north side of the breakwater. Often I swam out past the waves and waited for the giant ones to go by before catching a small one. Sometimes the surf was rough enough to wear me out and get me winded before I made it back to shore. The water would make me shiver. I would drop down on the hot sand to rest and gain my breath. Later, I would walk past beach houses to the Pacific Highway to hitch a ride home to Anaheim. My mom didn’t know about my teen aged hitch-hiking. When she finally learned about it, she gave me a lecture!