MOMS THAT SURF
5-14-08
By Corky Carroll

Being that this is Mama’s Day weekend I thought I would talk a little bit about mothers who surf or are major contributors to the surfing experience of their children. I wish that I could say that my mom surfed but the fact is that she couldn’t even swim. Neither could my dad. The advantage of this was that when I snuck out of the house to go surfing when I wasn’t supposed to they couldn’t do much about it until I came in. My mom loved the fact that I surfed and was always way proud of me when I did well in the surfing contests. I was lucky to have one that was totally behind me being a surfer and not on my case to “make something outta myself” in life. She was a singer who passed along music to me as a kid and always hoped that I would do something that I was passionate about. Surfing was that for me and more.

One sort of famous surfing mother that comes to mind is Marge Calhoun. Marge was a beautiful woman who had two beautiful daughters, Candy and Robin. All three of them were excellent surfers. I think Marge won the Makaha International a time or two and also many of the contests here in California. Candy was not only a great surfer but also an all around water-woman. She could body surf with the best of them.

As I am sitting here thinking about this subject there are a couple of serious drawbacks that you could face with a surfing mama. Like what if your mom drops in on you and your best wave of the day? Whadda ya gonna do? Cuss her out? Smack ‘er one? I don’t think so. And what if your mom surfs better than you? THAT would be a hard one to deal with. Like hearing your friends say, “Wow Maynard, your mom was really shredding today, that was so funny when she ran you over….hahahahaha.”

And what if you dropped in on HER on her best wave of the day? That would be grounds for serious restriction. Like two weeks of no surfing. Plus she could easily cuss you and even smack you one if she wanted to. Whadda ya gonna do? Nothin’. You just better not drop in on her. And maybe this weekend, it being Mamas Day and all, it would be a nice gesture to say, “hey mom, in honor of Mamas Day, and what a wonderful mother you are, you can have all the waves and even rip me off on my best wave of the day.” That would be a nice little bonus for the surfing mom.

There used to be a guy that surfed a lot in the Seal Beach and Huntington Beach area back when I was a kid. We all knew the dude but I don’t know if anybody ever got his real name. He was always being driven around by his mom, like every day. She took him everywhere. Surfing, to the surf movies, everywhere he went she drove. He became known as “cruzin’ with mama.” That’s what everyone called him.

There were some surfing brothers who lived down the street from me in Surfside when I first started surfing. Mike, Mark and Morgan De Cheveroux. Mike, Mark and I used to ride air mats together and all started surfing at about the same time. They had a mom that used to take us on surf trips down the coast. My first trip was with them and we hit a great day at both Doheny and San Onofre way back in the fifties. Her name was Ruth and she was into bullfighting. Not herself, at least I don’t think so, but she liked to go to the bullfights in Mexico. Once we took a surf trip south that also included a bullfight in TJ. I was the typical gringo and was rooting for the bull the whole time and was sad when it lost. That was my one and only bullfight.

Then there was another surfing mama that I really would like to mention here, and as a matter of fact dedicate this week’s column too. Her name was Kay Merrill. Kay was the wife of famous San Onofre surfer Benny Merrill and also mother to surf champion Linda Merrill and San Clemente local and hot surfer Tommy Merrill. Kay was like a second mom to me during my formative years between about 13 and 17 years old. I used to spend the weekends sleeping in their back room and going surfing at San Onofre with them. That was the complete surfing family.

And to all you other mamas out there I hope you have a wonderful Mamas Day. Especially you foxey mamas.

 

ROCKIN’ THE HOOD
The Wave ~ 5-14-08
By Corky Carroll

Today I had sort of a blast from the past. That would be sorta like a flashback but in this case it was actually more of a blastback. I was cruzin’ down the street with my new chica, the extremely Kool Kika, sittin’ next to me and listening to the radio when she asked if she could pop in one of her CD’s. She said she had some “classic” rock that I might like. As she is from a totally different generation than me I had no idea what to expect. Her idea of “classic” and mine might be decades apart. It’s like with me and my neighbor the “Iguana.” His idea of classic rock would be like Montavani or something like that. Lawrence Welk maybe. Way different than mine. So I was thinking that the extremely kool Kika was probably gonna hit me with something like Aerosmith or Bon Jovi. I was all ready for something that was from the period between now and what I would consider “classic.”

But then the music started and I was in shock. Leading off was Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Wow. Definitely classic all the way. Then there was some Jimi Hendrix which opened the pathway to a few memories for sure. But the capper was when a cool Buffalo Springfield tune came on. I had to high five her and congratulate her on truly having a cool collection of rock classics.

As we were driving along listening to all these great old tunes from “my day” I couldn’t help but think back about the days when all of these bands used to play right here in Huntington Beach. There was a rock n roll club here back in the 1960’s and 70’s called the Golden Bear. I have written about it before but this music blasting from my past brought back the memory of that place one more time. So I thought I would recall a bit more this week about that club. Plus there was the fact that I got an email from a reader a couple weeks ago asking why I never wrote about the Bear. I guess he had not been reading me all that long.

The Golden Bear was located on Pacific Coast Highway across the street from the pier and about a half a block south. Pretty much all of the top acts of that period played there at one time or another. The list is long and I could never remember all of them. But a few that I do remember are Hendrix, Jackson Browne, Elvin Bishop, Santana, the Tubes, Linda Rondstat, Flo and Eddy, Pure Prairie League, Paul Butterfield Band, the Grateful Dead, Buddy Miles Express, Country Joe and the Fish, Canned Heat, Honk and on and on. It was a great place to catch a top name act right in downtown Huntington Beach. About the only bands I don’t remember playing there were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

This brings me to my own experience playing there. During the height of my made it to the middle almost music career I had the chance to open for a few acts at the Bear and finally being the headliner one weekend back in the late 1970’s. I can attest that it was a much better club to listen to music than to be the one playing the music. Their sound system was not great and they had all concrete walls. The result was that you could not hear a thing onstage but a massive wall of noise. Or maybe that was just the way we sounded…. Who knows? But it was a hard room to play. The good side was the crowds were great. It only held about 300 people and the energy level was always the best.

The Bear is where we learned our first hard lesson about the music business. The first time we played there the manager had a big fruit basket in our dressing rooms and a cooler full of beers and soft drinks. He told us that if we wanted anything from the bar or kitchen to just ask and they would send it to the dressing room for us. We had played other clubs where they comped us drinks and maybe had a little poo poo platter for us too so were we stoked about how nice the management of the Bear was to us with that kind offer. And we were pretty hungry that night too and maybe had a few drinks on top of that. And I might add that there were nine of us in the band. At the end of the night I went to get paid and the manager said “ok, that will be $957.”

Wow. I thought we were only getting $500, as we were the opening band on a three-act night. So I said, “Cool, that is more than I thought we were getting.”

The manager stared at me and blankly said, “No, you owe us $957.” Our bar and food bill was not comped like we thought, plus they charged us $200 for the fruit plate and a bunch more for the cooler of beer and soft drinks. We put all our money together and only had about $300. So they held our equipment hostage until we came back with the rest of the money. I love rock n roll.