GROWING UP ORANGE COUNTY ( CONTINUED )

8-29-07
By Corky Carroll

Some time ago I started a little series where I use stories sent to me from you, the most intelligent and tasteful readers on the planet, about your very own experiences growing up here in beautiful Orange County.  This week I am going to show you one sent in by a dude named Mike Kerr.   Here it is.

“On Days Gone by…

Long ago in “South County” the geography was made up of rolling hills that met the surf.  The landscape was known more for beaches and their breaks than mega malls and mansions of the Nuevo Riche and the roads were traveled
by VW Vans with surf racks on top and not $70,000 dollar SUV’s with “bubble headed bleach blonds” behind the wheel.  The beaches were clean and the crime wave of the time was surf rats stealing scrap lumber used to fuel
ceremonial bonfires that burned late into the night in honor of the Gods of the Sea and Goddess’s that danced on sand.

We had our own language during those times with words that described the necessities of a much focused culture but like the rolling hills even those have been redeveloped into a modernistic and sometimes profit driven ways of communicating.  Here as an example are just a few;

The term “Waxing” meant preparing your board an afternoon of joy not removing unwanted hair in the most “Brazilian” of ways.

A “Reef” was something that gave birth to waves and not something you read about in the Wall Street Journal and “off shore” was something that described the direction of the winds not a popular form of banking.

New “racks” were something you purchased to carry your board atop you car and not something women purchased from a plastic surgeons office.

Outside was where you wanted to be when a set approached and not something you have to beg kids to do after turning off their Xboxes and laptops.
Inside was somewhere you never wanted to get caught and not a sanctum of electronic gadgets and youth stealing multimedia our children beg to stay.

A leash was something you used to keep your board near your body and not something Laws were put in place for to keep your dog near the same.

Now nothing about the “Old OC” would be complete without a look at the one of the icons of what it used to be.  The “Surf Shop”.  It used to be a small store front, rarely more the 500 square feet, where you would go to buy a board, have a board shaped or purchase a few necessities.  If you wore a
Hobie or Natural Design shirt you actually road one of their boards and were extremely protective of your fiberglass chariot you really used at sea.  But now there are mega surf stores which occupy 20,000 square feet in mega malls that sell their wares to people whose feet will never touch the sand and boards that will never be blessed with a single day at sea.

Lest you think I am just another cynical old man, as my children so willing point out to me, let me mention why I feel so strongly of what used to be.

Today is my Anniversary and I am the man who came back to South County after thirty years to get married to one of the Goddess’s who danced the sand mentioned above.

I am one of the lucky ones who gets to look at that Goddess everyday and see just exactly how perfect things used to be and how perfect things are in the new OC.  Not all is bad.  Take waxing; “Brazilian” certainly has its benefits.  And as to the Surf Shop it is wonderful to see that the pioneers of then are now the leaders of a billion dollar industry.  Take Quiksilver and Oakley as just one example of this, as while growing their companies, they have given back through philanthropic efforts that far exceed the efforts of any dot com or corporate types new to the OC.

Yes, we were radicals back then with our towels and our guns but the towels were laid on the sand and the guns were long slender boards used to conquer the waves.  So while I am very content and happy with my new OC I will always bask in the memories of a simpler OC.”

WHERE HAVE ALL THE HODADS GONE

The Wave ~ 8-29-07
By Corky Carroll

Last night I was sitting on my deck laughing at an old story that my neighbor, the Iguana, was telling about how one time legendary surfer Jack Haley had worked for one day as an extra in some old war movie that Marlon Brando was in called “The Young Lions.”  Jack had been cast as a Nazi soldier and they put him in a full on German Army uniform for the role.  I guess Jack liked the uniform because he didn’t give it back.  And one night there was a big party in Seal Beach and Jack showed up with the uniform on and his sword drawn screaming, “Surf Nazi’s must die.” 

This phrase sort of caught on and even years later somebody made another movie with that title.  As the Iguana was telling the story he happened to say, “That sounded like something Hodads would say.”

Wow.  “Hodad.”  There is sort of a lost term that I have not heard in a few years.  Back when I was a kid growing up along these beaches of Orange County there were surfers and there were hodads.  Surfers were obviously surfers, you know with the bushy, bushy blonde hairdos and stuff.  Hodads were the dudes with the greasy, greasy slicked back hairdos and jeans with white t-shirts.  Usually they rolled up the sleeves of the white t-shirts and put cigarette packs there and stuff.  Many had tattoos.  Some rode motorcycles. 
A classic example of a hodad would have been James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause.”   Or, later on, the Fonze, in “Happy Days.”  Or even Vinny Barbarino, in “Welcome Back Kotter.”

What is really sort of ironic is that there was this one dude who was pretty much a total hodad who was cast as a surfer in all the old “Beach Party” movies.  Frankie Avalon.  Frankie was baby butt white and I am sure never new the wax side of a surfboard from the slippery side.  He co-starred along with Annette Funicello, in a ton of beach movies.  Annette was not much of a beach looking babe either, but who cared.  She was the Mouseketeer with boobs. 

When I was attending Huntington Beach High School we sort of had the two factions more or less not getting along real well with each other.  The surfers and the hodads were not the best of pals, so to speak.  This was more or less true all up and down the coast.  I later did a movie with Sonny Bono called “Under the Boardwalk” that was all about the wars between the surfers and the hodads.   It was one of the worst movies I have ever seen even with epic and what should have been Oscar winning performances from Sonny and myself.   I was all ready to “thank the academy and the director and my mom and everybody else from Duke Kahanamoku to Sara Lee.”  But noooooooooooo.  We were robbed.  I don’t even remember who won that year, but it was probably some hodads.  

Even Dick Dale was more or less a hodad really.  He surfed but he also dressed hodad and had hodad hair.  The big black Cadillac convertible he drove was very impressive though.  And he had tons of hot chicks.  When I became aware of that I decided I was going to learn to play the guitar.   It was either be a surf star or play the guitar.  Either way it seems that there was a promised land of hot babes at the end of either one of those tunnels.  But then Dean Torrance and Jan Berry promised “two girls for every boy” if I came to “Surf City.”   And geeze, I was already here in the first place.   I became a surf star and eventually learned to play the guitar too.  So where’s the two babes?   Knowing my luck my two are probably with some hodad up in San Bernardino or somethin’.  

Which brings me to the burning question of today’s column.  Where have all the hodads gone?  Ya just don’t see ‘em around town anymore.   Or maybe it is just that with the street vibe and piercings and tattoos and all the other stuff that seems to be “in” these days that the surfers and hodads have sort of blended into one. 

So I am thinking about this and I am standing on the pier and I see none other than Chris “the Waterman” Ryan paddling out.  And I think to myself, “Well there it is.  A real ‘Surf Hodad’ if I have ever seen one.”