GROWING UP ORANGE COUNTY…. CONTINUED

10-31-07
By Corky Carroll

Those of you that have been reading me for awhile know about my continuing series of columns devoted to people who have grown up here in our wonderland of lands, the beautiful Orange County. I get tons of email from you out there and many times stories from people who have grown up here.  So, from time to time, I run somebody’s story.  Today I have one from a dude named Mark Whoffman, who sent me the following story titled “Abalone Memories.”  A lot of what he has to say triggered my own memories of those very same Abalone steaks.   Here is Mark’s story about his childhood in the O.C.

“Corky, some of your recent OC Register articles have brought back more than a few memories. Some of my memories are of spending time in San Clemente with friends of our family who lived in San Clemente and the surrounding areas.

My parents were introduced to each other by this couple who ended up living in San Clemente after WWII. My Dad ended up buying a lot 5 blocks up the hill on Ave Del Mar from the pier in San Clemente. Just before he retired, he built a duplex on the lot where he lived until his passing.

Together in the early 60's we drove PCH along the coastline south from Newport Beach (where the BSA held it's Jamboree camp out at a buffalo ranch) stopping along the way to kick dirt clods to look for a suitable lot for my Dad to build on. There was no Dana Point Harbor back then; but there was the Doheny Camp Ground.

Each stop along the way seemed to look better than the one before until we reached the bowl overlooking the San Clemente Pier...where at that time there was a lot of surfing action going on...in particular I remember "tandem surfing". I was to later learn that what they were doing was practicing for a competition to be held there at the San Clemente Pier. Aaahhhh tandem surfing...wow!

I may be wrong; but this surf event predates the Ocean Festival held in San Clemente now. There was a King Neptune who presided over these water borne festivities that included surfing and paddleboard races (the paddle boards had knee wells and a kind of rudder setup). That sight hooked me into surfing. I went looking for a used Wardy; but ended up buying a used 9'-6" Hobie.

In addition there was 'skim boarding' and you could rent these plywood disks from Stan's at the pier. At the time, there was both half day and daylong deep sea fishing boats that left and returned at the end of the San Clemente Pier too. That too is a distant memory.

Our family would end up sharing a rental of a house for a month every summer down at Pico Beach with another family. Down in that end of town, there was a seafood restaurant. The most expensive thing on the menu was abalone steak. On the last weekend of our summer beach vacation; we were allowed to go to dinner at this place and order whatever we wanted.

I never passed up the chance to get the abalone steak. Although, us kids could (and actually did) rig up a kind of lobster and crab trap to lower down into the waters below the pier to catch a seafood dinner; that abalone steak from that restaurant never tasted so good. At a tide pool area (I think it was down around Cottons Point) we could find abalone too. When there was a full moon; us kids would go grunion "hunting" (as if you actually had to hunt for 'em) ...down at Trestles always seemed to be good for grunion...or as we got older...submarine race watching.”
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Yeah, I remember those very same grunion hunts.  Get a little beach fire goin’ and a pretty little hottie and wait for the grunion to show up.  Funny how they never used to show up.  Or if they did I never really knew about it.  Sometimes I would see them on the beach the next day and wonder when they showed up.  Grunion hunts were great excuses to set the romantic mood for a little beach romance.   Anyway, thanks to Mark Whoffman for today’s little journey into Growing up Orange County.  Stay tuned for more and if you want to send me your story I would love to read it and consider it for publication.

 

 

The Wave ~ 10-31-07
By Corky Carroll

Diane Edmonds is a local girl who has become one of our hottest local surfing photographers.  I have seen her stuff and I know how passionate and stoked she is about her work.  So I asked her to tell me her story of how she got into doing this and why.  I like it when people tell me their own story in their own words, that way I don’t screw it up by telling it in my own words.  Besides I always get off the track when I am telling a story.  So here is her story as she wrote it and sent it to me today.  It is too long for one column so it will be in two parts.  This week and next week.

“All my life I have looked for a reason to have to go to the beach – walk my dog, take a carload of kids for a surf, check out the sunset, or just sit and read a good book.  I was beginning to run out of good excuses when I discovered a new website where photographers like me can post their surf photos – eppicsurf.com.

I have been taking surf photos of my kids for many years.  My oldest daughter was on the Fountain Valley High School Surf Team for 4 years, competed in NSSA, USSF, Calvary Chapel Surfing Association, and she is currently on the CSULB Surf Team.  For years, she would tell me, “You always take the photo too early” (thus missing the ‘good stuff’ at the end of the ride) or “Don’t crop so much of the wave!”, when I would edit my shots.  She always admonished me, saying that “A good surf photo is about the wave, not about the surfer”.  And so, I have honed my skills as a surf photographer and can finally say I am pretty good at getting the timing right.  Getting the right camera has also helped.

Over the years, as I would wait patiently (or maybe not so patiently at times) for my own kids to catch a wave, I began to take photos of anyone else who DID catch a wave.  That led to the ultimate embarrassment for my kids – Mom yelling out from the HB pier to surfers in the water things like, “Hey, you on the green board – I just got a great shot of you on that last barrel.  Give me your email address and I’ll send it to you!”  And so, for years, I have given away some pretty nice surf shots to total strangers.  This has not always been a waste of time.  I have met some very nice people on the pier, on international vacations, in the water, and I have kept my Dermatologist in business. I’ve been given concert tickets by one surfer who happens to be in a band and I’ve ‘made the day’ of some nice girlfriends who were watching their boyfriends surf and trying to get a perfect shot with their disposable cameras.  I am going to go on record right now to tell all of you to forget about taking a “good” surf shot with a disposable camera or one with a small zoom.  It just isn’t going to happen, unless you intend to use a magnifying glass to identify your surfer loved one once you look at the photos.

I have been on both sides of the surf photography situation.  I’ve been the parent on the beach with the lousy camera, just dying to get “one good shot” of my kid pursuing her dream and passion of surfing.  All I wanted was just one nice surf photo that we could put on the wall for all to see.  Luckily, there was a generous parent on the Surf Team who had the right camera and he was kind enough to take shots of all the kids and give us prints.  Those became our first really good surf shots for the home gallery.  How I would have loved it if someone on the beach would have randomly taken good shots of my daughter surfing and then told us how we could look at them and order prints online.”

Stay tuned for the second have of Diane’s story right here, same time and same place, next week.