GROWING UP ORANGE COUNTY CONTINUED

By Corky Carroll

Some time ago I started a little series of columns about growing up in Orange County and invited you, the amazing wise and literature gifted readers of me, to send your stories about growing up in this Orangish wonderland.  I call it “Growing up Orange County.” 

Well, for one reason or another, I have left that little series sort of sit there while I wrote about many other things.  The Hobie years alone took up about eighty-seven years.  But at semi-long last I am going to get back to running some of your interesting adventures and I will try and get one in at some sort of regular interval which is yet to be determined due to the fact that I am one of the dudes who doesn’t do well with keeping to exact schedules.  Ask my editor. 

This week I am running an email that came from a dude named Don Smith.  This wasn’t actually a submission for the series; it was his suggestion at a great column idea.  But he wrote it so perfectly himself that I am going with his version and then am going to add my comments at the bottom.   Here it is:

“I read your articles each week and love to reminisce about the "old days" of surfing along the Southern California Coastline.

I thought it might be interesting to feature an article on some of the eating hangouts during those days of halcyon.

To mind, the first place I think of, and it makes my mouth water just to think of it, is La Paz in Laguna Beach.  I recall that you could go to their backdoor after a hard day of surfing and buy a bean or rice plate for 35 cents.  If you wanted to splurge with an extra 5 cents you could get a combination of both with cheese melted over the top and some tortilla chips on the side.

Another spot that was a favorite of my friend and I was Mac's Coffee Break in Dana Point.  After spending the night back in the sagebrush of Dana Pt, and fighting off the ants that invaded the car because the door was open and touching a bush, we would go in and meet Mac's friendly wife who would kindly take our order for fried eggs, bacon, etc.  Mac himself would walk by us at the counter and say hello, and with some difficulty, pick up a tray of dishes to be washed.  He had a lame arm and limped, probably from a stroke.
Anyway, I'm sure you have your favorites and so do your readers who would probably like to salivate over memories of those great eating places.”

I remember those two spots very well.  There was nothing like one of those La Paz backdoor plates after a long day surfing at “Trestles.”  Mark Martinson and I would usually be stuffed in the trunk of somebody’s car holding onto the boards.  Usually Steve Pezman’s car.  And he would stop and we would scarf one down sitting on the bench above Brooks Street in Laguna Beach.

And then there was the infamous “Mac’s Coffee Break” on Pacific Coast Highway in Dana Point.  Mac’s was THE local breakfast hangout for all the locals in town during the sixties.  And I don’t mean just surfing locals either.  It was where the dudes who worked at the Post Office and the Gas Station and the Real Estate office and everywhere else used to hang out.  Actually, thinking back on this, I don’t think any of us had a choice.  Mac was the only show in town for breakfast.  But Mac was a cool dude and his wife Ellie was fantastic.  When kids came in and ordered a hot chocolate he used to love to call out to the kitchen…”one hot chocolate….loaded with whip cream” in a loud and proud voice.   Mac and Ellie actually lived in the back of the restaurant.  Or maybe the restaurant was in the back of their house.  

My favorite Mac’s memory was when they were thinking about putting the harbor into Dana Cove.  All the surfers were totally against it, for obvious reasons, and everyone else in town was totally for it.  The property values were going to skyrocket.  There was many a spirited debate during the breakfast hours during those months.  The most exciting being the morning that this surf and fisherman dude named Spanky threw a ham and cheese omelet at this one dude who worked in the Post Office and a small yet energetic food fight ensued. 

Got any great O.C. memories?  Send ‘em in.  I might use one.  Or I might not…. but you will have fun writing it anyway.     

RICHARD CHEW HANGS UP THE CAN ~ THE WAVE

by Corky Carroll

In the 1960’s one of the top surfers in the world came from Seal Beach.  His name is Richard Chew.  Rich won a number of surfing contests here in California and was the United States Surfing Association number one rated dude one year. 

Against my better judgment as a professional columnist I actually attempted a bit of research to find out what year it was, as I can’t remember myself.  I know it was early-mid 60’s sometime.  I went to Goggle and typed in Richard Chew.  What I got was that there are a number of guys with the same name that are famous.  One movie dude in particular.  There were like 457 pages of websites about this guy.

That was not working so I typed in Richard Chew the surfer.  What I got was an ad on EBay for an old Harbour Surfboards sticker that is selling for more that you could buy the whole board for back in those days.

So, being the extremely tenacious dude that I am, I gave up.  But suffice it to say that Rich was the number one rated surfer in the United States one year.  He also was selected as one of the top 24 surfers in the world and invited to surf in the annual and prestigious Duke Kahanamoku Invitational at Sunset Beach on the North Shore of Hawaii.  This was a major honor.

The very first advertisement that I ever appeared in was a tiny one-sixth page ad for Harbour Surfboards in 1962.  It had a photo of me on one side and one of Rich on the other.  He was tearing up the men’s division at the time and I had just won my first contest as a junior in San Clemente.

We both went to Huntington Beach High School together.  He was a senior when I was a freshman.  Robert August was student body president that year.  He and Rich were like the “cool dudes” on campus.  They both were good looking guys and wore cords and Madras shirts and blue tennis shoes and had all the hot looking babes.  Excellent role models. 

Rich went on to become a career lifeguard.  He was with the City of Seal Beach for eleven years before transferring to San Clemente for the next thirty-two years.  On Thursday October 26th Rich finally hung up the lifesaving can and retired from the department. 

Now let me point out that this is good news and bad news of sorts.  It is fantastic news for Rich.  Now he can go surfing all day everyday and not have to worry about some five hundred pound office worker from Pasadena yelling for help.  I am happy for him.  But for the rest of us who are out surfing and hope to catch a wave or two during our sessions it is not good news at all.

Trust me, you do not want to surf at the same time as Rich does.  At least not at the same spot. Even at sixty what ever he is, this guy catches more waves per session than anybody known to man, woman or beast.  If there are three waves in a set Rich somehow will catch at least two of them.  You can have been sitting there waiting for a wave for three hours and have one come right too you and he will figure out a way to snake you out of it.  He is amazing at that.  Probably the most wave hungry surfer that I have ever surfed with.   This is not a put down of Rich, more of a testimony to the shape that he is still in and his desire to surf. But I can tell you for a fact that when I see him paddle out I start thinking that I am gonna catch one more and go in.  But I can’t get that one more because he snakes me out of every single one that comes by for like three hours.  Then HE goes in.  Blows my mind.   

Anyway, congratulations to making retirement to a fantastic surfer, lifeguard and good pal since we were both in grammar school in Seal Beach together.