Going surfing for the first time.

My surfing origin story is lost in the mists of time.

 When my father's Japan tour was over he had a choice for his next assignment. Become the of CID (Criminal Investigations Division) at Fort Benning, Georgia, or join his Army 'Chinaman', General Francis Kriedel, at the Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.

 Fort Benning to be close to my father's family in Georgia.

 Hawaii to be part of a traditional career path in the peacetime  regular Army.

 I remember pushing for Hawaii because Greg, my older brother and I 'wanted to learn how to surf'.

 But, why did we want to learn how to surf?

 We were living on a mile square Army Post in the middle of rural Japan. Only sumo wrestling on the one channel available from Japanese TV. Pre Gidgit.

 I have no idea why I wanted to learn how to surf.

 Eight years later we moved to Satellite Beach.

 Renting a newly built track house four blocks from the  ocean. Arriving just as school ended. Knowing no one. First days spent walking down to the  beach every day. Discovering the Coquina Coral reef. The tide pools that formed at low tide. The fish trapped in the pools. The birds whirling and diving, feeding on them.

 Crabs skittering along the water  line.

 Sandpipers dashing back and forth with the waves.

 Knowing  how much I wanted to learn to surf, my mom asked around and discovered that the Patrick Air  Force Base Boat Club (think  country club) had surfboards for rent. The Boat Club catered to active duty and retired military who owned boats, loved to fish, loved to waterski, loved to sail.

 We took sailing lessons on Hobie catamarans one summer.

 The Army Air Corps supposedly had ordered surfboards in the 1940s for young sailors, airmen, and soldiers stationed at Patrick for flight training and anti-submarine  patrols.

 One Saturday we drove to the boat house to see if that was true.

 In a far corner, laying on special built wooden racks, were ten or so classic (now worth thousands of dollars) 1940 era Hawaiian surfboards. Made out of balsa wood because this was light and buoyant. Shaped by Hawaiian artisans and shipped to Florida.

 We had no idea what surfboards were supposed to look like, but these were fifteen feet+ long.

 Narrow.

A single, small skeg (fin) at one end, and narrowing almost to a point at the other. Wide in the middle. Some hollow. Some solid.

 Each weighing 90+ pounds.

 We talked to the Special Services manager.

 No one ever rented them, but he had some rope and if we wanted to try, he'd help tie them to the roof of our family car.

 Family cars back then were the size of a CTA bus now.

 Greg wasn’t interested and went to the Officer's Club pool to meet girls.

 My mom helped me carry the long, heavy board to the ocean. It was glassy and 2-3’.

We walked the board out to where the waves were breaking.

 I laid down on the board and she pushed me into a wave. I slid off the slick surface of the  board. Again and again.

An Airman called to us from the beach. We went in.

He was from San Diego and was amazed at the board I was trying to ride. He talked about foam and fiberglass and ten foot 'pig' boards that only weighed thirty pounds.

He told us we needed to get some Gulf Wax at a grocery store. Break it in half and 'wax'  the surface of the board to make it sticky. That way you could lay on top to paddle and then be able to stand up without slipping when you caught a wave.

My mom drove over to the Base Commissary and brought back a bar of Gulf Wax.

We waxed the board.

I could lay on it without slipping off. 

But, to turn it around and point it toward the shore, I had to get off and manhandle it into place. 

Once ‘outside’ (outside of there the waves were breaking) she pushed and I paddled, and I the I felt, for the first time the amazing rush of speed from 'catching' a wave.

I stood up.

It wasn't really hard to stand up on such a big, wide, heavy board. It would be like standing up on the quarter deck of a frigate, but what did I know?

Greg came back and tried it.

He stood up, rode a wave to the beach, stepped off on to the sand, and went back to the pool.

I went surfing on one of the 15' Hawaiian  boards every chance I got that summer.  They were so heavy and cumbersome and long that you could only takeoff at an angle and ride that angle all the way in to the beach.

They had virtually no 'rocker' (curve from nose to tail) so they 'pearled' (the nose went under as the wave lifted the board on to the wave) frequently. When the board pearled, I learned to get away from it as its buoyancy meant that it would shoot back out of the water like a missile.

A ninety pound missile.

Some of boards, rented over the years by airmen who knew nothing of Gulf Wax, had sandpaper like mats glued to the top surface that would take the skin off your chests and knees and elbows when you surfed them.

One day two guys from California paddled out on modern surfboards.

9+ feet long. Plenty of rocker. A large skeg at the tail.

The board made out of white styrofoam covered with fiberglass. A redwood 'stringer' down the middle to add strength. The tail fin set in a wood and styrofoam block (I found out later the 'block' was purely for esthetics).

They were amazed at my 1940 board.

They had only seen boards like mine in photos. One asked if we could trade boards for a while?

Sure.

For me like trading a battleship for a Lamborghini.

I could barely stand up and keep my balance for ten seconds. Every shift of balance made the board turn or pearl or slip out of the wave.

It was a completely different experience. Exhilerating.

I started saving all my tips from bagging groceries at Winn-Dixie.

By my second summer of surfing, I had saved enough to buy a 9'6" James and O'Hara surfboard. Hand made in a garage in Cape Canaveral. Two guys from LA.

Paying extra for a redwood skeg block, and blue stripes  each side of the ¼” redwood stringer.

It was beautiful.

I built a surf rack for the family car. And, a storage space in the garage to hold the board as tenderly as a newborn.

The first night at home, Gary, Steve, and Raymond, as if alchemists turning lead into gold with process and incantations, melted two bars of Gulf Wax in a tin can.

When it liquified, painting it on the beautiful gleaming surface of my band new board.

Precise strokes. Exactly like Hobie instructed us to do in Surfer Magazine.

Then let it harden.

Did a second coat.

Woke up before dawn. No wind. Glassy conditions.

Gary, Steve, and Raymond were already waiting in the dark at the end of our driveway.

They were excited to try a real surfboard. They had been surfing the Boat Club Hawaiian boards for a month.

We dashed across A1A in the dark as hundreds of cars rushed toward the Cape to continue the race to the moon.

Walked barefoot in the dark, two of us carrying the new board.

Along the narrow path made by armadillos through the palmetto bushes.

The horizon glowing with hints of red, yellow, and orange.

We could hear waves breaking. The clapping, crunching sound of hollow, glassy waves.

Big waves.