“…Wanna see our pictures on the cover
Wanna buy five copies for our mothers
Wanna see my smilin face
On the cover of the Rollin Stone”
People of a certain, um, age will remember the song from the early ’70s by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.
Well, I finally made it on a cover, 61 (ulp!) years later in the just-out copy of The Surfer’s Journal. I was wearing a shorty wetsuit from the Dive ‘N Surf shop in La Jolla (pre-O’Neill). You sent them your measurements and they sent you the cut-out pieces and a bottle of Black Magic glue and some tape. You’d glue together pieces, glue tape over seams. Early wetsuits didn’t have nylon lining so you’d rub cornstarch on your body so as to be able to slip the suit on. Underneath it I was wearing on old-fashioned wool bathing suit. A 9′ Velzy balsa wood board (this was just before foam.)
This was about a 6-8′ drop to the water (at Steamer Lane), there was a ledge, and we did this when the tide was right in order to stay dry. We’d wait for a wave to hit the cliff, then jump as the backwash flowed outward.
Before wetsuits there wasn’t much of a crowd problem. I remember a foggy morning, 6-8’ at the Lane, 4 of us out. Ah, me.
