I aint no hodad man

 I aint no hodad... man

    A very pleasant part of my tween years was the Summer family rentals at Surfside Beach Colony in a small cottage on the B row. Surfside was created in 1929 as a resort and incorporated as part of Seal Beach in 1930. Originally, the colony was to exist on both sides of Pacific Coast Highway but that never happened. In WW II there was an ammo depot built across the highway and this altered the coastline there and caused erosion problems that existed into the1980's. The mother city Seal Beach has a colorful history back to when it was called Bay City and was infamous for gambling, carrousing and illegal boozing. The Big Red Pacific Electric Streeetcars could get you there from LA in 45 minutes or so they said.  In 1962 however, Surfside was a wonderful place with two rows of cottages that were cozy and just like part of the Pacific Ocean that was a few hundred yards away, protected somewhat by a sort of breakwater that failed in 1953 and 1965. It was the permanent home of family favorites Gordon and Winnie Shaw who turned BC on to possible rentals.  Even today there is only 250 homes in the colony and back then it was probably 100 at most. My Dad rented a sweet bungalow two years in a row and even though I had to leave my pals in the Gate to live on the beach it was divine to fall asleep hearing the waves lapping the shore and awaken to the calls of seagulls flying over the shoreline. Living near the ocean is exhilarating with the water offering all manner of fun activities. We used to float on inner-tubes, go body-surfing in the early mornings, watch sailboats and walk over to the docks across PCH to see fish fresh from the Pacific including sharks and mantarays. There was a post office and tiny store behind the gate with no more than a couple of  hundred residents. After enjoying our little beachfront pad thoroughly BC offered the owners $10 grand for it but another bastard offered 11 which they took without giving him an ability to counter-offer. Boy was he sore when he heard that news.

     This was right in the heart of the surfing craze and while I often body-whomped, rode belly boards and balanced on skimboards I never surfed nor owned a surf board. There was a world famous surfer who lived in the colony named Corky Carroll but he seemed older than I was and I never did more that look at him with envy.  He was actually named the greatest surfer in the world by his peers just a few years later. Surfers were cool guys with their own sense of style and at Pius surf was king. This meant purcell sneakers, Pendleton wool shirts, white levis, cut-off levis, thongs (flip flops) blond hair with bangs hanging down on your forehead and tans. So, I am living the life many boys yearned for living right on the sand where you could get into the ocean in a minute and friends turned up to visit even if there were not real friends. One afternoon, after I had a deep tan and my butch haircut was actually blond a few South Gate punks showed up to see their good pal Glen. Jack was one and Billy was another but there was also Rich Becker and a prick named Bobby Boswell. Boswell was a white trash no-goodnik who lived in a shabby apartment in Lynwood but he was aboard the surfer train and lot of kids were just searching for ways to get their boards down the ocean. So, these masters of the waves showed up and Jack got them through the gate and they found our place. I wandered out to a spot on the sand where boy talk and bravado was abundant. Becker was a bully but nothing compared to the miscreant Boswell who seemed to be jealous of my privileged place at the beach. He demanded to know what kind of board I had which was part of a heirarchy of surf cool. A Dewey Weber, Greg Noll, Hobie or Ole would be bitchen but many kids just had rejects or hand-me-downs like Billy's wood longboard "Honeybee"  I responded earnstly that I did not own a surfboard and Boswall, the bully asshole called me, his host, a HODAD! A Hodad was a fake surfer, a poser of the lowest order and the term was a severe insult. However, Boswell was bigger, stronger, dumber and meaner than me so I just wandered away with my feelings devastated. I believe they left a little bit later talking trash about the lousy waves at Surfside.Then again, a few weeks later when I began my first days as a sophomore at Pius I was the smallest kid in school but had the best tan. 

                    house on far right with shingles on front was "our" house