Ocean Surfing

by Joe Linker

I went outside to grab this morning’s paper and the air smelled and felt like the ocean, warm but a bit wet, a “marine layer,” the weather folks call it, and I was reminded of early June mornings in the South Bay, getting up to “go surfing,” and thought I’d pull some old photos together.

We’d sometimes go down to the Redondo Beach pier, a horseshoe shaped pier. The waves were never very good there, but the view from the back of the waves gives a different perspective on the surfers, here one paddling out, the other dropping down.

Also at the Redondo, horseshoe shaped pier, this photo was taken looking south from the north end of the horseshoe.

The last two photos above were both taken looking south from the Manhattan Beach pier.

We peeled the fiberglass off of our longboards, reshaped them into short boards, and re-glassed them in my Dad’s garage on Mariposa.

This is me at El Porto in September of 1969, (riding the board seen on the floor of the garage in above photo, an old Jacobs), the month before reporting for Basic Combat Training at Fort Bliss, in El Paso. Surfing is bliss.

Piece originally published at The Coming of the Toads |