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OAK ISLAND , NC
The first occurrence of the month was when I got my driver�s license and could now legally drive a car. What a marvelous feeling of freedom and independence that event produced. I had been rather accustomed to coming and going as much as I wanted to anyway, but there is just something very special about being able to use your own car to come and to go with. I�m sure that millions of other sixteen year olds all have felt that same feeling upon getting there license for the first time, but, this was my time, and my turn to relish in this experience.
Although I could now go places legally in a car, there was no room for me to carry my surfboard in my grandmother�s Pontiac Bonneville. Even if there had been enough room, she would not have allowed me to carry that thing around in her new car, especially with sand and salt water dripping and dropping all over the place. So, her car was used for personal transportation only and I had to continue to use either my Grandfather�s station wagon or the top of Bobby�s Corvair to get my board to where it needed to go.
Even without my surfboard I really enjoyed driving around in a new Bonneville with the radio tuned to the �Big Ape�, WAPE, in Jacksonville Florida, playing songs like �Tossin and Turnin�, �Put a Little Love in Your Heart� and �Surfin USA�. Of course all of these songs sounded much better with the radio volume turned up to about ninety-five percent of its capacity. Also a strange law of physics became very apparent to me, and that law is that the forward velocity of a motor vehicle is a direct function of the volume intensity of the radio.
One Friday afternoon, after exiting the Barbee Boulevard horseshoe, heading north on Barbee at a rather swift rate of speed, I heard a horn blowing behind me and saw headlights blinking in my mirror. It was Herman Sellers, the local cop, wanting me to pull over. I made a right turn at the Barbee Boulevard-Live Oak Street intersection and stopped the car. Mr. Sellers approached the car, and although he knew me, he said that he had to see my driver�s license anyway. After looking at my license, the next words out of his mouth were, �She�ll run won�t she?�. There were no posted speed limits and Mr. Sellers just told me to keep it under forty-five, drive safely, and to have a good day.
To me he had always been a very nice man, but from then on he seemed a great deal nicer since I must have been driving around seventy miles per hour when he stopped me.
The other big event occurred on the last day of May 1964, on a Saturday. My Grandfather had found and had bought for me my own car. It was a 1956 Chevrolet �Woodie� station wagon in almost new condition. It was light green with dark green panels on the sides. It was the perfect match for my dark green surfboard. I had seen pictures in some of the surfing magazines of guys out in California driving them around with their boards in back or on top but I never thought that I would ever find myself in possession of one. When I came home and saw that thing in the driveway for the first time, I almost dropped my eyeballs in the sand. I just couldn�t believe it!
The green �woodie� and green surfboard really presented the surfer image. It was not only a magnet to the girls, but it was also the center of envy from my fellow surfers. In fact, I was so �cool� that I amazed myself.
The �woodie� became part of my anatomy. We were virtually inseparable. I wanted to make the wagon a little bit more like home, so I developed an idea. I fixed up the back of the wagon with curtains, quilts, sleeping bag, and some other comforts including a slight modification of the spare tire well in the back floor. I removed the spare tire and had it mounted on the front side of the car. I then lined the spare tire well in the back, including the bottom of the access door with foam insulation and then removed the drain plug, which was in the bottom of the well. After filling the tire well about half full of crushed ice, it became the perfect place to keep food, soft drinks and beer, very cold and accessible. I also bought two, twelve-volt Eveready lanterns to use for light at night. I became very self-sufficient in the �woodie� and it was also an excellent place to entertain ladies from time to time.
We used the �woodie� to travel to many other beaches to surf, or just to visit with the locals. Different beaches have different types of surf. This is largely dependent on the wind and weather conditions that are prevalent on any given day.
In the mid sixties, there was no cable TV or weather channel, nor did we have the information that Doppler radar and computers could generate. We had to rely on simple weather reports and reading the signs of the sky and nature to determine what the weather conditions would be for the next day.
We were very familiar with the geography and sea bottom contours for many miles, up and down the coast. If we calculated that the next morning would bring an east, south or southeast swell, we would leave the night before and go to a beach were we could get the maximum benefit from the surf conditions. These decisions were based on a number of factors including whether the beach faced east, or south, and whether the bottom contour was flat, sloping, or an off shore sandbar break.
We would get to the beach of choice, party with the locals, sleep in the �woodie�, get up in the morning to the sounds of breaking surf, and then surf like hell all day until the surf became flat or blown out by the evening sea breeze.
This activity was repeated too many times to begin to count over the next several years, even throughout the winter season, when the surf was up.