1974: Edison High School Freshman

The summer between middle school and high school was a blast. My mother worked a 9 to 5 job so she was gone all day and both my brother and I were professional Latch-key kids. As long as we did our chores and were home when she got home, we could fly under her radar. Basically, I was free to do any thing I wanted as long as I kept the house clean and cooked dinner. I could do both in an hour.

Ethel and I spent all summer getting stoned, going for bike rides, and hanging out at the beach surfing. I got excited when my skin tanned dark and my long blond hair bleached out. Ethel is Italian. She got very tan too but, her hair was long, brown, and really curly. In the summer her hair was all over the place. She wore a bandana as a hat all the time. My brother had passed my surfing skills long ago and was trying hard to ignore me all summer. At that time I was ok with that, but Ethel was in love with him. She wanted to hang out with him all the time. I wanted to hang out with the local guys at our local surf spot. It's the only thing we fought about.

Me with my first surfboard. My brother is holding the yellow board.

My surfing was getting a little better. I was stronger and I could hold my breath longer (in spite of all the pot smoking). In the line-up I practiced Duck Diving while waiting for a wave. I became a champ at it and cut my paddle-out time in half! This skill also allowed me to go out on bigger days, but that was a double-edged sword. At this point there was no way in hell I was going to take off on a wave over 6 feet. I was still purling. My brother called me a kook because when the big south swells hit, Ethel and I would smoke weed and go for a bike ride instead of surf, while he smoked weed and surfed.

Starting Edison High School was exciting for Ethel and me. We had every class together and we had fun in all them. We had our Newland St. local group of surfers that we hung out with at lunch, and, it was the first time in a long time my brother and I were in the same school. Even though I would be 15 in January of 1975, my brother would be 16 in September '74, he was a Junior when I entered as a Freshman.
Edison High School was over crowded so the Freshmen and Sophomores had to split shifts with the Juniors and Seniors. This amounted to me starting school at 12 noon, and ending classed at 5pm. My brother started classes at 7:30am and got out at 12:30. In the beginning it was great. Ethel would come over and we'd go surfing before school. But when the waves were blown out we'd just sit around getting stoned while waiting to go to school. I had started gaining weight until my brother nipped that one in the bud...
"You're getting fat." he said to me one day. I had gained ten weed-smoking puberty pounds.
"If you get fat you can't hang out with me nor my friends...EVER!" He teased. I took it seriously. I pulled out my Seventeen magazines and put together a workout from the articles. Every night before bed I'd do leg lifts, sit-ups, and tons of push-ups. I slept like a dream and my body shaped right up. I became strong and agile. I was already a fast.

Ethel and I tried out for softball and made it. Now we were able to change our classes so we could go to school with the Juniors and Seniors and have off a good part of the day before practices to go to the beach. Half way through the season however, we had a game against Fountain Vally High and the waves were a clean 4 foot. Ethel and I didn't make the game. We were promptly off the team too. Now Ethel and I were free everyday after 12 (we took our lunch period from 12-12:30). We started hanging out more and more with my brother and his friends. After all, I had grown to be 5'6" and had gotten myself into shape. When he and his friends went on surf trips they'd ask me to go. "Bring your sister," he heard all the time. Gracefully he let me in and we became best friends. Ethel was elated. Our local Newland St. crew was ditching school and hanging out too. We were all on the Edison High School surf team with Mr. Rothrock. Personally, I was still having problems riding down the line with any form or grace, but at least at this point I could ride. I never won anything.

The second semester of my first year in high school they offered surfing as a PE class. We all took it. The teacher was a Kneeboarder. (There were a lot of them around in the 70s.) One day a big 8 foot north swell rolled in and I purposely left my board at home.
"Where's your board?" the teacher asked when I pull up on my bike without a board under my arms.
"Its got dings that need fixing." I lied.
"Unexceptable. Ride my board." he told me.
"But it's a Kneeboard." I protested.
"Ethel, after you surf for thirty minutes give her your wetsuit." he ordered. Then he turned to me he said, "and you can use my board. Stand up on it if you want." then he walked away to play volleyball. Ethel and I just looked at each other. Neither one of us wanted to paddle out.
My brother chimed in, "Don't be a pussy. If you don't paddle out my friends and I will never take you on another surf trip....Wimp." and he paddled out. I believed him.
Ethel had gotten pretty good for a girl and was handling the big waves like a boy. After awhile she came in and ripped off her wetsuit and handed it to me. The thing was wet, sandy, and COLD! I put the freezing rubber on, grabbed the 5' 6" Kneeboard, and headed out.
The first thing I noticed was how easy it was to Duck Dive. The second thing was how easy it was to snap up onto my knees and handle a late take-off. But what changed my life forever was when I discovered how easy it was to tuck into a tube on my knees. Now I had to learn how to make it out.

That day Ethel and I ditched school and we rode our bikes to Main St. I traded my Infinity surfboard in for a used 5'2" yellow Sea-n-Ski single fin Kneeboard. The guy threw in the Duck Feet flippers, two bars of wax, and a leash. I gave him some weed. The next day I showed up for PE with my new board. The teacher was not surprised. From that day on I could hang with the boys in any kind of surf.  

By the end of my Freshman year I was ditching school at least two days a week even though I was passing my classes. I was surfing almost every day and I was smoking weed morning, noon, and night. At parties, I wasn't a big drinker because it always made me puke, so, I did other drugs like Cocaine to get high with the group. The year ended with me going to my first Prom with a guy in my Home Economics class that had a big crush on me. I didn't know him very well and I knew his friends even less. My date's friends teased me all night because I was only a Freshman. One girl really gave me a hard time so I wrote 'Bitch' across her car's windshield and colored in her side mirrors with Sex Wax. She was a cheerleader.

My freshman year was also the year Mother lost tract of both my brother and I. He had a car and we were never home. She never knew of anything we did. The strange thing was, she didn't seam to care.