1960: My thirteen-year-old self starting Junior High and a new decade |
Mom and sister in front of the Santa Monica Canyon house, 1962
| Graduated from Revere Junior High and on to Palisades High. Before surfing and skating took up all my time, I was on the track team as a short-distance sprinter and high-jumper. I enjoyed the latter so much I set up a makeshift pit in the backyard to practice. This was pre-Fosbury Flop, and we did something that involved a kind of scissors-kick and somersault flip. 1964 |
| Surf-inspired skating was just starting in 1964 – we did noserides, cross-steps, kick-turns, and spinners on boards made in woodshop at school. Note the all-important blue tennies – PF Flyers, I believe – that all the surfer kids wore at the time, to be replaced by Jack Purcells a year or three later. |
| Similar concept, but in the water: Cheater five at Bay Street, Santa Monica, 1964 |
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| The above was on my new Harbour Banana model, the first board I ever had custom-shaped; had to save up a lot of landscaping and babysitting bucks, and totally worth it. Not coincidentally, the board that was stolen with my car this year – and returned yesterday, as I write this – is also a custom Harbour: five decades later they still make a magic board. Ad below from Surfer Magazine, 1964 |
| Feasting on Ritz crackers in preparation for a surf run up to Rincon in Steve Marx's VW bus with Bill Ziering, 1965; in front of family home on Esparta Way in Santa Monica canyon, where I lived from age 8 until moving in with future wife Carole (see below). Went to school at Canyon Elmentary, Paul Revere JHS, and Palisades High, all LA city schools |
| I'm definitely an ocean person and have been in snow maybe three times in my life. This is one of them: Park City, Utah, where mom had some friends, shortly after my dad died in 1963 |
The not-so-happy family, maybe a year later
Palisdes High School yearbook graduation picture, Summer 1965
1966: Cornering my '59 Morris Mini 850, Amalfi Dr., Pacific Palisades
| Polaroid that has miraculously survived from 1966, formal ball with first love and girlfriend, Jan Stangier, sister of my friend Jim, above. Jan is living with husband Steve Carey in Washington State now, and so is Jim |
| Graduated from Palisades High and went to UCLA. Jan and I went separate ways. Before settling on English as my major, I knocked around between majors, including studio art, French, music, and ethnomusicology. While pursuing the latter I played bamboo flute in an Indonesian Gamelan orchestra, That's me on the lower left, at an all-night shadow puppet performance at Marshall Field, UCLA: |
| I met Carole in that ensemble; she played the xylophone-type instrument in the foreground. Carole was a classical piano performance major and ethnomusicologist. We moved in together, in an apartment on the corner of Bundy and Wilshire. Below: sailing with Carole and her sister and my cousin Bert, Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles |
| Proof sheet of two impulsive kids: after an all-night Balinese shadow puppet performance. we woke up and decided to get married, Snapped a roll of pictures, called our friend Ross Altman to be a witness, went to the courthouse downtown and had a civil ceremony. My mom and her parents weren't pleased when we told them after the fact, but they warmed to the reality after a short time. |
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Happy with our official marriage docs
| The folks threw us a wedding reception, complete with old-school cake and a folk-dancing troupe. We weren't really into it, but it turned out to be a good time |
| We both graduated that year and I got a Teaching Assistantship at UCSB, so we moved to Santa Barbara while Carole figured out what/where she wanted to study. We rented a rustic cottage on Prospect Ave. I started taking postgrad classes in English toward a PhD while teaching classes in freshman composition. UCSB reg. card, fall 1969 |
Carole celebrating the SB move and cottage, 1969
| If you had a six-pack, might as well include it. Carole and I on a trip to Painted Cave in her red '66 Toyota Corona |
| No better way to conclude the decade than Carole with Smeeum giving you the stony black-cat hoodoo |
