Drifting by logjammer
Little Ditty about Jack and Diane. -Ed.
Wild As The Sea
In 1962 I turned 9 years old.
That year, Bruce Brown made the film, Surfing Hollow Days, and it was the year I saw my first SURFER magazine. My family was visiting relatives in Tampa during our summer vacation, and one of my cousins had picked up the magazine somewhere.
I remember seeing the magazine and somehow just sort of flipping out; surfing was just SO cool. Unfortunately, being a landlocked kid in an Air Force family in Oklahoma, it didn’t really do me much good at the time.
The next summer, my brother and I got turned on to something else.
The images of our 1963 TURN-ON exist in my mind as somewhat of a blur, consisting of The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, Surfer shirts, and (drum roll...) my first SKATEBOARD, which I got on August 26, 1963...my 10th birthday.
It was a magic vehicle: all wood, painted red on the deck, and it had shiny metal wheels. We had a nice driveway, and that was the first place I started working on the carve.
Two summers later I would ride my first wave, on a giant yellow paddleboard on Lake Huron.
My brother and I got so stoked when in 1967, my dad retired and we moved to Florida.
Years later, my mother would tell me that we came here for two reasons: to be near our relatives, and so that my brother and I could SURF.
We were really stoked. I remember in the summer of 1967 we went to this drive-in and saw The Endless Summer on the big screen. That was IT. Probably about a week later, I had my first board. It was a 9’6” blue Malibu, with a white competition stripe someone had added to the deck. My dad paid $50 for the board from a guy in Titusville. My brother had just secured a 9’6” Allen Total Performance...an awesome board that was very sleek with a huge black skeg.
In The Endless Summer there was one particular song that had a mystical effect upon my eager brain. In the film, they play it as Mike Hynson and Robert August are paddling out and surfing at Raglan on Christmas Day. The song is titled, Wild As The Sea.
Short 30 second audio clip, may not work on all computers
Being a mystical force in my life to this very day, it’s a bit of a challenge to translate the feeling of the ORIGINAL VERSION of this song into words, but I would like to try:
First of all there are no lyrics, which is how it is in 99.9% of all music by The Sandals. Secondly, it’s performed mainly in minor chords, which automatically gives it a mental quality that separates it from the sound of much “pop” surf music from the period. One of the instruments played in the song, as in the Theme to The Endless Summer, is a melodica, which adds an element to the song which is reminiscent of the music of sailors, who might produce similar sounds on harmoniums or concertinas.
But what really makes the song magic beyond all these musical elements is that this song quickly became the music I associated with the Dawn Patrol, which for us meant getting up before the sun and driving out to Playalinda in an old ‘64 Falcon station wagon, with all our boards piled in the back.
Here it is: the light of dawn, the smell of coffee, eggs, and bacon. Checking Florida Today newspaper for the surf report. Loading up the boards and driving east for 12 endless miles until we hit the little dirt road, full of potholes, heading north. We’d go up to a place that was near a tower, and we’d pull over and scurry like crabs over the dune to get that first glimpse. Ahh...waves! YAHOO...!
To this day, I still get a little quivery thing that happens
in the pit of my stomach when I do a Dawn Patrol. The
feeling is captured in Wild As The Sea, and
it happens vicariously every time I hear the song, regardless of the time
of day. If I play the song in the pre-dawn darkness as I prepare to head
to my favorite spot for DP, the feeling is there so strong that it’s
like the first day...the feeling is fresh...I’m 14 again...the smell
of wax transports me to a realm of mysterious anticipation, captured in
images of backlit waves breaking
over murky depths...and it’s a feeling of awe tinged with a fear
of the unknown.
The surfboard becomes a vehicle of unspeakable greatness, for it has the potential to connect you to feelings that are perhaps the most sublime in the world of athleticism...the feeling of what it means to be a surfer riding the wild frontier of the sea.
The stoke of surfing is forever, and Wild As The Sea contains the alchemist’s magic ingredient, defying the ravages of time.
~logjammer