Present times: July 2011. Our 35th contest has just concluded successfully. Decent waves on Saturday, diminishing to mushy trough mush balls on Sunday. But skimboarding is all about making do with what you have. The week before that my family had just taken the trip of a lifetime, a trite phrase, but nothing could be more true, down the Colorado River on an 8 day motor raft trip. About 10 days before that trip my mom had passed away after 8 years of struggling against gravity and time. Add to this 4 years of the biggest depression I have ever experienced caused by yet another economic bubble collapse. Through this we have persevered, with countless cutbacks in personnel, done slowly so as to exhaust our financial resources in the process. And we have been proactive, launching a whole series of cost saving processes, such as recycling our scrap foam into usable blanks. This year again has seen a another large drop in our sales as our competitors have cut into our market.
But! I veer again, and again.
Laguna Beach, what does it stand It is just one of the coolest places on this planet. California! Land of the beaches, mountains and the population bomb. Laguna, one of the only places near this place I call Rome (Los Angeles), that has managed to preserve it’s small town charm and relative isolation. Bohemian then, Laguna Hills now. Isolated then, surrounded by 7 cities, each 2 times bigger than Laguna now. 24,000 in Laguna changes to 175,000 just over the hill in a short 30 years. Thank Jim Dilly the Laguna bookstore owner who had the vision of the greenbelt around Laguna or we would be swamped with tract homes at our border.
History Timeline: From Tyler Palmer 30 year Anniversary Book of Victoria Skimboards History.
1818 Captain Hippolyte Borchard, a French pirate, puts ashore in Southern California to search for fresh produce. While ashore, his crew reputedly buries part of their booty of bold in the area known as ‘Laguna’ The forty acre plot at that location will eventually be known as Treasure Island.
1871 November. Five years after the end of the U.S. Civil War, local pioneer and historian George Thurston arrives in Aliso Canyon from Utah. The great Chicago fire also took place in 1871.
1920 the Laguna Playhouse was founded.
1925 Mariner’s Stationers founded. Laguna now has a student enrollment of 150.
1932 Olympics in Los Angeles My dad was ten years old. Duke Kahanamoku has just competed in his swimming event and the stands were still packed. People from all over the country were in the stands. Shortly after disappearing into the locker room, Duke reappeared carrying a surfboard under his arm and tossed it into the pool and paddled around. The entire stadium sucked in a big breath. Wow! That was a moment. My dad was hooked. Not long afterward, boards were being built and ancient cars were making the multi hour trip from Altadena to San Onofre.
My dad is one of two children born to Dr. and Dr. Haines Sr. His mom is one of the first women to earn a medical degree, and his father is a general surgeon, family doctor in Altadena, a suburb of Los Angeles, right up against the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains. Aside from surfing, which he pursues avidly, he is a big guy, and plays football for Pasadena City College, before being accepted to Stanford University, where he continues to play football and study to become a doctor. His family is descended from the Pennsylvania Dutch who settled in Pennsylvania.
AUGUST 13, 1932 The first Festival of the Arts is offered by artist John Hinchman on El Paseo St. the following year, an admission fee of ten cents is charged and tableaux vivants produced by Roy Ropp are included, giving birth to the Pageant of the Masters. The first tableau, ‘Mona Lisa,’ appears for three years. The following year, an admission fee of ten cents is charged and tableaux vivants produced by Roy Ropp are included, giving birth to the Pageant of the Masters. The first tableau, ‘Mona Lisa’, appears for three years running.
January 21, 1933 The battleship U.S.S. Colorado anchors off Laguna Beach for liberty call. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. attend the ribbon cutting when Coast Highway opens from Newport to a Laguna. Later in 1933, Lloyd Accord opens Accords Market at 144 at Forest Ave. This address later becomes a location for Mariner’s Bookstore.
December 10, 1941 Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. My mom is a student at Punahou High School. She has been out late at night, sliding on tealeaves down the slopes of the steep valleys behind Honolulu. Freaking scary in the dark if you ask me. It is the rainy season, so they are covered in mud. They slide into a friend’s car to drive down to Waikiki to rinse off in the ocean. They get to bed late. Early the next morning she is awakened by the ground shaking and smoke billowing up over the ridge between their house and Pearl Harbor.
They are under attack; a full-scale land invasion could begin any moment. A new phase in the war has begun and the greatest generation, which has had to deal with the greatest depression, is now headed for a whole new round of trials. One day she is a carefree kid, barefoot, in high school in Hawaii. The next, day she is terrorized with fears of imminent invasion and plans are being laid to repulse the Japanese and evacuate the women and children.
Meanwhile in Laguna, the bombing of Pearl Harbor brings widespread fear of invasion, the internment of Japanese farming families from Emerald Bay, and a blackout that will last four years.
1953 This year In Laguna, the present Laguna Beach City Hall building is opened.
1953 Grand Oaks, Altadena I have slim memories of my beginnings. No memory of anything Texas where I was born.
1956 Age four; I can remember a baby bird in our driveway on Grand Oaks, Altadena, California. I can remember the closed window I jumped thru, right after my mom said to quit jumping on the bed. I can remember the layout of the back yard, the space between the house and the garage with about 15 feet or more of fence that our dogs could somehow climb over. (My sister Jody just laughed out loud. She reminds me that I was 3 feet all at the time and the fence was only about 8 feet tall) I remember the winding sidewalk outside where my neighbor Dave Keene busted an arm crashing his Flexi Flyer. Now there is an early influence. More about him later. I can remember, since I have driven by occasionally, the layout of the street and the neighbor’s pool. Not much.
Just bits. We were driving to San Onofre from this house, and hour and a half away. Surfing all day, eating great food, napping, and driving all the way back, with maybe a burger stop on the long stop and go stretch from the 5 up to Altadena. Before the 710 and the 210 and a couple other LA freeways.
1959 – 1960 Age 8
I can vaguely recall meeting fellow surfing families on the side of the freeway/highway near what is now Irvine. Not a housing tract in site. Orange groves perfumed the air. We trade some gear for the drive into San Onofre, thru the military gate at Basilone Road, driving inland a bit and then doubling back thru a bunch of old houses, under the freeway, and train track, up the bluff and behind the Recreation Hall for the Marines and back down the dirt road to San O. Remind me to tell you about the San O Olympics. Doctors, lawyers, and construction guys, movie stars, and surf legends shared a slow rolling, non-serious surfers only point break that has hardly changed at all in the last 40 years.
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