Christmas Break 67- 68…

During that Christmas break, we got to go to the beach only once. There was a true Florida cold snap and my Brother thought there would be waves. We showed up at the Canaveral Jetty Park and there were ice puddles in the parking lot, Wow!

First, I need to back track to that Christmas morning and why we got the “Duke Kahanamoku” model surfboard…

After my Mother and Grandmother arrived in Hawaii from Samoa, the summer of 1927, they lived on the Kailua side of Oahu. By the time my Mom was 15 she was hanging out at Waikiki and tandem surfing with the beach boy’s. Of course everyone knew Duke, but my Mom was taken under the wing by his younger Brother Sam. Not able to carry the big Waikiki redwood planks herself, she would catch rides on the Boy’s boards surfing tandem. Sometimes she rode along with the tourists in the Boy's outrigger canoes. That’s why it wasn’t that hard to convince our parents to get us a board.

Now back to that cold January morning at Canaveral jetties.

We got out of the car and the cold North wind blasted us. My Brother had an old beavertail wetsuit top and put it on, the waves were only about waist high, but with the jetty blocking the wind, the waves were pretty clean. He lasted almost an hour before he came in freezing and handed me the ice cold top. Being five years younger and a lot smaller, the top swallowed me up. I walked to the water on numb feet and with my Brother shouting “Go for it you…” I jumped in the water and tried to paddle out. There were maybe ten other surfers out and I really wanted to be one of them. The wetsuit top being way to big for me didn’t let me paddle well enough, really it was more of a water anchor.

The small inside white water kept pushing me back and my Brother kept shouting words of encouragement, not! Now my Brother, who all his friends had started to call BG, was both my best supporter and my worst critic (as most older brothers are). I’d been trying to get to the outside for like… Forever ( BG said it was like ten minutes max) and I finally took the white water back to the beach. I was so cold I dropped the board in the sand and headed back to the car on frozen feet, with each step feeling like I was stepping on needles. BG started the car and turned the heater on high, I sat shivering with my teeth chattering so hard I thought they’d break and fall out of my mouth. After about ten minutes he said “get changed and go get the board you…” I got out and still shivering, picked up the cold heavy board and half carried it and dragged it back to the car. At least he was nice enough to put it up on the racks and strap it down. His words of “encouragement” never stopped until we were almost home.