Gremmies, Hodads, and Woodies

Posted May 22, 2008

It was a warm day like this some years back that a song first stopped me cold. Walking home from sixth grade, I shared a transistor radio with a friend. When our song came on, which in the spring of 1963 was often, we stopped, put down our books, and sang to the avocado trees at the top of our lungs.

If everybody had an ocean
Across the U.S.A.
Then everybody’d be surfin’
Like Californi-a

A song about surfing – the sport we lived and (especially) dreamed! In the early sixties, Southern California went surfer crazy. It was not just music — it was walk, talk, dress, and mindset. Those of us too young to own boards or drive stuck to "body womping" at Huntington and Corona or, if we were especially reckless, "pile driving" Newport’s fearsome wave known as The Wedge.

We worshiped the bronzed surfers who were a few years older and a lot better than we were. My next door neighbor Bobby
Weinman was radiant the night he found himself immortalized in Surfer magazine. We stared for hours at the photo of him dropping straight off a translucent green twelve footer at Laguna.

You’d see ‘em wearing their baggies
Huarachi sandals too

A bushy bushy blonde hairdo
Surfin’ U.S.A.

You’d catch ‘em surfin’ at Del Mar
Ventura County line
Santa Cruz and Trestles
Australia’s Narrabeen (How did a beach near Sydney end up in Surfin’ USA? Doesn’t even rhyme.)

All over Manhattan (Beach, you Hodad)
And down Doheny Way
Everybody’s gone surfin’
Surfin’ U.S.A.

The song became our anthem. I got my own radio so that I could wait
for 93 KHJ to play it. We would scream the names of (mostly) local
beaches as definitive evidence of Californian superiority over British
invaders. Could Dave Clark hang ten? Could you even imagine Gerry and
the Pacemakers in a woody? And don’t make me laugh about that other
Brian Epstein import from Liverpool that called themselves, of all
things, the Beatles.

Haggerties and Swamies (Torrance and Encinitas, respectively)
Pacific Palisades
San Onofre and Sunset
Redondo Beach, L.A.
All over La Jolla
At Waimea Bay (Not California, but surfing’s then Mecca had to be in the song)
Everybody’s gone surfin’
Surfin’ USA

We
didn’t realize that the lyrics were written by three brothers from nearby Hawthorne who were not
yet old enough to buy beer. Nor did we know or much care that they had ripped off of rock legend
Chuck Berry (the Beach Boys not only copied the melody of Sweet Sixteen but
youngest brother Carl Wilson had just turned sweet sixteen himself when
he helped sing it). Mr. Berry noticed the theft and arranged to
receive not only last minute album credit, but all royalties on the hit song to this day.

None of that mattered at a time when music and surfing ruled our imaginations. Eventually the Beach Boys descended into drugs, lawsuits and illness, someone shot our president, and a car accident left Bobby Weinman quadriplegic.

But spring and music, like surf, still come in unstoppable waves. Today a young kid with an iPod at Lake Merritt was in
thrall to the first song to rock his soul.

We busted out of class
Had to get away from those fools
We learned more from a three minute record baby than we ever learned in school
Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound
I can feel my heart begin to pound
You say you’re tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down