"Some people have Alcoholics Anonymous, Starbucks, church, I was retreating, trying to get away from high school and boys and movies on Saturday night ... I had Malibu." - Kohner
History marks rare moments when people meet for the first time and find some energizing kinship that is intellectual, spiritual, or experiential; a kinship that alters their world and sometimes ours. Often the place of their meeting takes on the luster of the collaboration, too.
Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald met in Paris and compared notes on the style of the 20th century American novel; Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Alexander Woollcott met for lunch as often as possible at New York's Algonquin Hotel and re-invented journalism and criticism; J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis met at an Oxford pub and created between them Narnia and Middle Earth; Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg met in Greenwich Village and created the philosophy of the Beat Generation; John Lennon and Paul McCartney met at a church fair in Liverpool and...well, you know what happened with them.
Terry Tracy and Kathy Kohner never became as famous or influential as those listed above, they were not artists or writers or musicians or philosophers or Oxford dons. But, for a small portion of misfits in our culture, their meeting changed the manner in which society came to regard them. Likewise, the place of their meeting, Malibu Beach in Los Angeles County, thus gained a mythic status in fiction, film, and music.
That first meeting came about in 1956 when both were in need of something the other had. The fifteen-year-old Kohner wanted to borrow a surfboard as she did not have one of her own; Tracy was simply hungry. Tracy had a couple of balsa wood boards leaning against his driftwood and palm frond beach shack, Kohner had a couple of peanut butter-and-radish sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. The rest became a story only Hollywood could ruin.
As nicknames were important in the nascent surf culture, and in testimony to how important Tracy was to the Malibu scene, he became the bearer of two nicknames. As he had once worked at a nearby hot dog stand, and was known to be a show-off in the water and on the beach [in other words, a hotdog], he was called "Tubesteak" by the surfers his own age. However, because of the size and strength of his physical being and personality, he was generally known by the younger surfers as "The Big Kahuna."
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| The Malibu surf gang, with The Big Kahuna waving. |
Over time, Kohner was taught to surf, earned her own surfboard, and became the protected surrogate little sister of the tribe. As she was the only girl and, at 5' tall and 95 pounds, physically slight, the surfers began calling her "the girl midget". The Big Kahuna shortened it.
He called her "Gidget".
So, every day after school, Gidget would head down to Malibu Beach to surf with The Big Kahuna and the others. Each evening at dinner she would describe to her father the stories that she heard from the surfers and the adventures they would share in Paradise Cove. Given that Gidget's father was an author and screenwriter, it was natural that her stories would appear in print and, eventually, on film.
The novel, a mildly fictionalized account of Gidget's summer of 1956, would be published the next year and sell more copies than even Gidget's father, Frederick Kohner, could have hoped. So many that he spent the rest of his writing career producing sequels to the original and adapting screenplays for the inevitable series of movies. It became one of those perfect summer beach books, and exposed what was then the small, and still charming, world of southern California surfers.
The first film, Gidget, would star Sandra Dee as the titular character and, remarkably, Cliff Robertson as The Big Kahuna. [The character would be played by Martin Milner on the 1960's TV show, which starred Sally Field as the girl midget.] The Gidget novels would be written until Gidget Goes New York in 1968, and the films and television versions would continue through various actresses in the leading role until the cancellation of The New Gidget in 1988. Not bad for an off-hand novel designed to serve as an alternate source of income until Gidget's father received his next screenwriting assignment.
Kohner would step away from her fictional self, however, and would enjoy a life that was far more ordinary than what was presented in the novels, movies, and TV shows. In fact, she would marry an English professor who had never even heard of Gidget.
Kohner, now Kohner-Zuckerman, will appear, however, each year at a surfing event that benefits a cancer charity. In 2011, she was inducted into the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach, California and is listed as #7 in Surfer Magazine's "25 Most Influential People in Surfing".
But what of The Big Kahuna, Terry "Tubesteak" Tracy? Portrayed by an Oscar and Emmy-winning actor on screen and by yet another on television, and the dominant personality of Malibu Beach, one would have thought that his name and fame in greater culture would have been notable, too. In what is a Zen paradox, common in surfing, while Tracy is nowhere as well-known as Gidget, he was far more influential in what became the developing culture.
Tracy was a college drop-out and office drudge, working in a dreary insurance office in Los Angeles when, one day at lunch, he went out for a walk and never came back. He dumped his office suit, picked some stray beach gear and a couple of balsa wood surfboards [the preferred material in the days before fiberglass], and built a surf shack for himself in Malibu. While 21st century California is mostly known for its strangling list of civic regulations, Malibu of the 1950's was a gloriously free place where no one cared if some "beatnik" decided to live on the beach and spend his days doing nothing other than waiting for the waves to be right for surfing. Well, and accept handouts of food and beer.
Because of his singular commitment to not being committed, Tracy became an idol to the other surfers, including Miki Dora, the troubled personality who was regarded as the best surfer anyone had ever seen. While Tracy's technique was not as refined, the least critical would describe him as "decent", he brought to the experience something beyond style or athleticism. He made it all about having fun at the beach.
For example, on a sunny day in Malibu in the late '50's or early '60's, one could observe a brace of young people riding a curl with style and concentration, each in the common attitude of balance. Except for one. He would be standing impossibly straight on top of the board with his arms extended in cruciform, his chin uplifted in an imperial regard.
Yes, that would be the Kahuna, practicing his singular move, "The Royal Hawaiian".
On other occasions, Tracy would ride a donkey down the beach dressed as a Roman Catholic saint, build impossibly large fires around which the other surfers and their disciples would gather in the evenings, and always seemed to have access to the wherewithal necessary to keep the assembly in order. If there was a party, he probably started it; if there was a commotion, he would calm it. Tracy enforced the rules of comportment in the surf and the rule of fun on the beach. He became, for those who knew him, knew of him, or read of him in a Life magazine article about the world of Gidget, the quintessential beach bum. He was, according to Kohner, the kindest and friendliest member of the tribe.
The novel, a mildly fictionalized account of Gidget's summer of 1956, would be published the next year and sell more copies than even Gidget's father, Frederick Kohner, could have hoped. So many that he spent the rest of his writing career producing sequels to the original and adapting screenplays for the inevitable series of movies. It became one of those perfect summer beach books, and exposed what was then the small, and still charming, world of southern California surfers.
The first film, Gidget, would star Sandra Dee as the titular character and, remarkably, Cliff Robertson as The Big Kahuna. [The character would be played by Martin Milner on the 1960's TV show, which starred Sally Field as the girl midget.] The Gidget novels would be written until Gidget Goes New York in 1968, and the films and television versions would continue through various actresses in the leading role until the cancellation of The New Gidget in 1988. Not bad for an off-hand novel designed to serve as an alternate source of income until Gidget's father received his next screenwriting assignment.
Kohner would step away from her fictional self, however, and would enjoy a life that was far more ordinary than what was presented in the novels, movies, and TV shows. In fact, she would marry an English professor who had never even heard of Gidget.
Kohner, now Kohner-Zuckerman, will appear, however, each year at a surfing event that benefits a cancer charity. In 2011, she was inducted into the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach, California and is listed as #7 in Surfer Magazine's "25 Most Influential People in Surfing".
But what of The Big Kahuna, Terry "Tubesteak" Tracy? Portrayed by an Oscar and Emmy-winning actor on screen and by yet another on television, and the dominant personality of Malibu Beach, one would have thought that his name and fame in greater culture would have been notable, too. In what is a Zen paradox, common in surfing, while Tracy is nowhere as well-known as Gidget, he was far more influential in what became the developing culture.
Tracy was a college drop-out and office drudge, working in a dreary insurance office in Los Angeles when, one day at lunch, he went out for a walk and never came back. He dumped his office suit, picked some stray beach gear and a couple of balsa wood surfboards [the preferred material in the days before fiberglass], and built a surf shack for himself in Malibu. While 21st century California is mostly known for its strangling list of civic regulations, Malibu of the 1950's was a gloriously free place where no one cared if some "beatnik" decided to live on the beach and spend his days doing nothing other than waiting for the waves to be right for surfing. Well, and accept handouts of food and beer.
Because of his singular commitment to not being committed, Tracy became an idol to the other surfers, including Miki Dora, the troubled personality who was regarded as the best surfer anyone had ever seen. While Tracy's technique was not as refined, the least critical would describe him as "decent", he brought to the experience something beyond style or athleticism. He made it all about having fun at the beach.
For example, on a sunny day in Malibu in the late '50's or early '60's, one could observe a brace of young people riding a curl with style and concentration, each in the common attitude of balance. Except for one. He would be standing impossibly straight on top of the board with his arms extended in cruciform, his chin uplifted in an imperial regard.
Yes, that would be the Kahuna, practicing his singular move, "The Royal Hawaiian".
On other occasions, Tracy would ride a donkey down the beach dressed as a Roman Catholic saint, build impossibly large fires around which the other surfers and their disciples would gather in the evenings, and always seemed to have access to the wherewithal necessary to keep the assembly in order. If there was a party, he probably started it; if there was a commotion, he would calm it. Tracy enforced the rules of comportment in the surf and the rule of fun on the beach. He became, for those who knew him, knew of him, or read of him in a Life magazine article about the world of Gidget, the quintessential beach bum. He was, according to Kohner, the kindest and friendliest member of the tribe.
After a couple of years, the California tendency to over-regulate reared its grotesque head and the "authorities" [actually, the Malibu parks and recreation department] tore down The Big Kahuna's shack. With that, beach bum culture evolved, surrendering a portion of its innocence and fun.
Tracy would marry, have seven children, and work a variety of jobs. He was always around the beach somewhere, and he would continue to surf until his un-disciplined lifestyle resulted in a debilitating case of diabetes which would cause him to surrender the surf and the beach and, eventually, his mortality. He died in the summer of 2012 at the age of 77.
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| The Big Kahuna in his later years; still with a sense of humor. |
As a friend mentioned upon his passing, "Once the lifeguards showed up and began regulating, that was it. Tube ruled through charm and good humor. LA County lifeguards ruled through laws and regulations. No beach fires. No alcohol. No shack. Kind of like how, a hundred years earlier, when the missionaries squashed gambling and public nudity, they pretty much squashed surfing, as well. For Tubesteak, if you remove the shack and the beer, what's the point?"
Well, there is one lingering point for which we should be grateful. During a recent trip to ride the hurricane agitated waves in south Jersey, I was musing about the changes in surfing and its culture since my introduction to it in the late 1960's, as there are more people in the water, more equipment to be had, and greater accessibility to instruction. Surfing is much more technical these days and, frankly, a little soul-less compared to what I once knew.
That's because I had forgotten, and re-learned yet again on those waves, that this whole business is supposed to be fun. That, more than anything else, is what has powered me through the years and the injuries and the aging on the beaches from Ocean City to Bondi. That seems to be, as learned from the Kahuna, the one, great translatable spiritual lesson that makes surfing, and life, worthwhile.
[A note from The Coracle: Yes, we've had two surf-associated postings over the last two Fridays, but those on the eastern shore have to admit that the summer has been long one, almost endless, and the days that haven't been claimed by work have been spent in The Great Other that is the ocean. As the season is coming to its inevitable end, so we will move onto other subjects next week. Well, there may be some water to it....]