Editor’s Note: The following is a three-part memoir from former professional surfer and recording artist Jim White. We think you’ll enjoy it, as three years later, the themes Jim tackles ring perennially true. Also, be on the lookout for Jim White‘s recently released CD, Where It Hits You.
Jim White. From the archives. Photo: Courtesy Jim White
It’s December of 2009. I’m standing alone at luggage carousel number four at the Honolulu, Hawaii International Airport. I’m hoping, hoping, hoping. Why so much hope? Because things aren’t going my way.
First, I’m a professional musician and all three of the pricey guitars I need for my big show tomorrow are presently missing in action. One by one a succession of suitcases from the mainland flight I was on appears, tumbles onto the conveyor belt, circles once, circles twice, then disappears. Surfboards arrive. Golf clubs. A huge stuffed panda bear. But no guitars. The crowd thins to nothing. Now it’s just me standing here. Where are my guitars? North Korea? South Dakota? East St. Louis? West Timbucktoo? Nobody knows. The mysterious airport gods remain silent.
Second, I’m fighting a nasty flu. I’m feverish and achey and not feeling especially aloha-ish. To add to my portrait of physical misery I’m working on a severe case of laryngitis which has all but shut down my vocal cords.
Third, the promoter of the show, who was supposed to meet my flight and guide me to my hotel, is a no-show. Where is he? Has he forgotten me? Been killed in a traffic accident? Won the lottery? Passed out drunk in some filthy alley once featured in an episode of Hawaii 5-0?
So, a quick tally: I’m a singer-songwriter who presently can’t sing, is stranded in an airport far from home and has no guitars. My mind is racing. Have I come all this way for nothing? How far have I come? Let’s just say it’s a distance that can’t reasonably be measured in mere temporal-spacial terms.
See, thirty years ago almost to the day I passed through this same airport on my way back to the mainland—well, I didn’t exactly pass, I hobbled. I was on crutches, and rightfully so, due to the massive gash I was sporting in the arch of my right foot—the wound held together by an impressive tangle of shiny black stitches. Six weeks earlier I’d gone over the falls at Rocky Point on a small day, at least by North Shore standards. It was just another five foot wave—or so I thought—until it hit the reef in an asymmetrical lump and pitched unexpectedly. I tried to pull out and over the falls I went. No big deal. I’d surfed good sized Sunset a few days earlier so this was child’s play—at least until my board, guided by my leash, followed me over the falls tail first. It was low tide, the reef lay a few feet under the impact zone’s glistening surface. When I landed the lip of the wave drove the knife sharp trailing edge of the fin into the arch of my foot, which had come to rest on the floor of the reef. Sort of like a meat cleaver hitting a pork loin joint on a table made of coral. The flesh parted, making way for the slicing fin. The cutting edge proceeded on all the way down to the bone, scraping sideways upwards toward the joint of my big toe, scalloping a garish eight inch flap of rosy foot meat away.
It was 1979. I’d come to the islands to see if I had what it takes to turn pro.
It was the logical next step to take on the North Shore. Since my mid teens I’d been a team rider for increasingly influential surfboard companies. I was urged to compete, so I did, albeit reluctantly at first. As I began to place in, then win contests I saw a pattern of rewards and followed it. As I rose in the amateur rankings, first in the ESA, then later the WSA I was given discount on boards and wetsuits. Free Sex Wax. Trinkets. Such was the extent of entry level sponsorship in the 70’s. My closet was stuffed with tacky little trophies I’d won over the five year stretch that I’d competed. Sick of pointless gee-gaw harvesting, I’d decided to turn pro at the age of twenty two. I was better than most, but in my heart I knew I wasn’t the cream of the crop. I’d hoped the move up would serve as a kick in the ass, prompting me to lift my game. This was not the case. The major contests I entered on the mainland made it crystal clear that there was a fundamental difference between me and the hard chargers who were winning it all. I had plenty of skills and would show flashes of brilliance, advancing a heat or two, but eventually I’d lose to the inevitable Wes Laine, Dave Carson, or Joey Buran.
I was clearly lacking that extra something. What was it? Physical ability? Ambition? Greed? Confidence? Creativity? Consistency? What did they have that I didn’t? What did they want that I didn’t? What was the missing component in my psyche that rendered my surfing skills just slightly inferior to the best? Was it the nagging suspicion that no matter how far I rose in the world of competitive surfing, I still wouldn’t find what I was looking for? In retrospect I see that my plan had one major flaw, for while I knew I was coming to the North Shore to try my hand at some ephemeral proving process, I never bothered to clarify what exactly it was I wanted to prove—or to whom I wanted to prove it.
I grew up surfing on the Gulf of Mexico. Arguably the worst surfing context in America, if not the world. We were wave beggars, desperately milking every molecule of energy from the miniscule shreds of wind chop that formed our irregular diet. On the fleetingly rare day of real surf everything stopped. Jobs were quit. Girlfriends and dying relatives were abandoned. Like that. We’d surf from predawn til postdusk if the waves permitted. Baited by surf movies like Cosmic Children and Free Ride and the glossy magazines spreads from famous surf locales around the globe, I became obsessed with the dream of one day riding real waves. The minute I was handed my high school diploma I packed my few possessions up and fled that wave impoverished coastline, heading west to the promised land of Southern California. Visions of classic Trestles, The Ranch, Rincon, Malibu, of long symmetrical glassy dream machines emerging from beds of kelp danced in my brain as I feverishly drove westward. Armed with a mere hundred and fifty bucks, a seven foot Sunshine swallowtail, and the name of surfing matriarch who ran a shop in Pacific Beach, I came rolling into San Diego. The kindly surf shop lady (a friend of Skip Frye’s) listened to my story and not only took me in, but helped me find a job sweeping floors at the Gordon & Smith factory in Mission Valley. It was the late summer, and soon the fall swells started marching in. I worked the night shift and surfed all day. I seldom slept, at one point I realized that I’d surfed overhead glassy waves at Sunset Cliffs for forty days straight. I’d show up at the beach morning after morning and simply couldn’t believe my eyes. There were waves—perfect waves–everywhere. Big waves, small waves, glassy waves, blown out afternoon wind chop. I surfed anything and everything that came my way with a manic intensity. By mid fall I moved to my own place, worked my way up to laminator, glassing boards for west coast stars like Bolton Colburn and Brandon Hayes, as well as the Bronzed Aussies, and some of the Bing team riders, who all rode a new design called a Bonzer, the first viable channeled three fin board.
I’d been on the West Coast less than a year when I entered my first WSA contest. The factory regulars were stunned when I beat a few of the highly regarded Bing team riders, placing fifth in the contest. Word got back to the higher ups there and I was offered a spot on the Bing team and given a Bonzer to ride. Things were looking up. Throughout that contest season I rose in the ranks of the Western Surfing Association, ranking in the top ten at the end of my first year of competition, affording me an invitation to the US Championships which was held in Cape Hatteras that year. It was late August when I headed east with a contingent of west coast luminaries that included, among others, future Surfing editor Sam George and a relatively unknown boys division surfer by the name of Tom Curran. I was seeded in the second round due to my high ranking in the WSA, but failed to advance in the lumpy closed out swell. Undeterred, a few weeks later I informed my sponsers that I was turning pro. Shortly thereafter I bombed in the Katin, then advanced through two rounds of the Stubbies. With that I headed to the North Shore.
Once in the islands I stumbled into a job glassing boards for the legendary Hawaiian icon Ben Aipa. He was impressed that I could handle the tricky multi-channeled bottoms of the Bonzers, and since he was experimenting with similar hull designs he hired me on the spot. An old friend had offered me a shared room near Wiamea. I scrounged up enough dough to buy what the Hawaiians smirkingly referred to as a “junkalunka surfmobile”. It hardly ran and had no tag or registration but I didn’t care. It got me to Rocky Point and Laniakea just fine. I only drove it on the North Shore—never even venturing into Haliewa, much less on to town. Then one work day after I missed Da Bus to work I had no choice but to drive the junkalunka into Honolulu to get to work on time. I got lucky and didn’t cross paths with any cops along the way. As I chugged and backfired my way into the parking lot behind Aipa’s factory one of the shapers came out and just shook his head. He looked under the hood for a while, trying to diagnose the problem, then said he had an uncle who ran a garage nearby and would get it looked at for me. He grabbed my keys then inexplicably asked me for my driver’s license. He assured me everything was on the up and up. I went to work laminating one of Brother Ben’s 7’6″ channel bottom twin fin funboards. A few hours later the shaper returned with a legit title and state issued tag in my name and an emissions sticker for my car. My surfmobile had been tuned up and ran like a top. “No charge, brudda!” he said, grinning as he slapped the paperwork and tag in my hand. I felt like I was in the mafia or something; I was a made man, surfing style. I lived a stones throw from the most amazing surf in the world, had transportation, a job and connections to the inner workings of the island. It was early fall and the surf was pumping. By all appearances I’d assembled all the necessary ingredients to make a run at surfing success. Swells lined the horizon as far as the eye could see, each wave a dream waiting to be seized.
I’d come over on the plane with Phil Trible, a friend from the WSA who would go on to have some success as a pro, and watched as this wiry little sixteen-year-old kid instantly began to assert himself in the lumpy 12-14 foot swell that greeted us that first day. Between the size of the swell, the word of mouth about localism at Haleiwa where we ended up, and my inexperience in surf of that size, I decided to lay low until the waves dropped. It was just too big, too gnarly. Coming from the Gulf Coast I’d never been in such a context before, where you couldn’t go surfing because the surf was too big. It was surreal. The next day the swell smoothed and diminished to a solid Hawaiian 8-10 feet. Sunset and Pipe were both zoos. Backdoor was closing out. Eventually I paddled out at Laniakea and caught my first North Shore wave. I’d been warned by Hank Warner, a mainland shaper friend with island experience, that no matter how hard I tried, after I dropped in on that first wave I’d panic and kick out—so intimidating would that feathering wall look. With this in mind, I prepared myself, dug deep, paddling like hell for that massive feathering peak. The board began to build hull speed and then suddenly there I was, driving down the face of my first Hawaiian wave. I banked hard off the bottom, looked far far far down the line at the impossibly steep wall that was not only towering over me, but also flying at me at a speed far faster than any mainland wave I’d ever ridden. I felt a sickly spasm, my knees went weak and I promptly, reflexively kicked out. As I came flying over the top of the wave the line of surfers on the shoulder all groaned, watching as the perfect right passed by unridden. Welcome to the proving grounds.
Tune in next week for Part 2. Plenty of good stuff to come….
