By Yoichi Shimatsu
Exclusive to Rense
6-12-25

News of the death of Brian Wilson, the lyricist-composer of The Beach Boys’ classic songs of America’s youth culture, imprinted dreams of an endless summer for those who experienced the height of American glory - briefly - before the soon-arriving decades of hopeless foreign wars. Most of todays culture rags are sure to focus on a narrow sheaf of Brian's song list while overlooking the social impact of their lyrics about young American innocence prior to the transition toward nightmarish guilt over global imperial wars. This selective and arbitrary tribute, based on personal memories, is merely how one young teenager saw that band’s sunlight glittering over the waves in the early years of surfboards and woody vans.

It was on my return to Southern California from Japan in 1965 that surfing and surfer anthems were the staple of an otherwise boring existence in an increasingly avaricious, self-centered and often vindictive American society in transition. To celebrate the coming end of my youth prior to entering Purdue University in the backwoods of a backward and repressive Indiana, I reveled in the freedom afforded at Santa Monica beach. In the first few weeks of my return, after arrival by plane in early summer, I was stuck in a remote Palmdale with all the monotony of the high desert, other than an occasional lopping off the head off an invasive rattlesnake trying to crawl through the back door.

Needless to say, I was over-eager to get to Santa Monica. On summer vacations in Japan, I had done a lot of body surfing and diving for shellfish in the pristine white-sand beaches off the 99 League Coast east of Tokyo, south of Fukushima. So driving my newly acquired beat-up Monza convertible mini-"sports car", I drove to the beachside town famed for its pier with all sorts of games and a pizza parlor. Even then the resort area was getting expensive. Yet out of curiosity I inquired at a 4-story apartment block, where the day clerk was being haggled by a young American fellow about my age (pre-college). Deciding to act as a bold fool, I interrupted their argument with the question: “Do any of your tenants need a roommate to split the monthly rent?”

Then and there, I signed the contract for about a third of the rent with the happy fellow Mike picking up the larger share, being the son of a rich family who drove a GTO muscle car. In just a few minutes, we dumped our belongings in the apartment and dived into the swimming pool (a necessity by the ocean, according to California custom regarding fresh water quality). As both of us suspected it was a magnet for pretty girls passing by, none of them interested in riding a surf board but who were keen on lolling like alligators in the tame water or lolling around poolside. It was a good start, perfectly timed with college girls flooded in during the summer break.

Board not Bored

Farther north of the life-guard stand was a surfing rental shop where I purchased - super cheap - a large and heavy board of the Royal Hawaiian variety, sturdy in stormy weather and tremendously buoyant. It was heavy as an old woody truck, which I figured helped to build up my arm muscles in preparation for life in the rural Midwest, where football and not soccer was the main sport. Surfing wasn’t mindless fun as it was cracked up to be by the Beach Boys. The waves were fickle and the undertow at times scary. The best time to surf was before sunrise even though the water of the California Current was bone-chilling and the female visitors were absent before noon, they being interested in guys with nice cars – not surf trash. My “holiday” was squeezed between two real-life bummers - the first being the bus-ride to smoggy East L.A. to work at a screw import warehouse (as in steel nuts and bolts) and the other was that evening surfing was not appreciated by all the tourists wading in the waves and strolling along the sand. Never mind the kids peeing in the pristine seawater.

So my memory of arm-hand paddling through the rising waves in the early morning darkness was that the cold water felt like swimming around an iceberg – with shivering and goosebumps. But I figured that the chill was excellent preparation for ice-skating in the Midwest or sliding on a toboggan down icy hills before being tossed onto mounds of snow. The things we do for fun.The other issue was that oil tankers were not yet passing at that early hour, which meant puny ripples instead of powerful waves. Santa Monica hardly could be compared with the big wave beach at San Onofre or the monstrous swells aka “pounders” at Waiamea Bay on the north shore of Hawaii’s main island - which is a rough and tumble experience of being slammed onto the sand if you make it that far along the curl. That brutal experience is when one learns that surfing can be voluntary bone-crunching torture - although along with scenic vistas the Hawaiian shores offered opportunities for meeting healthy surfer girls in string bikinis the size of postage stamps. Unfortunately, surf Valkyries tended to be muscle-bound stocky, forerunners of female wrestlers – too much power for a one-night stand guy to handle.

California girls, by comparison, were typically not athletic back in those early days, preferring to idle in the swimming pool and sip beer on the balcony with a view of holy water rolling in from the other side of the Pacific. As a novice at casual encounters I had assumed that slipping a hand under a bikini was a normal Californian custom - until my left hand got slapped painfully under a miniskirt. Basically the girls were there to drink free beer that my lousy job had paid for. The worst were the Asian girls who barged into the parties but had no interest in meeting a smart alec resembling their younger brothers. So I was stuck with gawky nerd females sporting underdeveloped figure - skin and bones tossed to the dog. At least those wall-flowers did not object to sitting on the beach sand to watch and laugh at their hero - me - get tossed off the board by a rogue wave and rewarding me with a hug. Surfing was great preparation for being the low man in the fraternity pecking order at college dances with sorority girls from rich families.

Surf Party?

The Beach Boys’ idolization of California surfing was misguided (Brian was hydrophobic) in that the more interesting activities (at least for trying to attract the interest of young women) were timid walking tours of tidal pools where tiny fishes abounded, thereby providing a talking point. That’s probably how environmentalism got started – women are suckers for Nature, birthing and goo-goo babies – such utter nonsense for real men like me, who tried hard to be nature worshipful but failed. By contrast, surfing offered very few conversational opportunities other than “my board flipped smacking the other guy unconscious and me nearly drowning.” That got hands-on sympathy from nurse types. The exciting twists and leaps and endless barrel rolls - regularly featured in the surfing movies - were rarities caused by storm-driven waves usually in inclement cold weather. Those long-shots were achieved by occupational surfers not recreational fun-seekers and tumble bums.

Contrary to public opinion and TV weather reports, it did rain a lot in California at least by the beaches – actually a mix of dense fog and heavy mist - which put a dent in surfing due to possible lightning bolts and fishing boats running amok in the onset of darkness. Thus, on no-surfing afternoons when I was not at my job in smog-ridden East LA (the Pachuco aka Mexican thug neighborhood), I’d badger my roommate to drive his GTO along the boulevards in search of easy women - a hunt that got a smile and a wave of the hand that meant "keep moving, buster!". Contrary to the Beach Boys’ idolization of California girls of being available and easy, I’d later do way better with healthy hefty farm females in Indiana, nearby Ohio and a cowgirl from Montana for whom I was the stallion (although not Italian). Luckily, I never met the little old lady from Pasadena, who might have overworked me till past midnight.

I neglected to mention that while my buddy’s GTO was the pick-up mobile, my tiny black Monza convertible was the perfect vehicle to watch drizzly dreary rainfall over the Pacific while sipping a beer with a gullible young lady in desperate need of overcoming the embarrassment of virginity. Forget sunshine heroes on the short board, since nothing was more daring than reclining seats under a canvas roof in sight of passersby along the boardwalk. Then the worst disaster occurred when my screw-shop boss forced overtime on his wage slaves, greatly eating into my recreational schedule while also providing me with the money to pay for the air ticket from LAX to Chicago.

My hopeful endless summer ended in a bummer. I sold the car and boarded a bus to the airport, the first steps toward the collegiate life - which the Beach Boys had never prepared me for other than that insipid chorus “Be true to your school”. My big board was back to leaning on a wall of the surf shop, traded in for tickets to Big Ten football games, drunken frat parties and coed rivalry for lusty attention and whatever followed with silent consent - to be forgotten on the next day in class. In California I chased the girls but in the Midwest the pursuit was the other way around with the women on top.

Changing channels: Watching a diminishing LA from the sky was the end of my youthful naivete, which since those halcyon days can be summed up as “California Dreaming” as sung by the Mamas and Papas. Within about 18 months into college, surfer tunes were history - long surpassed by nihilistic antiwar anthems, none of which came close to Jim Morrison and The Doors’ “No one here gets out alive”, an anthem to the fate of unknown soldiers of our generation who marched or parachuted into the jungle inferno. War meant the decline of the Beach Boys and the good times they represented. Since that golden era, California hasn’t been the same, no longer a paradise for naive fools of my generation to get around town blissfully unaware of the trap that awaited us.

One last note, while the news media highlight their most popular lyrics based on album sales, gone unnoticed nowadays are those early songs closer to life as we lived it back then, including “Surfer Girl” and their initial hit “Surfin’ Safari”.