Surf and Socko
On most of my adventures, citizens weren't attacking police cars.
I had always been fearless of the surf. When our family lived in the San Fernando Valley, our favorite trip to the ocean was Zuma Beach, about 20 miles away over the Santa Monica Mountains to the south. It was a wide sandy beach over two miles long. The shallow water where us little kids would play had a predictably gently sloping sandy bottom, and that's where I would be when big breakers came crashing in. My first enjoyment was just to stand there and let a wave clobber me, and for the next five or 10 seconds, I would be jumbled about in the frothy white water, not knowing which way was up. Finally, I would come up. Repeat. I would do this over and over. This pastime would evolve into body surfing, but at the time, when I was five or six, I found joy in a few scrambled moments of weightlessness and disorientation.
Starting from when I was even younger than that, I have witnessed the whole evolution of surfing. I assume there has always been body surfing. It occurs spontaneously to a swimmer coming back into the beach realizes that the waves are assisting his progress; and with a little finesse, he can get an extended ride.
Back in 1949 or so in Carpinteria, in addition to body surfing, there were three ways to ride the waves. The first one I have never seen photos nor heard mention of a practice that was common back then; I don't even know what to call it. A regular bed sheet was sewn into like a giant pillowcase, open at one end. You stood in chest deep water with this wet pillowcase draped over your back and with your arms over your shoulders holding it, you swung it up, over, and down in front of you filling it with air, and as your hands hit the water, you closed the opening tightly with your hands and there you had it; a big white bubble to bob over or be swept along by the waves for a few minutes before all the air would leak out through the wet linen. Repeat. That was one way, and I must really be old since none of my other old friends ever heard anything like this.
A second device used to ride the surf was the inner tube. Automobile and truck tires in those days consisted of a tire similar to today's, with an inflatable doughnut shaped black rubber bladder. Tubeless tires didn't become come into use until the 60's. In the 40's and 50's used inner tubes were commonplace and kits to patch them were available everywhere. Even a poor kid could get ahold of one and patch it up. Sometimes you could get a great big one from a tractor or an airplane tire and many kids could jump around on it at the same time. One variation was to stuff the inner tube into a gunnysack so that it became oblong without the hole in the middle and it was shaped a little better for riding waves, your could steer it a little. What? You never heard of an inner tube or a gunnysack? I must really be old.
Eventually, someone invented a rectangular rubberized canvas "surf mat". They were red on one side blue on the other and became the preferred surf riding device replacing the big pillows and the inner tubes.
Another practice was the paddleboard. I had the use of one of these things; it belonged to my brother-in-law. It was about 12 feet long, about 18" wide and 4"thick at its fattest point. It was hollow and made out of wood, and painted battleship gray (I think it was something they used in the Navy). I used it once to paddle out to the Carpinteria Reef from the boat landing to do some snorkeling, but it was a tiring distance to paddle. I had been out to the reef that day, and after I came back to the boat landing and dropped off my snorkeling gear, I thought I would try to ride some waves. The first wave, the heavy board "pearled", short for "pearl dived", where the nose of the board goes down into the water and keeps going down until its buoyancy pushes it back up. I fell off and by the time I came up, the board had shot back out of the water and was standing nearly its whole length out of the water. Then it slammed down flat on the water right next to my head. That would have been a disastrous injury if I had come up in a little different place.
My first real surfboard was made of balsawood. It was about 6 feet long and coffin shaped. With a point on the nose and a square tail. It was about 28" wide at its widest point, and had a a single skeg. What? Never heard of a skeg either? That's old man speak for "fin". By 1958, foam surfboards had pretty much replaced the balsa boards, and I found some cheap used boards, a Gordon & Smith and a Velzy-Jacobs. In those days most surfboards were 9 foot 6 inches long; what would be referred to as a "longboard" today, and the shorter boards used today were called "hot dog boards".
I had some memorable surfing experiences there in and around Carpinteria. There was one time that I was surfing down near the "Tarpits". It was the only time my sister Judy ever was present when I was board surfing. By that time I was a free range Carpinteria boy in 1959, she had graduated high school and moved on to enroll in a nurses' college in Santa Barbara, and I didn't see her much after that. But for some reason she was there that day.
Anyone who has known a surfer or surfers, has heard endless stories of waves caught and ridden, and glories impossible to describe, ad infinitum. Rest assured that in keeping with the theme of this book, I will only share such surf stories as they include a bloody or catastrophic conclusion.
One day at Tarpits, the waves were waist high along the irregular shore break there. I caught an average shorebreak wave, sure to close out in several places, with a likelihood of giving me a 20-yard ride to the right. Some guy on the right of me caught the same wave, and he had the idea that his best ride was to the left and he cut back into me. His board came over the top of my board and whacked me hard, ripping open my right shin. I lost my board and limped up the beach to where Judy was watching.
A big flap of flesh covering my shin about 6 inches by 3 inches had peeled back exposing the bone. I was surprised to notice how white the bare bone was. Blood, blood, blood. By this time, however, I could no longer traumatize my sister with my bloody mayhem. She was midway through her training to become a registered nurse. No screaming necessary. She was totally ready for this. She looked at it, went up to her car, got her kit and came back. She took out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and completely flooded the inside of the flap of flesh, and the bare bone, closed it up and wrapped it up with gauze. Problem solved. She left me with the rest of the peroxide and roll of gauze and it healed up no problem.
In other old guy observations, there has been a great evolution in the treatment minor cuts and wounds to prevent infection. In my earliest years, one of the motives of not telling your mom every time you broke or cut your skin, was that the remedy was going to be...IODINE! Iodine stung like crazy and always hurt worse than the cut. Later on, there came mercurochrome, a substitute that didn't sting as much, and then merthiolate which stung even less, but still ouch. Both used mercury in their preparation. So Judy's use of hydrogen peroxide, which didn't hurt a bit, was a revelation in the treatment of my wounds, of which I was still going to have many.
The biggest wave I had ever caught on a surfboard was at a surf spot about 400 yards further east down the beach from Tarpits. It was called Jellybowl. A rock outcropping made a point that would at times make a little right point break that ran for 100 feet before it closed out in a shorebreak along the sometimes steep beach. Nearby a little trickle of a creek came down from the bluff. In this area liquid tar dripped and drizzled out of the cliff and formed puddles on the beach. I had snorkeled around those rocks on calmer days, but this day storm surf had whipped up some giants, breaking way farther out than usual, and a struggle to paddle out to. My surfing buddy, Dave, caught the same wave, above and behind me. Witnessed from the beach, our friends reported that Dave's board was about 2 feet above my head. I wasn't at the bottom of the wave and Dave could not see back over the top. Doing the math, two 6 foot surfers, 2 feet below us, 2 feet between us and 2 feet above Dave's head; the face of that wave was at least 18 feet, more commonly referred to as maybe a "12-footer", since they are calculated from the back side; or less precisely, "double overhead".
It was an exhilarating ride, and Dave had wisely kicked out as we neared the shorebreak. In an act of showboating, I decided to continue on, do a kamakazi quasimodo (just what it sounds like) and let the closing-out wave swallow me. Which it did of course, but unforgiving of my foolishness, the crashing wave drove my face directly into my knee. I came out of the water with a very bloody nose, it hurt for a long time. I may have broken something.
A potentially more serious event happened about 6 miles down the coast. In my lifetime, a whole lot has changed at the point now called "Mussel Shoals". There's a man-made island for oil drilling about a half mile off the coast with a pier leading to it. It wasn't there when I was little. It was built about the time I was in high school. They made the concrete "tetrapods" in big steel forms on the bluff by the oil pier a half-mile east of Jellybowl. The island is built upon these stacked concrete interlocking four-pointed jacks.
There is a motel and restaurant just east of the point now called "The Cliff House Inn", which in my day was the "Knickerbocker Motel" and we always referred to the surf spot as "Knickerbockers". In more recent times, surfers call it "Little Rincon", or "Mussel Shoals".
Anyway, as a surf spot when conditions were right, you could sometimes take off west of the point and shoot through the pier, but more often the action was east of the causeway, down toward the front of the motel.
This particular day as I recall was rather overcast and late in the day, and the surf was waist high to a little overhead, and the wave I was on somewhere in between. I was getting a good long ride into an area I was unfamiliar with. As a wave moves forward, it sucks a volume of water from in front of it, so the water gets shallower quickly. That action exposed a large boulder right directly in my path. I tried to kick right but it was too late and I found myself falling face first into the rock. The last thing I remember seeing was the water hitting the rock powerfully and bouncing back into my face with great force. The result was that my head was cushioned from hitting the boulder, but the water itself was so super compacted, I was knocked out. I did not hit the rock; I had no injury from that kind of impact.
I'm not sure anyone saw me wipe out, but friends on the beach noticed when my board came in without me (we didn't have leashes in those days), and they had been looking for me. I had regained awareness in shallow water and walked up onto the beach. The spot where the relentless current had carried me was nearly 200 yards down the coast. Somehow, I can survive in the water when barely conscious. I had no memory between the water bouncing up at me and then... staggering up onto the beach quite a distance away. Friends were surprised to have me come walking up the beach when they had been searching the water.
So that was one incident of concussion. Another happened in the realm of high school football, though not during supervised play or practice. It seems that young males go through a perhaps hormonal period in which we enjoy being violent. Football was an expression of that. The equipment of pads and helmets were provided to supposedly protect us from serious injury, and for the most part they did.
Rules and limits to the hitting, tackling and blocking, were also designed to minimize permanent harm. And the rules of the game are set up so that the violence takes place in a limited time space, and when the ball carrier is taken down, everybody stops, and goes back to their huddle, to plan the next clash. It's all very orderly, and anger is not a necessary part of it. Most of the time you could experience the joy of clobbering and being clobbered without any more consequence other than some short term pain, but sometimes not.
We were coached in all the ways to knock somebody down, and which ways were not permitted because of their inherent danger. Clipping, for instance, which is crashing into somebody in the back of his knees; using your fists instead of your forearms to hit somebody; and spearing; those are fouls. When I was in high school we were also coached in the act of spearing. Now it's outlawed. It's transforming yourself into a battering ram, by channeling all your force into the top of your helmet. You could make the bottom of your helmet settle down onto your shoulder pads so that the impact wouldn't jam your neck. The coaches would tell us, "Run right through them, head down helmet first". It was a technique used in both blocking and tackling. At that time, the only restriction was that you couldn't spear somebody in the back, but that's what happened to me. It was during a scrimmage in afternoon practice, and somebody plowed into the left side of my back from behind. I was in a lot of pain so I went to see our family doctor. He sprayed some cold stuff on it and sent me away. I think he thought I was wimping out.
My back got better and I continued my regular activities, but it made a difference in my stance on a surfboard. "Goofy foot" is when you stand with your right foot forward, instead of regular, which is left foot forward. Goofy foot was more comfortable for me after that. Occasionally in my 20's and 30's, after a long motorcycle ride, or just working or lifting in an awkward position, I would get spasms in my lower back that would be crippling and agonizing until in a day or so I got some relief. Sometimes I was prescribed Xanax to make it release the spasm. Finally when I was nearly 40, a doctor I had in Hawaii decided to take an x-ray of it. Sure enough, there is one vertebrate that sits a little cock-eyed. I knew instantly when that had happened: the story I just recounted. Over time armed with that knowledge, I embarked on a practice of building up my core muscles with sit-ups, and crunching my abs whenever I am bending and lifting. This has solved the problem except for one thing. When I lie around too much, or just stay in bed all day for some reason, the alignment of my spine migrates into a side-to-side "S" curve. It hurts a little, but if I go for a long walk, by the time I'm back it's all straightened out.
But my football concussion came about, not by any sanctioned activity in practice nor on a game night. Sometimes after practice, some of us, still in our pads and helmets and cleats would stick around to play a rougher game we called "Socko". It didn't have as many rules as football and no referees or coaches around to enforce them anyway. There were no downs, no huddles, and no time clock. Fists were allowed and the game didn't stop when a ball carrier was tackled to the ground. He was mobbed and pummeled until he let go of the ball then somebody else would run off with it. The action didn't stop until the ball crossed a goal line.
Well, in the midst of this melee, I was the first of the pack chasing the guy who was our football team's fullback and who, as a member of the other socko team, had the ball. We were all running full tilt, when he stopped abruptly, planted his feet, turned around and swung a big left hook at the right side of my jaw, which I ran right into. Football helmets didn't have faceguards in those days; they were just coming into use for the centers and quarterbacks. The rest of us just had our faces and jaws out there; sanctioned targets. So I took a big hit.
I saw stars, just as depicted in cartoons. I found myself in a detached state of mind, still on the field, still in the game of socko, but everything was dreamlike. Oddly though, beside the sore jaw, the game had become even more enjoyable, and the rest of the afternoon I threw myself into the action with reckless abandon.
Surfing...worth the risks. High school football? I don't know. Permanent damage to bodies and brains of healthy 16-year olds: not a good idea. It was fun though, in that time and space in the olden days before we knew any better, and experiencing a brain concussion was referred to casually as "getting your bell rung."
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
I had always been fearless of the surf. When our family lived in the San Fernando Valley, our favorite trip to the ocean was Zuma Beach, about 20 miles away over the Santa Monica Mountains to the south. It was a wide sandy beach over two miles long. The shallow water where us little kids would play had a predictably gently sloping sandy bottom, and that's where I would be when big breakers came crashing in. My first enjoyment was just to stand there and let a wave clobber me, and for the next five or 10 seconds, I would be jumbled about in the frothy white water, not knowing which way was up. Finally, I would come up. Repeat. I would do this over and over. This pastime would evolve into body surfing, but at the time, when I was five or six, I found joy in a few scrambled moments of weightlessness and disorientation.
Starting from when I was even younger than that, I have witnessed the whole evolution of surfing. I assume there has always been body surfing. It occurs spontaneously to a swimmer coming back into the beach realizes that the waves are assisting his progress; and with a little finesse, he can get an extended ride.
Back in 1949 or so in Carpinteria, in addition to body surfing, there were three ways to ride the waves. The first one I have never seen photos nor heard mention of a practice that was common back then; I don't even know what to call it. A regular bed sheet was sewn into like a giant pillowcase, open at one end. You stood in chest deep water with this wet pillowcase draped over your back and with your arms over your shoulders holding it, you swung it up, over, and down in front of you filling it with air, and as your hands hit the water, you closed the opening tightly with your hands and there you had it; a big white bubble to bob over or be swept along by the waves for a few minutes before all the air would leak out through the wet linen. Repeat. That was one way, and I must really be old since none of my other old friends ever heard anything like this.
A second device used to ride the surf was the inner tube. Automobile and truck tires in those days consisted of a tire similar to today's, with an inflatable doughnut shaped black rubber bladder. Tubeless tires didn't become come into use until the 60's. In the 40's and 50's used inner tubes were commonplace and kits to patch them were available everywhere. Even a poor kid could get ahold of one and patch it up. Sometimes you could get a great big one from a tractor or an airplane tire and many kids could jump around on it at the same time. One variation was to stuff the inner tube into a gunnysack so that it became oblong without the hole in the middle and it was shaped a little better for riding waves, your could steer it a little. What? You never heard of an inner tube or a gunnysack? I must really be old.
Eventually, someone invented a rectangular rubberized canvas "surf mat". They were red on one side blue on the other and became the preferred surf riding device replacing the big pillows and the inner tubes.
Another practice was the paddleboard. I had the use of one of these things; it belonged to my brother-in-law. It was about 12 feet long, about 18" wide and 4"thick at its fattest point. It was hollow and made out of wood, and painted battleship gray (I think it was something they used in the Navy). I used it once to paddle out to the Carpinteria Reef from the boat landing to do some snorkeling, but it was a tiring distance to paddle. I had been out to the reef that day, and after I came back to the boat landing and dropped off my snorkeling gear, I thought I would try to ride some waves. The first wave, the heavy board "pearled", short for "pearl dived", where the nose of the board goes down into the water and keeps going down until its buoyancy pushes it back up. I fell off and by the time I came up, the board had shot back out of the water and was standing nearly its whole length out of the water. Then it slammed down flat on the water right next to my head. That would have been a disastrous injury if I had come up in a little different place.
My first real surfboard was made of balsawood. It was about 6 feet long and coffin shaped. With a point on the nose and a square tail. It was about 28" wide at its widest point, and had a a single skeg. What? Never heard of a skeg either? That's old man speak for "fin". By 1958, foam surfboards had pretty much replaced the balsa boards, and I found some cheap used boards, a Gordon & Smith and a Velzy-Jacobs. In those days most surfboards were 9 foot 6 inches long; what would be referred to as a "longboard" today, and the shorter boards used today were called "hot dog boards".
I had some memorable surfing experiences there in and around Carpinteria. There was one time that I was surfing down near the "Tarpits". It was the only time my sister Judy ever was present when I was board surfing. By that time I was a free range Carpinteria boy in 1959, she had graduated high school and moved on to enroll in a nurses' college in Santa Barbara, and I didn't see her much after that. But for some reason she was there that day.
Anyone who has known a surfer or surfers, has heard endless stories of waves caught and ridden, and glories impossible to describe, ad infinitum. Rest assured that in keeping with the theme of this book, I will only share such surf stories as they include a bloody or catastrophic conclusion.
One day at Tarpits, the waves were waist high along the irregular shore break there. I caught an average shorebreak wave, sure to close out in several places, with a likelihood of giving me a 20-yard ride to the right. Some guy on the right of me caught the same wave, and he had the idea that his best ride was to the left and he cut back into me. His board came over the top of my board and whacked me hard, ripping open my right shin. I lost my board and limped up the beach to where Judy was watching.
A big flap of flesh covering my shin about 6 inches by 3 inches had peeled back exposing the bone. I was surprised to notice how white the bare bone was. Blood, blood, blood. By this time, however, I could no longer traumatize my sister with my bloody mayhem. She was midway through her training to become a registered nurse. No screaming necessary. She was totally ready for this. She looked at it, went up to her car, got her kit and came back. She took out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and completely flooded the inside of the flap of flesh, and the bare bone, closed it up and wrapped it up with gauze. Problem solved. She left me with the rest of the peroxide and roll of gauze and it healed up no problem.
In other old guy observations, there has been a great evolution in the treatment minor cuts and wounds to prevent infection. In my earliest years, one of the motives of not telling your mom every time you broke or cut your skin, was that the remedy was going to be...IODINE! Iodine stung like crazy and always hurt worse than the cut. Later on, there came mercurochrome, a substitute that didn't sting as much, and then merthiolate which stung even less, but still ouch. Both used mercury in their preparation. So Judy's use of hydrogen peroxide, which didn't hurt a bit, was a revelation in the treatment of my wounds, of which I was still going to have many.
The biggest wave I had ever caught on a surfboard was at a surf spot about 400 yards further east down the beach from Tarpits. It was called Jellybowl. A rock outcropping made a point that would at times make a little right point break that ran for 100 feet before it closed out in a shorebreak along the sometimes steep beach. Nearby a little trickle of a creek came down from the bluff. In this area liquid tar dripped and drizzled out of the cliff and formed puddles on the beach. I had snorkeled around those rocks on calmer days, but this day storm surf had whipped up some giants, breaking way farther out than usual, and a struggle to paddle out to. My surfing buddy, Dave, caught the same wave, above and behind me. Witnessed from the beach, our friends reported that Dave's board was about 2 feet above my head. I wasn't at the bottom of the wave and Dave could not see back over the top. Doing the math, two 6 foot surfers, 2 feet below us, 2 feet between us and 2 feet above Dave's head; the face of that wave was at least 18 feet, more commonly referred to as maybe a "12-footer", since they are calculated from the back side; or less precisely, "double overhead".
It was an exhilarating ride, and Dave had wisely kicked out as we neared the shorebreak. In an act of showboating, I decided to continue on, do a kamakazi quasimodo (just what it sounds like) and let the closing-out wave swallow me. Which it did of course, but unforgiving of my foolishness, the crashing wave drove my face directly into my knee. I came out of the water with a very bloody nose, it hurt for a long time. I may have broken something.
A potentially more serious event happened about 6 miles down the coast. In my lifetime, a whole lot has changed at the point now called "Mussel Shoals". There's a man-made island for oil drilling about a half mile off the coast with a pier leading to it. It wasn't there when I was little. It was built about the time I was in high school. They made the concrete "tetrapods" in big steel forms on the bluff by the oil pier a half-mile east of Jellybowl. The island is built upon these stacked concrete interlocking four-pointed jacks.
There is a motel and restaurant just east of the point now called "The Cliff House Inn", which in my day was the "Knickerbocker Motel" and we always referred to the surf spot as "Knickerbockers". In more recent times, surfers call it "Little Rincon", or "Mussel Shoals".
Anyway, as a surf spot when conditions were right, you could sometimes take off west of the point and shoot through the pier, but more often the action was east of the causeway, down toward the front of the motel.
This particular day as I recall was rather overcast and late in the day, and the surf was waist high to a little overhead, and the wave I was on somewhere in between. I was getting a good long ride into an area I was unfamiliar with. As a wave moves forward, it sucks a volume of water from in front of it, so the water gets shallower quickly. That action exposed a large boulder right directly in my path. I tried to kick right but it was too late and I found myself falling face first into the rock. The last thing I remember seeing was the water hitting the rock powerfully and bouncing back into my face with great force. The result was that my head was cushioned from hitting the boulder, but the water itself was so super compacted, I was knocked out. I did not hit the rock; I had no injury from that kind of impact.
I'm not sure anyone saw me wipe out, but friends on the beach noticed when my board came in without me (we didn't have leashes in those days), and they had been looking for me. I had regained awareness in shallow water and walked up onto the beach. The spot where the relentless current had carried me was nearly 200 yards down the coast. Somehow, I can survive in the water when barely conscious. I had no memory between the water bouncing up at me and then... staggering up onto the beach quite a distance away. Friends were surprised to have me come walking up the beach when they had been searching the water.
So that was one incident of concussion. Another happened in the realm of high school football, though not during supervised play or practice. It seems that young males go through a perhaps hormonal period in which we enjoy being violent. Football was an expression of that. The equipment of pads and helmets were provided to supposedly protect us from serious injury, and for the most part they did.
Rules and limits to the hitting, tackling and blocking, were also designed to minimize permanent harm. And the rules of the game are set up so that the violence takes place in a limited time space, and when the ball carrier is taken down, everybody stops, and goes back to their huddle, to plan the next clash. It's all very orderly, and anger is not a necessary part of it. Most of the time you could experience the joy of clobbering and being clobbered without any more consequence other than some short term pain, but sometimes not.
We were coached in all the ways to knock somebody down, and which ways were not permitted because of their inherent danger. Clipping, for instance, which is crashing into somebody in the back of his knees; using your fists instead of your forearms to hit somebody; and spearing; those are fouls. When I was in high school we were also coached in the act of spearing. Now it's outlawed. It's transforming yourself into a battering ram, by channeling all your force into the top of your helmet. You could make the bottom of your helmet settle down onto your shoulder pads so that the impact wouldn't jam your neck. The coaches would tell us, "Run right through them, head down helmet first". It was a technique used in both blocking and tackling. At that time, the only restriction was that you couldn't spear somebody in the back, but that's what happened to me. It was during a scrimmage in afternoon practice, and somebody plowed into the left side of my back from behind. I was in a lot of pain so I went to see our family doctor. He sprayed some cold stuff on it and sent me away. I think he thought I was wimping out.
My back got better and I continued my regular activities, but it made a difference in my stance on a surfboard. "Goofy foot" is when you stand with your right foot forward, instead of regular, which is left foot forward. Goofy foot was more comfortable for me after that. Occasionally in my 20's and 30's, after a long motorcycle ride, or just working or lifting in an awkward position, I would get spasms in my lower back that would be crippling and agonizing until in a day or so I got some relief. Sometimes I was prescribed Xanax to make it release the spasm. Finally when I was nearly 40, a doctor I had in Hawaii decided to take an x-ray of it. Sure enough, there is one vertebrate that sits a little cock-eyed. I knew instantly when that had happened: the story I just recounted. Over time armed with that knowledge, I embarked on a practice of building up my core muscles with sit-ups, and crunching my abs whenever I am bending and lifting. This has solved the problem except for one thing. When I lie around too much, or just stay in bed all day for some reason, the alignment of my spine migrates into a side-to-side "S" curve. It hurts a little, but if I go for a long walk, by the time I'm back it's all straightened out.
But my football concussion came about, not by any sanctioned activity in practice nor on a game night. Sometimes after practice, some of us, still in our pads and helmets and cleats would stick around to play a rougher game we called "Socko". It didn't have as many rules as football and no referees or coaches around to enforce them anyway. There were no downs, no huddles, and no time clock. Fists were allowed and the game didn't stop when a ball carrier was tackled to the ground. He was mobbed and pummeled until he let go of the ball then somebody else would run off with it. The action didn't stop until the ball crossed a goal line.
Well, in the midst of this melee, I was the first of the pack chasing the guy who was our football team's fullback and who, as a member of the other socko team, had the ball. We were all running full tilt, when he stopped abruptly, planted his feet, turned around and swung a big left hook at the right side of my jaw, which I ran right into. Football helmets didn't have faceguards in those days; they were just coming into use for the centers and quarterbacks. The rest of us just had our faces and jaws out there; sanctioned targets. So I took a big hit.
I saw stars, just as depicted in cartoons. I found myself in a detached state of mind, still on the field, still in the game of socko, but everything was dreamlike. Oddly though, beside the sore jaw, the game had become even more enjoyable, and the rest of the afternoon I threw myself into the action with reckless abandon.
Surfing...worth the risks. High school football? I don't know. Permanent damage to bodies and brains of healthy 16-year olds: not a good idea. It was fun though, in that time and space in the olden days before we knew any better, and experiencing a brain concussion was referred to casually as "getting your bell rung."
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com