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Kathy Kohner (Gidget inspiration) and Terry Tubesteak Tracy : Image courtesy of SHF
Friday, 14 September 2012
Terry lost a dead-end city job circa '54 & couldn't see living in Death Star just those few miles inland. Built a shack with Harry Stonelake right there on Malibu beach between the pit and flag pole line-up where surf is best viewed. Lived there with Harry, Billy Al and other 'guests' off and on for a couple of years.
Liked to surf but more intrigued with personalities and talking stories, "...action's on the beach, not out there in the water." However, he was one of the top surfers there.
Billy Al Bengston writes, "I had known Tube since summer 1953 when Phil Edwards (aka Guaiuli Kid) went to get boards from Velzy. Tube was living under the pier. I was very close to Tube 1954 thru '58. Sharing hut, etc and Coke bottles 'till the Gidget thing happened and I went to Europe for six months.
Kenny Price & I took him into the Inc. California Inshore Team and he was the celebrity arm of the of the Royal Hawaiian Team - he was outside squad captain."
You see Tube doing The Royal Hawaiian for the entire length of a wave in Endless Summer I. Later, Terry met Phyllis, lists his occupation on the marriage certificate as "Surfboard salesman for Bing Surfboards". However, I remember him as a salesman for Jacobs when he hustled me onto the Velzy Jacobs team around 1955. Whatever, he was essentially the pivotal social figure at Malibu for many years.
Because of Tracy's, cordial personality and inasmuch as he was there collecting and telling the stories of surfing... and as a good surfer knew what he was talking about, he probably did more to advance the sport than any single surfer or board maker of the day.
Was he there watching and telling it like it is when Bobby Patterson came on the scene?... Set everyone on the path of nose riding, especially Dewey Weber who became known as "the little man on wheels" and Malibu's main grommet at the time, Mickey Munoz whose innovative, fearless and well balanced skill set mixed generously with his ever bubbling sense of humor to provide most of Malibu's in-water and around the beach fire entertainment.
How many precious hours did he spend hanging out around beach fires with Hollywood personalities, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Jackle, Peter Lawford... regulars like Kenny 'Greenwater' Price, John 'The Bucker' Anning, Bags, The Beetle, Jaw, and on into the next echelons of characters, The Enforcer, Sandpiper, Misto George etc.
What would the hay days of motion pictures have been with out the stories of Luella Parsons? Similarly, how much of surfing's emerging technology would have been lost, we're it not for Terry passing along the stories of bitchin' turns, pullouts, tip rides, body styles, snakings, shapes and designs?!
Beyond the fact that Malibu was where anybody who was tops would go during a south swell, surfing itself... The skill, was being created. Was he there when San Onofre beach orphan and style sponge Mickey Chapin moved into the Malibu area bringing with him the best of all 'down south' had to offer? Set new performance standards?
There were no surfing magazines. Beach talk passed the stories along with nary an ounce of fat lost. Simply getting up and aiming for the pier was passé. Over shadowed now by the ever more radical and highly stylized 'left-go-right' turning of the next wave of young bucks... Doyle, Dewey, Ford, Kemp.
Nose riding, which had been very much the exclusive territory of Patterson, Munoz, Gomez and Grigg was now open game for the next batches of hot doggers: Fowler, Anning, Price, Cooper, Carson, Chrysler, Barrons, Henderson, Jamie Budge, Liddle... as better boards were being built by Velzy, Kivlin, Quigg and young emerging South Bay craftsmen, Noll, Goodart, Bing, Rick.
Day after day, every new move, every possible board innovation was being tried out at Malibu. Dave Sweet bringing forth the first foam boards... Lindeman's honeycomb boards... "too light to ride!", we all screamed (15 pounds).
What a history this man gathered as Fain battled Dora, Rick Chrysler bloomed, 'No Pants Lance' Carson took both nose riding and beach antics to new levels, Denny Aaberg probably discussed scripting Big Wednesday his big screen surf epic ... while a hundred million sets of peeling rights passed under the pier.
Although most of the history may seem to have gone with him. I bet you can look at his picture, even here.. And pick up some of it.. Maybe just a little. And you wonder... how much of this treasure trove is still locked up in files on his PC.
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