Kemp Aaberg
and the Phenomenal Rise of California Surfing:

An Interview with William Hale Clarke and David Dahlquist
in Carpentaria, California. 12/23/2001.

INTRODUCTION:

Before Gidget there was nothing. Well... certainly at the time surfing went public with the release of "Gidget" in 1959, few had any idea the movie would launch a billion dollar sports industry. "Gidget", was loosely based on the adventures of Kathy Kohner a Westwood High School tomboy who learns to surf with "the guys at Malibu". Kemp Aaberg was one of those "guys" and one of her high school friends. Aaberg, a tremendous natural athlete, later went on to become a Malibu lifeguard. He fit the image of a young, blond, wave rider that has become the sport's prototype. As one of the stuntmen for the surfing scenes in Gidget, Kemp along with Mickey Dora and Johnny Fain made up the crew that introduced the world to surfing. The rest is history.....

INTERVIEW:

"That performance by Dewey Weber cranking giant turns on about 10 or 12 foot Makaha waves ... all the little South Bay gremmies of all ages went, "Wooow!!! where is the surfboard shop!!!"

KA: I'm definitely what you would call an "antique" surfer...kind of like the old time longboarder. And any of my surfing explorations were definitely done on the big, straight, "tongue depressors" with the fin stuck right on the tail. Cause I've been around surfing for a long time, and many, many decades have passed now since the middle fifties when I first started surfing. So I'd say that any given person would probably never have even heard of me really ... although I was totally amped out of my mind in what you would call the forefront of development of what you would call "hot dog" surfing during that time of the late fifties and early sixties. So incredible as you reflect on it ... it was an incredible period of time. Everything was being invented, the whole thing was bubbling forth like it would anyway but it was just happening then in the late fifties because the boards became developed. They cut them down to about nine feet and got the redwood stringers out of there ... threw those out. Pretty soon people could start turning for the first time. And when that turn started happening, that's when surfing really caught on and I'd say that the advent of Dewey Weber and the movie called "The Big Surf" by Bud Browne, young gremmies in the South Bay saw that performance by Dewey Weber cranking giant turns on about 10 or 12 foot Makaha waves ... all the little South Bay gremmies of all ages went, "Wooow!!! where is the surfboard shop!!!" and they headed to Velzy/Jacobs both partners and at that time there were only three, actually four board makers along the coast of any significance; there was Hobie in Dana Point, and there was Gordy, Gordon Duane in Huntington Beach and then you go up to Velzy and Jacobs in L.A. and Santa Monica and they were both partners hacking the boards out with draw knives.

"Everything was being invented, the whole thing was bubbling forth like it would anyway but it was just happening then in the late fifties because the boards became developed."

KA: Like I said, every gremmie in the South Bay that knew anything about the ocean was going to get his new "Pig Board", which was a wide tailed board that would barely kick-out. And that was really where surfing started bubbling forth and becoming popular like it is today. And the last board maker was up in Santa Cruz and that was O'Neill. Jack O'Neill was also hacking away at balsa blanks. So think about that though, it was a very undeveloped and incredibly packed with potential sport. I wish I'd realized it more then. All I was, was a stoked high school enthusiast that was lucky enough to tune into Malibu in its hay day and concerning this Rincon area where I spent most of my years riding a surfboard. I used to come up on a Friday night, it was the most exciting thing in the world, driving along on the Coast Highway through all the stop signs in Ventura and we'd get up here in the middle of the night and run down to the beach and if you could hear the waves pounding, like I heard last night at the Biltmore.

"All I was, was a stoked high school enthusiast that was lucky enough to tune into Malibu in its hay day and concerning this Rincon area where I spent most of my years riding a surfboard."

KA: I was there last night at the Biltmore and it was shaking the Sea Wall a little bit and I'm going, "Oh boy, this is great" and I remember some vivid, vivid times, sleeping over in the State Park, waking up in the morning and you'd see the likes of people like, Phil Edwards as he strolled out on a picnic bench sleeping overnight and Peter Van Dyke who was into big waves at the time and we'd go down to Rincon and it would be 8+ and 10 and with no wetsuit, balsa board, just cranking these giant walls. I can remember Phil who we definitely emulated, because when I saw some of his first rides I went, "Oh my gosh this guy has got something cooking!" I did not know that his secret was riding a board that was so gol-danged heavy it would plow through anything. It was about a 45 pound, wide tailed balsa board that you could barely pick up. Cause I remember as a kid being on the beach picking up his board and going, "Oh God, how does he ride this thing?" But what he would really do was stall that giant board. It was about a ten foot board that he called "Babe" and he would lean back on the tailblock and stall the board and it would just get get hung up in the curl and then he'd take a couple of steps forward and with all that weight, he would just blast through sections, soup, tubes, the whole nine yards and we were going "All right!!" Just absolutely influencing the gremmies on the beach. So I became a guy who would stagger around my board and bounce of the soup and basically copy what was going on until the boards got better.

"We'd go down to Rincon and it would be 8+ and 10 and with no wetsuit, balsa board, just cranking these giant walls.

WC: Can you talk about that famous shot of you at Rincon in the early sixties doing an arch?

KA: Well that shot was taken in the winter of 1959 and it was a shot by John Severson set up on the rocks there. He was sitting amongst the clam diggers.

DD: That's a classic shot.

WC: It is.....It's a real enduring image.

KA: It became the logo for Surfer Magazine and they punctuated every article with it which is amazing. The track record on that thing was just amazing. It just sustained.

WC: You had the perfect form...the "archetypal" form.

KA: I don't know, let's put it this way, I went, "Whooow!" and put my hands up in the air for a moment ... I don't know. But Severson liked the shot so he utilized it for a logo for his magazine. Like I said, a lot of things were developing then; magazines, movies, surf music. surf clothing...but most important of all and especially to me, was improvement with the boards so that you could turn em because the whole exciting thing about surfing was making good bank turns. And of course they've gone further than I really want to go with these short boards and all the gyro, you know ... I can't go into the "Cuisinart blender" when you wipe out on those things and the fins are roaring around like a vegetable chopper. It's wild. I had a neighbor, a gal, in the late eighties who crashed at Hammond's Reef with the short boarder in front of her the board spun around when she was in the wipeout and the board caught her in the eye and took it out.

"Severson liked the shot so he utilized it for a logo for his magazine."

DD: I remember that accident.

KA: Sally Sebatoni. Not pretty. She's a sweet gal, real fit, strong...bad accident. Surfing is dangerous, you got to be careful. There was this guy, Sarlo, Allen Sarlo, at Malibu in the summer... ripping across the main wall ... and some guy launched a large surfboard and it cut him from his ear almost all the way around his whole throat. He survived ... and I just thank God I wasn't the lifeguard on that. I used to be the lifeguard at Malibu. And aside from controlling "Tubesteak," I mean controlling "Porkchops". Tubesteak keeping his beer in a bag. I experienced years of fun surfing and getting paid for it.

"Surfing is dangerous...... you've got to be careful."

WC: I wanted to resolve something once and for all: Is it true that Tubesteak Tracy's namesake originated because he collected bottles on the beach and bought hot dogs with the proceeds? I ask this because in a magazine interview he said that he worked in Malibu Restaurant called "The Tubesteak" and that was how the name originated. .

KA: Do you know what, I can't verify anything. But if you call him Terry, he'll go, "Don't call me that ... that's what my mother calls me!" Then what do I call you Terry? (... his name is Terry Tracy) and he goes, "Tubesteak 'll do". He has a very dry sense of humor. I've known him since I was sixteen and he was a very colorful ... he says, "Some people surf ... other people have personality ... I don't need to ride waves ... I have the personality".

"Then what do I call you Terry? (....his name is Terry Tracy) and he goes, "Tubesteak 'll do".

WC: He just hung out on the beach, he didn't surf at all ?

KA: At San Onofre he put a card table out there on the sand halfway between the parking lot and the water. and he put a phone out there on the card table and an umbrella and then he'd sit there in a little lounge chair sipping some sort of white wine and you'd walk by and say, "Tubesteak, what's the phone for?" and he goes, "Just in case my agent calls." And then he would also go on all the time down there at San Onofre, he would say that he was "between pictures." And he would complain, not only was he "between pictures"... he would complain that the beach had no leadership whatsoever ... that it had no direction, no one to talk to ... no one to give out advice and that was going to be his function there. He was sort of like a social worker." A lot of these guys are just wandering around here aimlessly without any leadership. He was funny, really funny.

"Tubesteak, what's the phone for?" and he goes, "Just in case my agent calls."

WC: Malibu used to have all these characters down there. I remember guys living up by the lagoon - "squatters", did you have to deal with that as a lifeguard?

KA: No. At that time there was very little of that- that would be in the early sixties ... they'd actually go home to their mothers. Malibu was riddled with characters though. No doubt about it ... a turnstyle of characters.

WC: So you started surfing in '56 right? And that was the year Kathy Kohner (the Gidget) started surfing...

KA: Kathy Kohner went to high school with me at University High School (next to UCLA in Westwood). We were both in the same class and in that University High School in 1956. There were; one, two ... four of us interested in surfing. Four of us that did it. And one of the guys was showing me how to do it on his "tongue depressor" shaped 10' board that was terrible ... and Kathy somehow got into it and came down to the beach and she was one of the rare girls that would try surfing. There were 2 or 3. There was Marge Calhoun who was quite good at it and her daughter Candy Calhoun who was very good at body surfing and then there were some other people, 2 or 3 women. But then Kathy was the one that met all the beach guys that hung around down there and ran home and told her father, "Oh you should see this guy, he just lives on the beach!"

"Tubesteak realized that she (Kathy Kohner) loved the beach and suggested that she bring a picnic basket filled with food and come down and come into "the compound" and feed all these "bums."

WC: Moondoggie right?

KA: No, different people. Moondoggie was actually a guy named Billy Al Bangston and he was a real formidable artist and he wore bizarre clothing which Bob Cooper copied. He wore bumblebee sweaters, that had stripes on them and big hats and grew a giant beard. And Billy Al Bangston wasn't a real waterman, he could barely swim so he'd only ride inside the cove and he would throw his hands up in front of him and ride on the tip of the nose until crashed on the sand right in the shorebreak and then he'd walk out to waist deep water again with his board and just ride that little inside shore break. And his great stance was standing on the nose with his hands up and it was like a dog "howling at the moon" it was that particular image that the guys on the beach ... see Malibu had a pit area (by the wall) and at that time it was Tubesteak's "compound" and at that time it actually had barded wire wrapped around it so that only certain individuals could sit on all the discarded furniture that was inside this compound area.

WC: There was a shack there too right?

KA: There was a shack included, yeah, old coffee tables, couches, shack and stuff like that with barbed wire around it and stuff like that. And we'd look out and criticize...and at that time, you were worried about being criticized. That's because everything was so shaky as far as surfing went. So you see Billy Al Bangston coming along in the shorebreak with his arms extending in front of him and his beard up in the air and he'd be crashing into the sand and into the shorebreak and he'd look like a dog, "howling at the moon"... therefore he was named "Moondoggie."

"Malibu had a pit area (by the wall) and at that time it was tubesteak's "compound" and at that time it actually had barded wire wrapped around it so that only certain individuals could sit on all the discarded furniture that was inside this compound area."

WC: That's great! That's the truth?

KA: That's the truth. He was the Moondoggie and Gidget had nothing to do with him, because he looked like, "Euwww, he's older.." She was interested in the younger guys like this guy, what's his name ... it's slipping my mind right now-Bill Jensen. This guy Bill Jensen who drove a beautiful like fifty two convertible Ford, board hanging out the back, he was mister clean, hair combed, went to college ... you know, the "perfect' guy. And she had a crush on him but he never really cared that much about her. The deal on the Gidget is, and this is it in a nutshell: She came down there to surf. Tubesteak realized that she loved the beach and suggested that she bring a picnic basket filled with food and come down and come into "the compound" and feed all these "bums." So she'd do it on a daily basis and bring down a picnic basket with sandwiches and a little cooler with drinks. That made Tubesteak happy because he didn't have to forage as heavy as he did. Every once and a while someone would give a suggestion about how to surf. And this is true and what is wild is this is the year 2001, last spring I was at a party in the Palisades and my old school friend, Kathy Kohner was there and we had a good talk people and places and high school and going to the beach and she said, "Kemp, you've got to come over to my house and see my old diary". I said, "Oh, you're kidding, is MY name in it too?" and she says, "Yes". And I went with her over to her house which was very near this party in the Palisades ... went into her "boudoir" and she got out her original "Gidget" diary and I looked through that and there was things like, "Oh yeah and Mickey (Dora) came down today and God, he looked so cool and Kemp, he's a nice guy" and that kind of thing. All this surf lingo garble which was read over very carefully by her dad. And her dad is the genius. He's the one that said, "Hey, there's a story here." and he synthesized the "Gidget" thing and then it became a movie.

WC: And the rest is history.

"... she got out her original "Gidget" diary and I looked through that and there was things like, "Oh yeah and Mickey (Dora) came down today and God, he looked so cool and Kemp, he's a nice guy" and that kind of thing. All this surf lingo garble which was read over very carefully by her dad."

KA: The rest is history. And I in a naive way lived through all that because they were doing pilot films to see if surfing could be photographed. Surfing had not been photographed except for Bud Browne and then a few movie guys thought, "God, could we take movies of this?" and I remember going with Johnny Fain, Mickey Dora, myself ...we were getting paid twenty bucks to ride up to Arroyo Secos and ride waves off the rock while they filmed and then they'd take the film into the studio and develop it. And they said, "Oh, this looks pretty good on film". And those were the pilot movies for "Gidget". And they selected a little guy like Mickey Muñoz to be a double for Kathy Kohner (Sandra Dee). Kathy didn't do any of her own surfing or anything.

WC: I was reading that Johnny Fain did the double for her (Sandra Dee) because she thought she would get caught in the kelp.

KA: He also was a double. Fain and Muñoz who was a Santa Monica Canyon guy.

WC: The "Quasimoto" guy. Around 1965 ...were you lifeguard when they had that riot at Malibu? There was some kind of riot on the beach? Bikers duking it out with surfers ... right out of a "Beach Party" movie...Eric Von Zipper...greasers and surfers.

KA: No.


.......continued.