Surf Cat

 Added on December 19, 2019  Kevin Cody  Manhattan Beach , newsletter

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Shreddin’ Santa sliding through the snow at the South Bay Boardriders contest on Sunday in El Porto. (Special thanks to Tracey Meistrell, Body Gove and Dive N’ Surf) Photo by Ray Vidal

by Kevin Cody

[Reprinted from Easy Reader, Dec. 1978]

Today, everyone knows there really is a Surfing Santa. Children all over the world have seen newspaper photographs and even television coverage of Santa surfing at the Hermosa pier at Christmas time. But it wasn’t so very long ago that many children didn’t believe in Surfing Santa. Like the Green Flash at sunset, so few children had seen Surfing Santa that most of them thought he was just a storybook figure. 

That’s what Easy Reader’s Littlest Reporter thought too, until one cold December day in 1978 when the waves were so big they were breaking over the bait shop at the end of the Hermosa Beach pier. Hoping to find a story about the big waves, the Littlest Reporter stopped by the Lifeguard Headquarters at the foot of the pier. The lifeguard log reported that the Baywatch boat had rescued three visiting fishermen swept off the Redondo Breakwater by the unusually large winter swell. But what really caught the Littlest Reporter’s attention wasn’t in the log. It was a whispered conversation he overheard between Captain Crum and, an old retired lifeguard everyone called Pablo. The Littlest Reporter thought he heard Captain Crum ask Pablo when he was going surfing with Santa. 

The Littlest Reporter gets his interview with Surfing Santa in 1978. (Special Thanks to Pablo Matthies and Loyal Pennings) Photo by LInda O’Donnell

“Do you really surf with Santa?” the Littlest Reporter blurted out before he could stop himself. “I mean, Santa isn’t real. So how could you surf with him?” he asked, trying to sound as skeptical as his hardheaded editor.

“Are you saying you don’t believe Santa can surf?” the big, old lifeguard thundered. ‘You’re talking to the man who taught Santa to surf. In fact, I’m surfing with Santa at the pier tomorrow morning, at the crack of dawn,” he bragged. Then, realizing he had said too much, the old lifeguard warned the Littlest Reporter, “Don’t put that in the paper. Santa likes to get away from the crowds this time of year.”

Back at the Easy Reader office that afternoon, the Littlest Reporter asked his hardheaded editor if he knew an old lifeguard named Pablo.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been listening to that old surf dog. I suppose he told you about the time he taught Santa Claus to surf. He’s been pitching that story to us since I was the Littlest Reporter. Pablo tells the tallest  tales of any surfer who ever dripped saltwater from his sinuses. Don’t let me catch you wasting your time with him,” the hardheaded editor growled.

Shreddin’ Santa deploys his snow making machine on Saturday in El Porto. Photo by Ray Vidal

The Littlest Reporter scurried out of the editor’s office as hastily as his shaky legs would carry him. But that night before he left work, he asked the newspaper’s photographer if he could borrow the paper’s old rangefinder camera with the telephoto lens to take pictures of the Christmas tree on top of the pier bait shop.

The next morning, as the sun was rising over the sand dunes and the moon was setting over the ocean, the Littlest Reporter hurried out to the beach with his camera and notepad. The sand was cold as ice and the storm warning flags snapped in the cold north wind. The waves looked like snowcapped mountains as they struck the end of the pier.

“Cowabunga! It looks like Santa sent us an early Christmas present,” bellowed a familiar voice.

Santa gathers Christmas wishes from South Bay Boardrider groms on Sunday in El Porto. (Special thanks to Tracey Meistrell, Body Gove and Dive N’ Surf) Photo by Kevin Cody

Pablo was standing at the Littlest Reporter’s side, wearing a bright red hooded parka and sheepskin boots. “Better grab my board,” he said. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, he disappeared off in the direction of the lifeguard headquarters.

“Where’s Santa?” the Littlest Reporter called after him. But his voice was lost in the roar of the wind and the crashing of the waves.

The Littlest Reporter shivered on the beach for what seemed at least an hour, waiting for Pablo to return with his surfboard. But there was no sign of the old lifeguard. Maybe the waves were too powerful even for Pablo. Everyone said he was a big talker, the Littlest Reporter thought to himself.

His editor’s warning came back to him as he pushed his notebook into his pants pocket and put the lens cap back on his camera.

If he hadn’t stopped to watch a pod of bodysurfing dolphins, he almost certainly wouldn’t have noticed what looked like a red buoy rising and falling with the waves off the end of the pier.

He raised the old rangefinder camera to his eye for a better look. What he saw wasn’t a bobbing red buoy at all. It was Santa on a surfboard.

As the Littlest Reporter watched in wonder, Santa paddled after the pod of dolphins into a wave as big and as steep as the Matterhorn. They slalomed across the avalanching wave all the way to the beach. The dolphins swam back out to catch more waves. But a weary Santa dragged his dripping body out of the water and sat down on a bench-shaped berm carved out of the beach by the giant waves.

His heart racing at the prospect of his first Easy Reader cover story, the Littlest Reporter walked up to Surfing Santa and boldly introduced himself.

“I wasn’t expecting to see a reporter up so early in the morning,” Santa said, lifting his head from his tired arms. “But since you’re here, tell me what you would like for Christmas, young fellow. I’ve given some pretty good stories to reporters over the years. Old Frank Church sent me a very nice thank-you note after I gave him that story about the little girl named Virginia. Just don’t bother asking me for a poem. That ‘night before Christmas’ rhyme I gave Clement Moore was too much darn work. Oh, and I don’t give interviews. It wouldn’t do for people to know too much about how Santa does all he does in just one night.”

The Littlest Reporter’s heart sank. All he really wanted from Santa was an interview. How would he ever convince his editor to print his story about meeting Surfing Santa on the front page of the newspaper if he couldn’t flesh it out with details that only Santa could know?

Suddenly, the Littlest Reporter thought of something even better than an interview to convince his hardheaded editor that this time Pablo was telling the truth, that there really is a Surfing Santa.

“Can I have a photograph of you surfing?” the Littlest Reporter asked.

“Can you what? Can you take my picture? Do you mean to say that I just risked my life taking off on the biggest north swell ever to reach the California coastline, and rode it 300 yards to the beach just to get my picture on the cover of the Easy Reader. And you didn’t click off a single frame? Is that antique hanging around your neck a paperweight? Maybe you should ask that old grinch of an editor at Easy Reader for a new camera for Christmas,” Santa shouted, leaping to his feet in anger. 

The Littlest Reporter shrank back and sheepishly confessed that he had been so surprised to see Santa surfing that he had forgotten to take the lens cap off.

“I’d rather drop down an eight-story chimney than paddle out in this heavy, wool suit again. But since it’s Christmas, and I am Santa, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll get you your photograph if you promise not to print it until I’ve left town. Like I told you, my work requires secrecy,” Santa said.

“And another thing. When you see that old sea dog Pablo, tell him the next time he promises to go surfing with me and doesn’t show up, it will count as a lie in his log and he won’t get that new Body Glove wetsuit he’s been asking me for. He tells more tall tales than any man I’ve known since that Dickens fellow – who was another one of those reporters who are always embellishing stories about me just to sell newspapers.”

True to his word, Santa paddled back out and caught a wave even more mountainous than the first one. And this time the Littlest Reporter made sure the lens cap was off. 

That year, the Easy Reader Christmas issue carried the Littlest Reporter’s first front page story, accompanied by a photograph that even his hardheaded editor had to admit was proof in the Christmas pudding that there really is a Surfing Santa Claus.

Shreddin’ Santa celebrates another fun session in El Porto. Photo by Ray Vidal

And ever since that fateful, big wave day at the Hermosa pier in December 1978, whenever children have wondered if there really is a Surfing Santa, their parents have  merely had to show them Surfing Santa’s picture on the cover of the Easy Reader Christmas issue. 

Today, the Littlest Reporter is himself a hardheaded editor. And like the hardheaded editor he succeeded, he warns all his new reporters not to believe a single word they hear from old Pablo, whose stories over the years just keep getting taller and taller. The only person at the newspaper who is allowed to talk to old Pablo, and then only at Christmas time, is the new Littlest Reporter. ER