Brad Barrett was the unsung hero of SURFER Magazine's High Renaissance (I like my double-entendres the way I like my Twitter victims: easy and weak), from 1968 to 1972. Most of Brad's contribution was photo-related. He and Ron Stoner were the only two masthead-listed staff photographers in 1968 and '69, and a year or so later he became the magazine's first photo editor. But at one point Brad was listed as "Staff of All Trades"—more wordplay; the Panama Red made it funnier—and that gets closest to the actual service he provided to the magazine, which was to do pretty much anything that needed doing apart from pimping ad space. Brad organized, critiqued, did IT work, manned the office turntable, zinged the one-liners . . . he kept things lively and creative.

What Brad didn't do much of was write (mostly because editor Drew Kampion, in his magnificent prime, was a one-man show), but he's since published a handful of excellent articles in Surfer's Journal, and for 20-something years his often-lengthy emails have lit up my inbox. I was thrilled last week to have the essay you see below drop from the digital ether into my lap.

Brad's piece is about Motorskill and the Ranch, and what it was like to be young and high, smart and stoked, in 1970. I won't further summarize, but if you can free up 12 minutes, click 

 and watch for yourself. It's a beautiful ride.

In January of 1970, a group of us traveled with John Severson to The Ranch. The obvious purpose was to shoot footage of good uncrowded California surf for John's upcoming movie 

. The not-so-obvious purpose was—whatever else happened. This was a key ingredient during that epoch. We subdivided into three parts. There were the surfers: Mike Tabeling, Brad McCaul, and Angie Reno. Then “us”: John, Drew Kampion, Art Brewer, and myself. Finally, there was Rick Griffin—an entire mondo-bizarro group unto himself, deployed for this trip to pilot the newly-psychedelicized bus Motorskill, and to scare the living shit out of anybody not ready to deal with his quietly mysterious persona. Most of us rode in the seatless rear confines of Motorskill while John followed along in the SURFER Magazine International Harvester Travelall to film Motorskill as it wound its tortuous way up and down the narrow strip of Hollister blacktop that led to the beach. The bus had to be double-clutched while changing gears, and it made a horrible grinding noise whenever Griffin downshifted, and every time this happened Brad McCaul would holler out “I’ll take a pound!” which I still don't really understand, but it made Rick chuckle which in turn made everyone else crack up, and eventually we made our merry way to the bluff at St. Augustine.

Now we were, as stated, ostensibly there to work—ride waves, take pics, write, etc. But at some point Art and I, responsible denizens of Laguna Beach that we were, dropped mescaline. We climbed aboard the bus, sat ourselves down in the back, and waited to come on. Just as things began turning interstellar I happened to look up and there was Rick, sitting in the driver’s seat, giving us an Evil Eye Fleegle double-whammy in the rearview mirror. Scared the shit out of me. (Griffin was a pretty spooky guy at that time. At the end of each day, when we'd retire to the motel in nearby Buellton, Rick would obsessively read the papers about the Manson murders which were still in the fresh-blood stage. I dug Griffin's mystique, but that was maybe too much mystique for this boy.) Art caught Griffin's stare as well, and the two of us exited the bus and lay on the bluff staring at blades of grass. The surf was pretty good, the surfers were out doing their thing, and John was pissed 'cause Art and I were out of commission. Substitute cameraman Drew got 

 classic shot of the trip: Rick Griffin’s forward-squatting left-arm-navigating serpent-locks-flying tiny offshore wind afternoon tube San Augustine surf fever blast.

Drew then turned his camera to the beach. He took a shot of Art, flannel-shirted and scrutinizing something in his palm—a blade of grass, a loose hair, a grain of sand, or something equally captivating. Then he took a shot of John and I squatting on the wet sand, John with his Bolex, me in cowboy boots, squinting out to the horizon, hand across my forehead trying without much success to keep my head on. John, by then, bless his soul, was smiling.

MOTORSKILL TRIPPING WITH BRAD BARRETT: "GRIFFIN GAVE US AN EVIL-EYE FLEEGLE, AND IT SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF ME!"

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