SUNDAY JOINT, 9-3-2017: CORKY CARROLL, CHAPPY JENNINGS, HENRY LUM

Hello All,

I’m going to try to send one of these out each week, mostly just to catch everybody up on what was posted over the previous seven days. So without further ado:

Posted a quickie last weekend about Corky Carroll and his Bat-board. I was sure that I had a shot of Corky actually riding the thing, but apparently not. I’ll keep looking.

“Blackball Blues” is this week’s History of Surfing section. Touches on some of the anti-surfing laws and regs from the ’50s and ’60s. Didn’t have a whole lot here photo-wise, but I really love that shot of the San Diego kids marching in their suits and ties to protest surf regs on their beach (By the way, in History of Surfing, click the photo on any posted page and it should open up another photo. Usually I put five in there. Sometimes it’s hard to see the little dots in lower right corner which indicate this.)

“You’ve Been Served Bro: Surf Laws and Lawbreakers of the Sixties” was the follow-up EOS blog to “Blackball Blues.” It’s a very incomplete timeline of events at the intersection of surf and law. Mandatory life jackets for surfers, anyone?

In Above the Roar, I posted an interview with Chappy Jennings; on Facebook I described him as having the “smallest arms and the biggest heart.” The dude absolutely charged big Pipe and Sunset; I’m trying to get more footage of him for a new Chappy Jennings vid clip. Stand by.

Chappy got me thinking about super-thin surfers, and the only guy I could think of to compete with Jennings was a quiet big-wave charger from Hawaii named Henry Lum. I wrote “Ballad of a Thin Man” about Lum, and posted it yesterday; it’s got some great pix from the ’50s.

Cool! Just this very moment got a DM from Landis Lum, Henry’s son. “Very skinny, 5'7" and 125 lbs, no muscles, just a ‘bag of bones’ according to friends. The polar opposite of a waterman, he hated getting wet. He was quiet and reserved, but gained the respect of the best big wave riders of the day. George Downing even referred to him as his hero. Rabbit Kekai would offer him his boards to ride. His reputation for riding big surf was perpetuated among the beachboys of Waikiki and became legendary.”

That’s it for this week. Thank you, everyone, for supporting the site! Please get back to me with any comments, suggestions, or Scrabble tips.

Until next week,

Matt

[Photo of Henry Lum by Clarence Maki]