John "Doc" Ball was interviewed a number of times during the 1990s by surfing historians Malcolm Gault-Williams and Gary Lynch. Some of the quotes below were used in "Window to the Soul" (SURFER, October 1990, Lynch), "Doc Ball: Through the Master's Eye" (Longboard, August 1998, Gault-Williams and Lynch), and "Doc Ball: Surfing's First Dedicated Photographer" (Legendary Surfers, Gault-Williams). Ball died in 2001, at age 94.


My mother was a beautiful chicken, and a natural child psychologist. She raised us right.


I went to dental college at USC. That's where I learned to put my hands in people's mouths and not get bit. I had a little canoe I used to paddle around in the Redlands area where I grew up, in the lakes and rivers. It was mostly made of strips of wood they used for packing oranges; these great big orange boxes in the flat cars in the freight trains; just long strips of wood. They fit together perfectly. So I had my canoe while I was in dental school and I figured, Why not try it in the ocean? My family had lived in Hermosa Beach during the summertime, way back in 1920 and 1921. I took that canoe, put a little canvas covering over the front and back to keep the water from crashing over the bow and stern. Went out and paddled around, and finally found out I could catch waves with it. It was a pretty good little surfing canoe; 6-foot, 6-inches long. I called it the "Bull Squid."


There was a guy who came down to the beach at Hermosa. He’d been to Hawaii and he brought this board back; a big 10-foot redwood. He didn’t know what to do with it during the week, because he only used it on the weekend. I had a buddy named Norm whose mother and father owned a restaurant right on the beach, Walt and Mitzi Hamburgers. So we went in and made a deal. If the guy would let Norm and I use his board during the week, his folks would let him store it in their restaurant. It wasn't really mine, but that was my first board.


He was my surfing buddy for all those years, through the 1930s and '40s. We rejoiced together in the picture shooting and everything. [Blake, like Ball, took surfing pictures.]


My dad was a dentist, and his office gal brought in a folding Kodak Autographic. She didn’t want it anymore, so she gave it to my dad and he gave it to me. I took that down to the beach, and when I went to school, and after I started surfing I said to myself, "Oh man, I gotta take a picture of some of these guys.’


It was a do-it-yourself age. We bought very little. We made our own boards and swimming trunks, I even made my own camera tripod. It was good for you; after all that, you really knew how to get there from here. Of course, we had a little trouble getting gasoline. But then it was seven cents a gallon. Imagine that! We had surfing. As long as there's waves—you didn't have to pay for those. All we had to do was buy gas to get there.


We forbid any cigarette smoking in the club. There were some that did, though. One was Gene Hornbeck and another was Jean Depue. They never did have cigarettes when they came to the club, but once in a while, outside, you’d catch ‘em. Finally, Jean tried to go out at Hermosa Beach in the big surf and he couldn’t make it; he couldn’t punch through like the rest of us, he just ran out of breath. That slew the cigarettes on his behalf. He never touched ‘em again.


One of my Graflex cameras, I got it from the chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department arson squad. We traded. He was a patient of mine; I made him a three-unit gold inlaid bridge for the camera.


He was expert at putting gals up on his shoulders and riding. He was one of the big surfers in those days. He could cut across a wave almost like they do now; get in the tunnel and get out; just an extraordinary surf hound.


Tulie Clark was one of the big guys in our club. We got together a lot at Hermosa. We'd stack our boards in the back of my car or back or his, and take off for wherever we thought the surf was up. Tulie was one of those guys—not poverty-stricken, but very down, financially, in his early days. Everybody used to get after me about him. "What are you doing—a dentist!—messing around with those bums, those surf bums?" But you know what? Tulie wound up being a millionaire! He's got a big house in Palos Verdes Estates, another one in Palm Springs. He went from surf bum to millionaire.


Another one of the big guys in the club. Hoppy the had that characteristic fingertips thing when he rode. He’d have ‘em all stretched out. You could tell it was Hoppy just by looking at his hands while he was riding. He was real active [on a wave], and I always used to try and get him to grab one of those big ones because he could handle it pretty good. We used to steer [our boards] with our feet; stick your foot in the water, either right or left, whichever way you wanted to turn. Hoppy was an expert at that.


Another club guy. Yeah, Cliff was a wild one. He got the ax one morning out there at Hermosa and took 40 stitches in his leg. That kept him out of the water for a few days!


Well, that shut it out [surfing] for a while. During September 1944, [while in the Coast Guard] I got a big surprise. I was out in the South Pacific and someone said the new issue of 

 had my surfing photographs in it. And sure enough, there they were. ["Surf-Boarders Capture California," 

, September 1944.] Then after the war, it just kinda exploded again. Guys would get back—the ones who survived—and they were hungry for waves. We had an outlet. Surf was it.


I went down to the beach one day [in the 1970s], up here, at Eureka. I was going to the North Jetty because the surf was huge. I took my camera—Grannis had given me a Nikon; it had a great big telephoto lens. I rushed out to my truck, set the camera down on the rear bumper and rushed back inside the house—I’d forgotten something—got back in the truck and took off for North Jetty. That thing just spilled off somewhere along the way. But before that happened, I got a photo—one of the last ones I ever got. Patrick Edgar out at the North Jetty. Big wave–must’ve been a 22- or 23-foot, with a big old overhang comin’ down on him, soup on both sides. It was obvious he was gonna get the ax. I call it ‘Neptune’s Breakfast."

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