Gary Lynch recorded a conversation with bodysurfing and surf canoeist Ron Drummond in the summer of 1988, when Drummond was 80. This version has been shortened and edited.

I started to tell you why I’m deaf. I got hit by lightning and it knocked me about 15 feet flat on my back. It was such a loud noise; when you hear thunder way off you don't realize how loud it is, but when it’s right next to you, why, it ruined the nerves in my ear, so I’ve never been able to hear well since.

During the war, World War II, down in Port of Spain, Trinidad. I was unloading pillboxes and tanks and things like that from a ship, and the boom came up over the ship. I was just reaching for a sling to hook up a pillbox, and my hand was about six inches from the sling. If I’d had a hold of that sling it would have killed me, because it burned that sling almost completely through, a three-quarter-inch sling. I was lucky there. That’d be one of my close calls.

I sat down the other night and counted, and got up to 72.

I always wanted to be an adventurer. My father was an explorer, and he’d been all over interior China and all the out-of-the-way islands, the Philippines, and had skirmishes with headhunters, and that sort of thing. Headhunters killed a lot of his men. My father's carriers sneaked into the enemy camp, these headhunters’ camp [to retrieve the bodies], and they had their heads on poles and were dancing around a big fire, real jubilant that they’d got these heads. The bodies were off in the dark somewhere, so my father’s carriers got the bodies and my father took a picture of them carrying these bodies later the next day, stretched up the way you put a deer on a pole, one end on one fellow’s shoulder and one on the other.

But anyway, all I was going to say is, I wanted to be an adventurer too. So that’s why, as I was studying mechanical engineering at UCLA, I just figured, well, this really doesn’t interest me. Go back to Schenectady or someplace and work for whatever it was—you’d probably get about $150 a month then. So I heard that the Eastern Canadian Mining Company was sending canoe expeditions out to unexplored areas to get the geology of the place, and if they found something favorable in terms of deposition of minerals, why, they’d send 40 or 50 prospectors in there. The manager of this company came out to Los Angeles once a year on business, and I arranged to see. Nice fellow, he sort of patted me on the back and said, “Son, we only hire graduate mining engineers and geologists.” So that let me down. But the next time he came out I went to see him again. He said, “You’re really interested, aren’t you? You’re really enthusiastic.” I said, “Yes, sir!” And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what you do. You spend a year studying the subjects that I tell you to, and then we’ll give you a try on one of our expeditions.”

Well, I studied mineralogy and geology and pre-Cambrian shield and blowpipe analysis and all that sort of thing that’d make me of some use to them, and then I got on with them [and they sent me and my partner Jack Barrington to Canada]. We were the first white man on five rivers of northern Canada, and mapped them, and named them. Our names are on the Canadian government maps now. I named one in Northern Manitoba—Barrington Lake, Barrington River. I found a needle hammered out of native copper, up inland from the northwest corner of the Hudson Bay, so I named it the Copperneedle River. That’s in big letters now on the Canadian maps, and I felt real proud of that.

[Paging through a photo album] There’s the Cove. Isn’t that the Cove?

Yeah, that’s Dana Cove. That photo was taken from the pier before they built the harbor.

I used to surf out there as a kid, in '63, '64, '65. I remember one of the kayaks you had, you must have built it yourself. It had a real tight skin, like canvas, stretched over a frame. I remember you could roll upside down and go through waves, punch through waves. That was the first time I ever saw you, was out there at Dana Cove.

I think I’m the only one who sort of mastered the art of paddling while you’re upside down. I'd come up to a big broken wave, turn over, paddle under the wave upsidedown, then come up and roll back over again. It's the best way by far. If you try to go through it when you’re just floating upside down, it’ll knock you backwards. So that’s really a good system of going through a big, broken wave. [Points to the front of his canoe.] That’s my dog, Surfer, in the bow up there.

How did the canoeing thing start with you?

I’ve been interested in canoeing ever since I was 14. I remember my brother Tommy, he’s a year and a half older than I am. We used to spend our summers at Hermosa Beach, and I brought the canoe down there one year. The next morning we walked down to the beach, and the waves are about six feet high, thick and curling. And I says, “I don’t want to take it out through that.” And Tommy says, “Oh, you chicken!” I couldn’t take that, so we went out, and sure enough a wave came over right into the canoe. Broke the gunnels in several places, burst the hind end all out, and it took me two weeks to repair. That’s when Tommy says, “Aw, you’re dumb anyway to try to take a canoe out in the ocean.” Which made me determined that I was going to learn to enjoy canoeing on the ocean. So I think I’m the only one in the world, probably, that enjoys Canadian-type canoe surfing and doing various stunts out in the ocean.

It’s meant a lot in my life, canoeing. I’ve really enjoyed it. I rode a board, too, of course. I remember once saying to a friend, “I think I’ll quit canoeing and take up my surfboard again. I need to practice surfing.” And he says, “Forget the surfboard. That’s really something, the canoe, something different. You keep that up.” So I did. It is a great sport. Did I ever tell you about the big wave I caught in a canoe down in the Tijuana Slough?

Boy, that was a whopper. That was about forty feet high, I guess. I was right inside the curl. I thought I was never going to make it. That was one of the close calls I was talking about earlier.

Yeah. I was talking to Tommy Zahn, and he said that he’d told Dempsey Holder, who was down there, you remember Dempsey?

Dempsey was the chief lifeguard down there.

Yeah. Tommy said, “Whenever the waves are really big, give me a call.” So one morning he got a call from Dempsey. “It's really big at the Slough. You’d better get down here.” So Tommy and Peter Cole jumped in the car and drove all the way down there, and it was about one in the afternoon by the time they finally arrived. And they paddled way out to where these great big waves were breaking, and you were out there already. Tommy said he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Nah, he wasn’t out there where the big waves were breaking. I’m the only one that had ever ridden those big waves. They were about 20 feet high in near shore. That’s where Tommy was, I guess.

Well, a 20-footer is a good wave, but they were twice that big outside. None of the fellows would go out there with me. They’re scared. They can see the waves just booming over. What’s the biggest wave you’ve ever ridden?

Mmmm, not real big. I’m not a big-wave rider. Probably triple over my head, three times as high as myself, is all. I don’t really like the big ones.

Gary, when did you leave Southern California? What year?

Well, I don’t like it the way this country is building up. Thousands and thousands of new homes going up. I remember one time I was driving, and you know who Peanuts Larson is?

I was driving with him up through Santa Ana, and we passed about a hundred little white houses, all exactly alike, all going up, and he says, “Look at all those little breeding pens.” But I’m like old Pop Proctor. I’m glad I lived when I did, because it’s getting worse here every year. These days I go kayaking four or five times a week, and it used to be at a certain stop signal there’d be maybe two or three cars ahead of me. Now they’re lined up, every time we go down there, half a mile back to get through that stop signal. In other words, traffic is just getting unbearable, with all the thousands of homes going up.

Well, I’m not here to judge, but it’s hard to live where there isn’t a lot of nature.

This was all open country down here when I was young, and that’s what I enjoyed about it.

[Doris, Drummond's wife, comes into the room, the conversation meaders for a while]

Just us. A lot of nieces and nephews. I once asked my brother, the doctor, we didn't have any kids when we finally decided to have them. He said, “Well, you spent too many years roaming around the world, putting it off, and now it’s too late.” So that’s what happened. The big disappointment in my life. You’ve got kids, huh?

No, I don’t. But neither does Tommy Zahn, interestingly enough, or Tom Blake. It’s amazing how many people I’ve talked to in the last few weeks who don't. But all their lives have been totally filled, as far as I can tell. So I don’t necessarily think that it’s something everyone has to do.

[Looks at another old photograph] There's old Pop Proctor, a picture I took of him at San Onofre. He was quite an individual. People thought Pop was sort of a roughneck or something, but actually he was the son of a very wealthy shipbuilder. Owned his own shipbuilding yard on the Clyde in Scotland. But Pop was a normal young fellow, and he liked to go to town and whoop it up every once in awhile, you know. He’d come back late and his father didn’t like that, so he said, “You get back here about midnight when you go to town like that.” Pop came back late again, so his father says, “The next time that happens, just forget about coming back.” A week or so later, sure enough, Pop was going to get back after midnight, so he just never went home. Never saw his father again.

Pop had a good education. He knew all about engines and boats and that sort of thing, so he got a job as the chief engineer on a big boat and took off and traveled all around. He had a very interesting life. But what I was going to say first was, remember, he kind of lived out of his car, this big camper van he had, and people made him out to be sort of an uncouth individual, but he was brought up very well, and he was very polite. Every time he’d come to our house, why, he’d seat Doris, you know, and get up when Doris came in the room. Very mannerly and polite, and he’d always bring a bottle of wine with him. But I never saw him get drunk. Pop was always a perfect gentleman in our house.

I met Pop in 1930, when I was a lifeguard up in Los Angeles, a beach lifeguard. Years later, when he retired, he came down this way lived in his camper at Doheny State Park. And I said to Doris, “I bet old Pop would like a nice home-cooked meal for a change. He does all his own cooking in his camper.” So we invited him up to dinner one night, and he came once a week after that for the next 30 years. We ended up knowing his whole life history, all about prospecting down in Mexico, and oh, all sorts of different things. He took a rowboat down the Mississippi, and did all sorts of crazy things.

I remember telling Pop once that I wasn’t going to take up golf until I was real old, because some famous sportswriter said that golf was good exercise for an old man, not a young man. Pop quoted me in this. Or he didn’t quote me, but he said the same thing, that he was going to take up golf when he got to be 100 years old. He lived to be 99.

There’s a lot of real healthy surfers that I’ve met that have lived to be way beyond the average age expectancy.

Well, yes, and I think what happened to Pop was, he stopped exercising there at the end.

He was a really careful driver. And the last time he went in to do the test to renew his driver’s license he was too careful and went too slowly, and there was traffic behind him on the road. So they couldn’t renew his license.

Why, he came to live with us for about a month or two. How long did he stay?

[Doris] He was very nice, a very gentlemanly man, but it was just difficult.

I got him a real nice room in the hotel, and sent him some money. He had all the luxuries, all these things he'd never had before, and wasn't used to. He just turned a switch and the furnace would come on. He’d close all the windows and boy, that heat, to him, was just incredible. Like a friend of mine used to say, “I’m getting older and colder.” Old Pop just loved the warmth. And the bathtub. He told me he’d get up at 7 in the morning and go take a luxurious hot bath, then go to sleep in the tub and wake up at noon. Well, that type of life, where he didn’t get any exercise, after all those years where he went out surfing every day— he got sort of stupid. Like, for example, he wouldn’t drink water. He said to me, “Ron, why drink water when wine tastes so much better.” Can you imagine that? Then he’d get constipated, and he was taking Ex-Lax every day, and doing enemas every day.

It doesn’t seem like it. I hope I can keep going that long. If I can do half as well as you’ve done . . . .

Tell me a little about when they built Dana Point Harbor.

There was a man who was kind of running Orange County, Ken Sampson—he gave himself a job title of Harbor Manager—he didn’t want any surfers around his harbor at all, because a couple of those long-haired surfers had committed some vandalism at Newport Harbor. So he says, “I don’t want any surfers around Dana Point Harbor at all.” I tried to get him to preserve the surf at Dana Cove, this beautiful surf. I wanted him to, instead of building the breakwater right into the Point there, I told him to move the whole thing down a bit and leave the waves at the Cove. It was just a wonderful surfing spot.

He didn’t want to have anything to do with any surfers, no, so he wouldn’t do it. You know, I made 22 suggestions for improving recreation in the harbor down here, and the Harbor Commission approved of every one of them, but Ken Sampson would only do two of them. One had to do with where they built the breakwater to the Point, it was real steep, with big rocks and everything, and really hard to get down to the other side of the Point there. I once saw a young mother and her small baby up there, and she tripped on the rocks and fell, and so I suggested to the Harbor Commission that they build some concrete steps to prevent that from happening again. They did that. Also, before there were any yachts in the West Basin, kids on their little rubber rafts would get caught in a strong wind and it’d blow them down in there, and they’d be trapped and they couldn’t get out. They couldn’t go back against the strong wind. I told them to build ladders on the harbor wall so the kids could climb out. They did that too. But that was it.

He was the spokesman for wealthy land developers. He had millions of dollars to back up all his ideas, and he got to decide who ran for County Board of Supervisors. He paid for their ads, gave money to their campaigns. So he got all the Supervisors in that he wanted, and they did everything he told them to. That’s the situation that I was up against, so when it came to getting anything done for surfing. We had a running duel for a while, in the 

, first my ideas, then he would contradict them, and I’d have a turn, then him again. Finally I just gave up. I quit.

Surfing got a raw deal on that whole thing, with the harbor.

Yeah, and now surfing is now more popular than yachting! We've got about 3,000 yachts in the harbor now, but over a million surfers in California. I remember I tried to get floodlights put on the breakwater overlooking the Doheny surfing area, after they spoiled it here at Dana Point. I got an electrician, a fellow I knew, who said he’d put the lights in for nothing, install all the lights. And Ken Sampson says, “No, we can’t do that, it would attract sharks.” I couldn’t get anywhere with that guy. It kind of makes you ill, in a way.

Yeah, that's true. And Sampson had a heart attack, I heard.

Who were the first guys you started surfing with?

I met the lifeguards down there before I was a lifeguard myself. One of them had a surfboard, and I tried it.

I knew Peterson when I was a kid in high school. His father owned the bathhouse at Crystal Pier in Santa Monica, Ocean Park, I guess it was.

What memory stands out from that early period, for you?

I remember one time in high school, I was down there bodysurfing. I was catching the biggest ones, I guess they were about six feet high, something like that. All of a sudden I looked way out at sea and saw this huge swell coming. My gosh, what is this? I started swimming out as fast as I could, and I was just in exactly the right place to catch it. So I said, “Well, here goes nothing!” And I rode it all the way in. It was an earthquake wave, and I rode it till I skidded up on the beach amongst all the beach umbrellas and blankets and picnic paraphernalia, right up to the concrete wall at the edge of the sandy beach. That was about ten o’clock in the morning. Then about three o’clock that afternoon another one came in. I was on shore then, but two big waves that day came in. They were the result of earthquakes that day, I think down in Chile.

Well, let's see. The second date I ever had with Doris was right after the big Long Beach earthquake, in 1932, around there. [Note: the Long Beach earthquake of 1933 measured 6.4 on the Richter scale. It killed 115 people, caused widespread property damage, and played a major part in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel 

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