Surf Six

I Googled Surf Six the other day.  Came up with two strong hits.

1.       A restaurant in Old Orchard Beach, Maine; and

2.       A shopping and retail area in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The one that I was looking for wasn’t listed anywhere.  They were a group of snot-nosed teenagers in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio in the mid-Sixties. 

They were some kind of proto-taggers who marked up various public sites with the simple legend, “Surf Six,” or “Surf 6.”  I couldn’t say which version they liked best, I never saw one myself.  I heard about them from a member who was a summer friend of mine, and had been since we were about four years old. 

I’m at the time of life when one starts to wonder what ever happened to boyhood friends that we haven’t seen or heard about in forty or fifty years. 

I Googled my friend today, and checked the Facebook.  No luck on the ‘Book, but I did come up with two possible addresses for a man that may be his brother, or his nephew.  More likely his nephew.  I’m sending letters to each of the addresses.

My friend was a great kid, a heroic kid.  He was six feet tall by the time he was twelve, on his way to six feet, four or five inches.  As a teenager, he was well formed and very handsome, and incredibly strong.  I mean pick up a Buick strong.  That really came in handy during our later summers together, at Lake George in the Adirondacks.  The nearby town was very small, and it featured a huge lumber mill where they made, among other things, pencils with the same name as the town.  You’ve heard of the pencils.  Some nice Revolutionary War sites , too.  It was an interesting place.  Not much for the local teenagers to do though, so their main recreation was fighting.  The locals loved to pick on summer kids, but boy, did they give us a wide birth.  All they ever gave us was a cheerful smile. 

I might as well say it, the town was Ticonderoga, New York, at the northern end of the lake.  Right across the hill was the southern end of Lake Champlain.  That’s what made it such an important place in the wars of the period.  Rodgers’ Rock, Ethan Allan and the Green Mountain Boys, Last of the Mohicans.  I never saw an Indian myself. 

I miss my friend, and I hope he’s okay, and that the recipient of my letters can put me in touch with him.