When we were interviewing Neal Luoma for the movie he shared his collection of surf related artifacts with us.  He has collected some incredible things.  He has an original Tom Blake life saving board (!), letters from legendary board shapers, issues of old surf club newsletters, classic posters from Surfer Magazine, letterhead from his original board label Oscar Harris, super-8 footage of his surfing exploits.  He also has photo albums thick with pictures documenting life on Lake Erie.   Quite a few of them standout, further testament that Neal is a talented artist, whether the medium be photography, sculpture, painting, or whatever he directs his effort toward.

I asked Neal to tell me about this black and white shot, which is one of my favorites.

This is what he had to say:

The photo was taken by my surfing buddy Gene Nieminen. If I get this right I think it was in early November of 1970, or maybe 1971.  I went in with a shorty wetsuit and a bathing cap to try to keep my head warm. Lack of wetsuits around back then. I got the shorty wetsuit from a Top Value catalog. What you did back then was save up all your Top Value stamps and paste or lick them and stick them in a savings books . Then save up several books of them and cash them in at a rewards store. Those stamps you would receive after making a purchase of gasoline or groceries at different stores that gave out Top Value Stamps. The wetsuit was a design  for more like scuba diving as it had metal twist pins that hold up the beavertail to the front side of your hips. It was a flap that you pulled up between your legs and snapped  on. But it was all we had back then here in the Great Lakes area.

Back then the beach was pretty rocky and and you had to walk carefully over it as we didn’t have watershoes  available to us then. It was a session of not too big surf probably around occasional choppy 3 footers, but we did have excellent sandbars back then to make the waves break nice off shore. This was at the campground’s beach , what we now call Surfer’s Point. After freezing my ass off in these cold conditions I headed up to the sauna for a hot 180 degree steam-bath to counteract the cold hypothermia I was feeling.

The surfboard was a Bahane, 7 foot 6 inch round tail with one fin , which was removable. So that’s about all I can remember hope you can use that info somehow.