About four blocks from our house was (is) the town of Surfside. Like Sunset Beach, it was built on a sand beach with two streets lined with small cottages. In the early 1950's most of the sand washed out in a series of storms and the waves then attacked Surfside's beachfront houses. I think I was along when my mom took this picture in 1956. At about that time (I was eight then) I started to walk down here regularly to see the damage.
It was fascinating and awesome!
Acres of beach had simply vanished, houses were gone, and the street was covered in sand or missing!
What power!
So over time I began to re-create these events in miniature or on paper. Instead of sports or Boy Scouts, I would sometimes wander the back bay and if I found a sandy shoreline and some junk I would build a little town with roads and buildings and a seawall and then clobber it with waves I made with a board... Later I built a 'wave box' in the back yard that I filled half with sand and then spent hours building a model beach house on the sand. I'd then fill the
'ocean' with the hose, and bring in the storm surf with a board and that was the end of the house!
I usually did the wave - board thing by myself, but also built model houses and towns on the beach with my friend Chris. It was an extra treat if the tide came in and the waves got it!
Then I began drawing the ocean, or trying to, and came up with scenes like the one below, done in oil pastel when I was about 15. I was trying to visualize what it would be like being in one of those Surfside houses when that big wave came that ultimately destroyed it...
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