"He also enjoyed driving into La Jolla village every afternoon to fetch the mail and do the shopping, chatting with the postman and the grocer as he made his rounds...activities which for him passed for a social life...They would sit in the living room, before the big picture window with it's view of the ocean, a view so extraordinary that Ray once wrote, "A radio writer once came down here to see me and he sat down in front of this window and cried because it was so beautiful. But we live here, and the hell with it." The truth was he disliked looking at the sea: 'too much water," he said, "too many drowned men."
- Raymond Chandler
from:
The Long Embrace
Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved
Judith Freeman
Simmons passed on September 26th, 1954...one of the first places his friends looked
for him was at North Bird, below Chandler's house. Chandler would lose
his beloved Cissy a few months later on December 12, 1954. Within a few years
his drinking would kill him.
Pulling out the 9'0" Balsa planing hull to ride a few for Bob today...
where Simmons rode his last one.
3 comments:
After reading and watching the things you post - combining that with interviews and film parts I´ve seen, I´m tempted to attempt write pretentious,lachrymose (prefer the French: larmoyant) and probably just simply pathetic commentaries. My profession let´s me sip some of the best jetstreams, but because of my location, the way I was raised and the families I have to support and raise, I´m not in a position to convey certain things the way you are. (And I cannot ride a stand-up surfboard like you, for that matter.) Keep doing, what you are doing, please. Regards, from 11 hrs away in landlocked Europe.
As a youth in the early 70's, and, when I got the opportunity and inclination, I would sit in my car above San Simeon Point and absorb Raymond Chandler.
California Noir, a place and experience that at that point in time was still visible, not that far away.
He was one of many writers and thinkers that informed me; after that, it was back to the surf.
Always back to the surf.
For many years I used to think I was the only one who remembered Bob Simmons.
Or Raymond Chandler.
Wow, you got em' both.
Thanks.
Chandler published the Big Sleep in 1939, his first novel. Simmons learned to surf that year. He wrote the Long Goodbye, his last (my favorite) in 1953. He wrote it in the house at North Bird in La Jolla. So his writing happened during the time that Simmons surfed in Southern California. To know a little of Simmons and Chandler is the best way i know to be able to live in this place...without them it would be unbearably bleak.
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