SUNDAY JOINT, 7-6-2025: PHYLLIS WALSH, FOXTROTTING SOCIETY GIRL AND OUTLAW WAVE-SHOOTER

Hey All,
I have never pretended to love all my EOS children equally. The "people" entries are the Dick Smothers part of the site; I like them best, always have. Attention is paid to the others (surf breaks, equipment, events, etc.) but they must work harder, and not always to successful ends, for what I give freely and easily to the people pages.
Canoe surfing, for example. The section in James Michener's Hawaii where the resolute Bora Bora chief and his volatile brother guide a massive single-hull canoe 2,500-hundred miles north to the Big Island of Hawaii, navigating by stars, birds, and swell patterns, with a full load of villagers, flora and fauna, is epic, in every sense of the word. The sweep of history held aloft by incredible characters. I was glued to Hawaii as a kid and just as glued when I reread it ten or so years ago. But that's canoe adventuring, not canoe surfing, which I've always associated mostly with first-generation Waikiki celeb-tourists getting lightly and cheerfully hustled by beach boys, and a failed a bit of Evel Knievel big-wave capering in 1980 called Project Avalanche. I probably wrote the EOS "canoe surfing" page in a slight get-it-over-with mood, wedged as it is between "Canha, Conrad" and "Carroll, Corky."



Ron Drummond pulled my attention to canoe surfing, true—except really it just put my attention on Ron Drummond, whose kaleidoscopic life was so full of adventure that getting struck by lighting was not likely even in his top 25 most-interesting life experiences.
Two things finally put canoe surfing front and center.
First, in 2023, while on Namotu Island, I finally actually tried it. This was not planned. Late one afternoon near the end of the trip it was very windy, no surf to speak of, everybody on our little island killing time until happy hour, and one of the resort guides suggested we take out the jet-black outrigger canoe that was parked high on the berm. Four of us loaded in. We stroked a few hundred yards offshore, turned around to intercept a barely-fringing little roller, and the moment we connected the afternoon seemed to warp just a bit—this was so unlike anything I'd experienced before in the waves, the sense of speed was five-fold what I expected, and while I'm sure it looked like nothing from shore, just tourists out for a ride, same as ever, the weight and glide as experienced from inside the hull made it feel like I was riding a very old, very tame dragon.

The second thing that happened is that Mike May of New Jersey pointed me to a bunch of century-old canoe-surfing-related articles on newspapers.com. May is relentless, in the best way. He is the sole reason why New Jersey's place in EOS is as jacked as Rafael Nadal's left arm after a 20-shot rally. It was canoe surfing, not regular surfing, that first caught on in New Jersey and New England ("Surf Riding in Canoes Society Fad of Newport" and "Surf Riding in a Canoe: Most Thrilling Water Sport"), but what really razzed my berries was an article about a red-hot 16-year-old Philadelphia-born debutante named Phyllis Walsh, who summered in Ventnor City in the 1910s with the rest of the Tri-State Area smart set, took to canoe-surfing the way she did to tennis, roller-skating, and ragtime dancing, and ended up in court after broadsiding a swimmer and getting into a very public shouting match with a local lifeguard.


The Walsh vs. lifeguard fracas made national headlines. Read here. You will not regret it. No spoilers in today's Joint, but we are again back in Spinal Tap territory, walking that fine line between clever and stupid, except this is Model T-driving, bowler-hat-wearing America, which is a twist in itself, and the other twists—there are at least two—I leave for you to discover.
No harm in doing a summary of Walsh's post-canoe-surfing history, though, as it points to the life we might aspire to after sobering up from what Hawaiian surf great Wally Froiseth called being "surf drunk."
Walsh sailed to France while still a teenager, not long after her society debut, enlisted in the French Army, and drove an ambulance during the peak of World War One. She returned home and over the next few years was among the finest tennis players in America, and played doubles with national champion "Big Bill" Tilden. From there she became, in order, a New York sportswriter, bootlegger, and Gilded Age stockbroker, then for 30-plus ran a dude ranch in Arizona. I was disappointed that Walsh didn't so much as mention the canoe-surfing years in her lengthy oral history, but in the many decades to follow (she died in 1985) I imagine Phyllis must have looked back now and then at her wave-riding dalliance in Ventnor, smiled and rolled her eyes. Living fully was the main thing, and she did, even as a spoiled rich girl bumping up against the local beach-town authorities.
Nothing is worse, I don't think, than boredom, And I don't have time to be bored. I don't give up anything, I'm [always] doing exactly what I want to do. I've always been—what is the old expression—"Jack of all trades and master of none." If I'd been particularly good at one thing, I wouldn't have had as much time to be part of as many.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Matt
[Photo grid, clockwise from top left: me at Namotu, 2023; Sophie Tucker; Project Avalanche canoe surfing, 1980; Phyllis Walsh; vintage Waikiki canoe postcard; World War One ambulance. Prince Edward, Waikiki, 1920. Tourists canoe surfing. Duke Kahanamoku and Babe Ruth, 1933; "Surf Riding in a Canoe" headline, 1908. Phyllis Walsh. Ventnor Beach postcard. BW photo of Walsh from the early 1910s, color photo of Walsh taken in 1971.]