Review of The Oom, by Bernie Shelly
If you’ve ever wondered how it all began – the real world of surfing, beyond ladies in bobbly bathing caps and frocked cozzies riding little wooden surf planks at Muizenberg, then here is your answer:
Miles Masterson has captured the essence of John Whitmore in all his adventurous spirt and entrepreneurial resourcefulness. Prior to reading Miles book, The Oom, you might have only known of John as the great pioneer surfer who built Cape Town’s early surfboards and Hobies and led Western Province Surfing. Perhaps you never gave a thought to how he kick-started the sport and the now massive industry that followed from this man’s economic acumen and valiant spirt.
Charmingly down-to-earth, this widely informative and meticulously researched book about Cape Town’s doyen of South African surf is a must read for those whose curiosity compels them to understand what came before where we are today. Filled with anecdotes of adventure and enterprise, Miles’ well researched account of the life of this extraordinary man is a must read.
Miles endearingly portrays John’s childhood years when, from the age of ten, John began his surf craft endeavours. Navigating the gully between killer rocks at Boat Bay, Sea Point, after catching abundant kreef, gliding back to the beach in a homemade canoe of sorts was John’s first experience of surfing. Through subsequent surfboard building, to Hobiecats and Morey bodyboards, John opened a good version of Pandora’s Box for the South African surf world.
From days of freshly caught kreef braaied on the beach, to the warmth of old brown sherry after a wetsuitless dive in the freezing Atlantic, to the more sophisticated days of HobieCats – it’s all charmingly captured on these pages.
From the beginning, this book is a page-turner – and for those who don’t care to read steadfastly from cover to cover in one continuous sitting, it’s the sort of book you can pick up and read any chapter randomly.
The man who came to be known as The Oom sought out and discovered the breaks we now take for granted: Elands Bay, Jbay, Kommetjie, Scarborough and many more. He and his friends searched always for more excitement, like true pioneers. But that was not the entirety of this remarkable man:. Miles documents his entrepreneurial nature and how the surfboard building industry of today evolved.
John and a friend pioneered skin-diving in Cape Town, with makeshift gear made from inner tubing and glass cut and banded, masonite “fins” attached to tennis shoes as well as innovative spearguns (you have to read about this!).
American surf traveller Dick Metz’s comment that John’s ambitious surf craft was “the ugliest board I have ever seen,” and other influences which helped shape John’s creations, all led to the dawning of South Africa’s surf industry. The Oom captures these historic moments with humour and affection.
Miles gives us a glimpse into the making of the classic The Endless Summer, the search for the perfect wave from an inside perspective, showing us the eccentricities of the characters and the nuances not depicted in the final cut of the movie. It’s an eye opener, as is much of this book.
The beginnings of surf contests is meticulously and engagingly recorded, including John’s antagonism to professionalism in surfing. Funding and recognition of South African Surfing was a challenge during the apartheid years when “Whites Only” signs at beaches brought the regime into focus and overtly racist white surfers beat up surfers “of colour”. Boycotts held sports at bay and John struggled to get a team to World Champs.
Other difficulties that the book exposes is the battle with the growing drug and counter culture within surf circles in the mid 60s. A shift in board design, and through trials and tribulations and personal crises, John moved from full-on board building to manufacturing and selling Clark foam, to Building Hobie Cats. Miles traces all these events with frankness.
The older population will recognise many of the names and characters Miles mentions, with fondness, and will remember the rivalries, the strained relationship, even discord, with Max Wettland. It’s a riveting read.
Miles then traces John’s next enterprise: HobieCats. Under The Oom’s masterful marketing strategies, including Langebaan regattas and downwinds, the story of Hobies in SA is as riveting as that of the surfing industry, as told by Miles’ tireless research. Exciting stories of international escapades make the exposition of the Hobie days an engrossing read. With South Africans competing and taking full honours internationally, the book relays the trials and triumphs in a tense time of anti-apartheid activism.
John’s legacy lived on after he sold the Hobie business and moved onto Morey bodyboards. Miles has it all, all the details, all the way into The Oom’s latter years, always coming up with something surprising and amazing.
As I read the book I could not shake off the feeling that John is still somehow here with us, so immediate is Miles’s rendition of his life. Without sentimentality, at the end of the book, Miles insists that he doesn’t intend to portray John as an angel and tells the reader of his shortcomings, in a very honest appraisal of his alpha male personality.
Personally I can attest that it was balanced by all the good he did for the sports we love. Below is a 1966 newspaper cutting of The Oom with Margeret Smith and me in Western Province coloured surf gear that John arranged for us for an interprovincial contest. Considering the male attitudes back then, this was a recognition I can believe was egalitarian for the time. (The second photo has Therese Bates as well but does not have John.)
Order the book at: https://johnwhitmorebook.com/
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