It's summer 1975 in SoCal and JAWS is the hottest thing going
It's the summer of 1975 in Southern California and everything's beautiful in its own way. It's muscle cars cruising the Pacific Coast Highway. It's Paul McCartney singing soldier boy kisses girl. It's tight corduroy pants with super bell bottoms. It's the famous gorilla suit guy from The Zoo restaurant on the street in Newport Beach acting bananas for the kids piled in the back of the truck on the way to the arcade at Balboa Island. It's sunshine, music, crunchy sand in your french fries and who lost mom's favorite beach towel on the freeway.
It really was a beautiful and groovy scene I'll never forget. You know what else I'll never forget? The first radio ad I heard for the new summer movie "Jaws." I was waiting for Olivia to tell me she honestly loved me when it happened. I was 12 years old.
“May be too intense for younger children,” was the ominous warning floating at the end of the radio spot. Wait... what? What kind of shark movie is this? By this time I was already subjected to multiple episodes of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, my stepfather's favorite show, and said stepfather was pushing me to be the youngest certified SCUBA diver in the history of the sport, since I was so comfortable in the water and purportedly unafraid of any diving scenario.
So when you're saying too intense for younger children, you really must be talking about all these city kids around me who are scared of a guy in a gorilla suit on the street, and not me.
Soon the blue and red Jaws imagery was everywhere. On freeway billboards. In full page ads in newspapers and magazines. And of course on the TV, appearing again and again while I'm patiently waiting for Mr. Spock to pinch someone on the neck. The Jaws movie is the hottest thing going this summer, and I simply have to see it.
I went the logical path of least resistance: I begged my grandmother to take me to see it. She was hesitant, and read the novel to try and get the story before she conceded to the No. 1 grandson, who can be somewhat of a pest on occasion.
She finally conceded, and we waited in a 30-minute line outside the theater before getting in.
So I will retroactively pronounce right here - in honor of the 50th anniversary of this cinematic masterpiece - that in no way, shape or form should I have been taken to see that movie. For lack of a better term, it jacked me up. Like, really bad. I was officially wacked in the head, as my friend Jimmy Roberts likes to say about the wacky kids in the neighborhood. I was one of them now.
Go to the beach? I can't even walk on a pier without having an anxiety attack. The problem, you see, were those little slivers of blue ocean that were peeking between the wood slats of the pier. I couldn't step on them. My mother's back? It seemed trivial compared to stepping on any one of those pier cracks, which could give way at any moment and make you shark bait long before you could swim back to shore.
All of the ocean places that my poor, uninformed little mind had subconsciously marked "safe" were instantly decimated by that movie. Small piers ("Can we go home now?"), estuaries ("Michael's in the estuary...") and even shark cages ("I don't have any spit.") that were occasionally featured in Cousteau's now highly questionable wonderful world were not safe.
When the Orca out at sea started to list, and Quint came out from below with those crappy-looking lifejackets, I thought I was going to pass out right there in the theater. I'd been on enough boats to know that boat was going to sink. My grandmother told me to close my eyes during Hooper's battle in the shark cage (he'd been eaten by the shark in the book), which I did, but where I should have closed my eyes was during the tragic demise of Quint. Not that closing my eyes would have helped at that point.
My loving nana was remorseful that she helped whack out her favorite grandson, but it was my problem now. A case of self-inflicted galeophobia that threatened to end my early oceanic exploits unless action was taken.
I immediately applied self-therapy. I read the novel multiple times (the final sequence is still my favorite book ending). I went to the library and found the book “Shark Attack” by David Baldridge, detailing every known shark attack ever recorded. I then read every shark book in the library. I obsessed on shark physiology. Nothing helped.
One day I got a phone call from my stepfather back home. My grandmother listened in. He had great news: He finally found an instructor who would certify me for SCUBA if I passed the physical tests. After hanging up with him I quietly wept, grieving for my own inevitable demise. My grandmother thought it was family abuse. No nana, it's not the stepdad. It's Matt Hooper, and his stupid anti-shark monkey cage that didn't work.
So how did I cure myself of such a debilitating fear of the ocean? The honest answer is I never did. I just learned, eventually, and just like any other major ordeal you may experience when you walk out the door, to control the panic. To use it to pay attention to detail. That slight panic hovering in the far background, waiting to spring up, is really the main ingredient to the spice of life, isn't it? How boring would life be if everything was 100 percent safe?
Yes I did become one of the youngest certified divers at the time (still considered an extreme sport in the 1970s) and yes, the stepfather and myself ended up in all sorts of adventures looking for lost relics in southwest Florida. Lately I dove back into that wacky world of the 12-year-old to re-manifest a debilitating fear of the water for the fiction novel, "The Topaz Beetle," which is available on Amazon as a paperback and ebook. If you enjoyed this romp into 1975 SoCal, you may enjoy the low-tech ocean adventure in 1976 Florida aboard the not-so-famous boat, the Topaz Beetle.
Jaws still stands as the blockbuster summer movie of all time, and I hope you enjoyed this journey. I'm looking forward to the continued celebration of the movie and wish all of the people involved in the 50th celebrations a beautiful day, with the beaches open, and everyone having a wonderful time.
Amity as you know means friendship : ).
About the author
Steve Delgado is a U.S. Navy veteran, former media professional and author of The Topaz Beetle, the story of a young boy and his stepfather who use a "lucky" refurbished cabin cruiser and an ingenious underwater dive plane to search for lost valuables outside of 1976 Tampa Bay. More info can be found on the Amazon author page here https://www.amazon.com/stores/Steve-Delgado/author/B087QT6Z99