When Bruce Brown made the decision to travel the world making the original Endless Summer movie in 1964, he explained how we would be gone for eight months and he would pay for everything while on the trip. Everyday expenses like transportation, food, hotels – pretty much anything we needed on the trip was guaranteed to be provided for us. The one exception was we had to purchase our own plane tickets for the journey. By the way, at the time this was going cost me $1,800.

As an agreement, Bruce promised Mike Hynson and I that he would pay us back as soon as he started showing the movie throughout high school auditoriums. I was pretty confident in Bruce; his movies were the best of the times and I knew he would hold up his end of the bargain. Well, back in the day, $1,800 was a whole lot of money that I didn’t have in the bank. However, I did have a pretty nice car. Working under my dad for several years, I had been able to afford a vehicle when I turned 16. It was a 1958 Chevy Impala – one of the first “big-block” V8 engines with three 2-barrel carburetors. Overall, I had a really cool car!

But the urge to go on this trip around the world was so great that I sold my car, totally unsure if I would ever see the Impala again. But a year later after circumnavigating the globe, Bruce held up his end of the bargain and paid me back. The Endless Summer took off, became a huge success and we started making some money so he paid me back.

But shit! Some days I really do wish I had that car. It’s probably worth about $100,000 by now!