Great Roots From The Wild West

Jack London wasn't just one of our all time great novelists, but an adventurer who scoured the world, whose own life was even bigger than the majestic characters he ended up creating in the unforgettable Call Of The Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf and other classics. 

While I'm in no position to vouch utterly for this particular bit of history, legend has London and the master lawman Wyatt Earp meeting in the Yukon, London even living upstairs from a retail supply store owned by Earp. The two would leave Alaska, eventually reconnecting in Los Angeles years later, eventually finding their way to movie director Raoul Walsh and both their legends grew from there. (Immortalized in film versions of several of his novels, London died in 1916 at the age of forty. Wyatt Earp passed in '29 at 80 years, nearly fifty years after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.)   

At some point in between the Yukon and L.A., London made way to the Hawaiian Islands, more than likely coming across - at some point at least - one of the original surf deities, Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamokuon. Both were instrumental in popularizing surfing, and London took his love of the sport to the SoCal beaches, (he wrote "Riding the South Sea Surf", an early bible for the budding constituency), and so the evolving trend would eventually become an ingrained part of the Southern California lifestyle.   

Fast forward a few decades and you have James Arness, wildly popular lawman Matt Dillon on the sixties Western smash Gunsmoke, and an avid surfer. It may well be true that Arness and Clint Eastwood were friends and surf buddies. It may also be true that every now and then Eastwood would complain about his role on Rawhide with Arness apparently quick to remind the future legend, "a steady paycheck is a steady paycheck."  

Clint, from his Rawhide days, and below, what's might very well be James Arness hanging ten.