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Easy-rolling autobiography of Phil Edwards, revered California power surfer of the '50s and '60s, coauthored by 

 staff writer Bob Ottum, and published by Harper & Row in 1967. 

You Should Have Been Here an Hour Ago: The Stoked Side of Surfing, or How to Hang Ten Through Life and Stay Happy

—surfing's first full-length biography—grew out of an 

 cover story Ottum wrote on Edwards in 1966, and is thought by many to be among the best books on surfing.

 is short (179 pages, including 70 black-and-white photo, many taken by Edward's friend and 

 filmmaker Bruce Brown), and wasn't a big seller—just one edition was published. It also had the misfortune of being released at the beginning of the Shortboard Revolution, when the sport underwent its greatest period of change, both in terms of equipment and attitude. Edwards' short-haired all-American look, his 10-foot surfboards, his decidedly non-psychedelic voice—all were out of fashion by mid 1968. The 

, but the surf press ignored it completely.

The book is sequenced chronologically, from Edwards' early surfing years at Oceanside in the late '40s, to designing and manufacturing boards for Hobie Surfboards, to judging the 1964 World Championships in Australia. Neither Edwards or coauthor Ottum ever revealed how the writing chores were divided, but Edwards is the first-person narrator throughout. In this passage, he's 15 years old, and already more or less living on his own.

It was 1953, and I was so broke you wouldn't believe it. I was living that summer in Doheny State Park. The forest rangers sort of looked the other way and it was a special time for a kid. By day we surfed. By night—after everyone had left and gone home—I would have the park all to myself and wander through it, through an aisle of still-smoldering campfires and half-eaten hot dogs. And I had this girlfriend who would come down on her horse and we would sit together on the beach and stare out into the black Pacific and dream about the time when we would all be rich and famous. A state park has an air of special enchantment about it at night.

By night—and by day—I collected pop bottles and sold them back to stores for two cents each. One of my buddies had a Model A pickup truck that wheezed along because it had a thrown rod which he could not afford to get fixed. But the thing about a Model A is that it will run along, nicely but slowly, on a thrown rod or two. We would drive along from Doheny to Oceanside and I would keep a lookout along the sides of the road for pop bottles. I would step out, pick them up and toss them into the back of the truck and he would never stop driving at, what was for the truck, full speed.

Still, the rangers had certain rules, and when I opened a surfboard reshaping emporium in the park, they had to draw the line. They chased me out. Not all the way out, but I moved the business under the bridge, where I set up boxes and reshaped boards and glued noses back on—those were the day when noses were popping off—and through it all made enough money to get by.

, Edwards provides a detailed account of the day he became the first surfer to ride the inside-out waves at Pipeline on Oahu's North Shore.

Throughout the book, Edwards's voice is simultaneously wise, humorous and laid-back. He said he had reservations, as a surfboard builder as well as a surfing icon, about inviting the rest of the world to further crowd the waves, but nonetheless felt it was the right thing to do. "The hackers of surfing are coming," he wrote. "Which is fine. Perhaps if we stoke a few people, life outside will calm down a little." 

 is dedicated to "the Legions of the Unjazzed"—that is, nonsurfers.

 became a collector's item in the 1990s, and as of 2015 used copies were selling from between $200 and $500.

You Should Have Been Here an Hour Ago

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