Name sound familiar? It should. This guy’s the reason that beach is called Haskells.
Mike was born and raised in Santa Barbara. In high school, guys started calling him “Eddie
Haskell” because of the Leave it to Beaver TV show. But that eventually wore off.
He got the surf bug pretty early on, here he is enjoying the Pit in 1962.
Like most stoked young surfers, he surfed up and down the coast, always searching
for the perfect wave at a great new spot.
His skills improved to such a degree that he soon had surf brands sponsoring him,
this photo was for Hansen Surfboards.
In the mid 1960’s, Mike lived on a ranch in remote western Goleta at the end of Farren Road.
Mike noticed some fun little waves right down the road from his new home at the mouth of the
Tecolote Creek. He managed to get a key to the gate at Tecolote Canyon Ranch’s private beach,
so he thought he’d go have a surf.
He had never really seen anybody surfing there before, but it was good.
So, of course, he had to invite a few friends down to enjoy it with him.
Soon, he had a pack of guys talking about Haskell’s new spot.
The name stuck, and continues to do so.
Mike was also known for another interesting thing, his pet wild boar, Hershey.
In Mike’s words….
“Hershey was a feral boar piglet that George Greenough found on Santa Rosa Island,
apparently a hunter shot the mother. He was a little guy when I got him but he got huge with
big tusks and got a pretty aggressive, so me and couple of friends tied him up and castrated
him. He remained moody and finally tried to break into the feed room at the Tecolote Ranch
next to our ranch and they shot him. Greenough named him Hershey because they fed him
Hershey bars on the boat trip back from Santa Rosa. It was a constant fight to keep him out
of the Ranch house, we had to smack him with a broom stick.”
Hershey used to scare the crap out of my girl friends, I remember I met a real cute UCSB
girl one day when I was surfing Sands and I invited her up to the Ranch. She showed up that
night with one of her girlfriends and I heard her car pull in and then a bunch of screaming,
Hershey liked to rub up against peoples cars to scratch himself and he was out there
snorting and rocking their car in the dark, they were terrified, she was kind of a city girl
and thought it was a bear.”
Oh, the good old days…..
