I used to body surf and swim while he surfed. He was a good skateboarder too. We lived on the bay side of Seaside Heights, Jersey Shore, so there are a lot of good stories. It was such a cool place. You'd walk the boardwalk and there would be a dozen or more kids skateboarding on the boardwalk.
This was back in the late '60s as I'm now 70 years old. There was a TV show called "I've Got a Secret" and people would go on the show with a secret that the panelists (famous celebrates) would have to guess. They could ask 10 yes or no questions and then they had to guess. I remember watching the show, and there was this young kid on the show, and his secret was his name: August September. Anyway, a few years later there was this kid, maybe 13 or 14 skateboarding on the boardwalk and my friend said, "Hey, you know who that is? That's August September" and we went up and started talking to him. It was almost like out of a movie because all the kids had long, below the shoulder length hair. They defined "cool". It was as if every day was an adventure with my friend John. He was a wild child but also amazing.
When I was writing, back as a college student, and published, John was one of two people who got a poem. I still have that poem and I think in some ways, it was my best poem, but maybe that's only an emotional response. Fittingly, it ended with these lines:
and breezes which spilled our emotions
blown through streets like leaves
only to meet me,
and I them
at some distant spring.