Diddly Bops, Sport Rats, and Beach Boys

A User's Guide to My LI H.S.

Ninth grade got off to a bad start at the Long Island, NY, high school to which my family moved in fall 1963. There were two social groups, with names so specific to Herricks High School, that I had never heard these words before or since. When I entered the building for the first time I was asked: "Are you a diddley bop, or a sport rat?"

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"Diddley bops wear black socks. Sport rats wear white socks," a pretty sport rat girl told me. I looked at my feet. I was wearing purple socks. Or green socks. At the middle class/blue collar school from which I'd come, Valley Stream North in Franklin Square, such distinctions were meaningless. In Franklin Square, there had been little distinction between the hoods and the athletes: social groups, at least through junior high, were porous, and many of the outstanding athletes, like charismatic wrestling star Chris Feder, were also street fighters who hung out at the Franklin Diner and got into infrequent and perhaps apocryphal rumbles with gangs from the city.

The sport rats were the jocks, the preppies, the country clubbers. My father had made it out of the working middle class to ownership of the family business, and wanted a bigger house, in a newly built nouveau riche development of 36 identical "split-ranch" houses made from bulldozing half a forest near the remnants of the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway in Searingtown, NY, a perfectly aspirational name for men just like my dad wanted to be, who had worked hard and made a few bucks running small businesses. Searingtown was one of many hamlets that made up the school district, from Manhasset Hills to Williston Park, Roslyn Heights to New Hyde Park. In fact, had they been larger, Searingtown and Albertson (which shared a post office and ZIP code) might have been Ul Qoma and Beszel, the two overlapping dimensional entities in China Miéville's "The City and The City."

What does this have to do with the Beach Boys? Everything, as far as my developing rock taste went. It was just my third month at Herricks, in November 1963, when President Kennedy was shot and the Beatles began getting some radio play. One day, the radio was playing the hits "Dominique" by the Singing Nun, and "Sugar Shack," by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs. The next day, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You."

But the Beach Boys were always there, ubuitous before and after November, 1963. I hated my new school; when Kennedy was shot, the "yay-team" cheerleading of the Beach Boys' latest hit, "Be True to Your School," hit me like a cosmic face slap. I approached the song with bitter irony: I was still true to my old school, which put me nowhere at all. The sport rats had school spirit; the diddly-bops mostly dropped out of school. I was anti-school.

They always sounded good on the radio. They were played a lot on New York radio, right out from "Surfin' USA, now credited to Chuck Berry, whose "Sweet Little Sixteen" the Beach Boys autocopied with new lyrics. My favorite was the vrooming car song, "409," the B-side to "Surfin' Safari," and to many a better song because it rocked away from the water. Because while surfing was a regional specialty, car songs resonated everywhere.

The Beach Boys were as much as a car group as surf group: "Shut Down," "Little Deuce Coupe," "I Get Around," "Fun, Fun, Fun" ("til her daddy takes the T-bird away.") were all part of the first blush of Beach Boys' bliss no matter what color your socks. When I got my drivers license and my starter car, a Pontiac Catalina broke down, I could have lobbied for a Thunderbird, but I was too self-consciously depressed to drive such a car when I was so far from "fun-fun-fun." I could anticipate imposter syndrome.

Though Long Island has perhaps 100 miles of beach along its South Shore, from Rockaway Beach all the way out to Montauk, surfer culture was not a big deal, although there was a small surfer clique, or at least one surfer I knew of, at Herricks. I think his name was Phil, and the way you knew he identified with surf culture was that he had a surf board rack on the roof of his car (maybe even a surfboard in springtime). He wore Dewey Weber jackets and shorts, a surfer style-thing, merch from the legendary surfboard designer of that name in Southern California. Capturing the non-surfing spirit in early winter of 1965, was the Trade Winds, a New York group consisting of Vini Poncia and Pete Anders, with "New York's A Lonely Town (When You're the Only Surfer Around)." Weber was also a childhood actor, nationally-ranked wrestler, and a national yo-yo champion.

In tenth grade I became friendly with both some musicians (black socks) and some of the Beach Boys contingent, even if they dressed like sport rats. I remember walking around the Herricks area of New Hyde Park and ran into an acquaintance named John. He wanted to play me his favorite record, a Beach Boys song. John was a quiet guy and we sat in his quiet bedroom in a quiet house, in which he played Brian Wilson's painful paean to teenage loneliness, "In My Room." I felt a little ill at ease, tried to make conversation. What does your dad do? I asked.

John: "He puts the stars out at night."

Me: "I'm not sure I understand."

John: "He's dead."

Oh. My faux pas. Not only was John's dad dead, he was a dead police officer. When I asked John what he was going to do with himself for a career, he already knew. He was going to be a cop, like his dad. With "In My Room," still on return on his turntable, I told him, "good song. Thanks for sharing." I left, haunted by what John must have felt like, and I felt the ghosts of dead cops in a dead cop house, my whole mile walk home.

I had met the musicians through another classmate, Jeff Cohen, aka J.C. Mong. His band, the Mongs, were an excellent if occasionally maladroit garage band which favored British Invasion hits like the Animals' "It's My Life." At the point in the song in which there's a pause, and on the Animals record, Eric Burdon shouts, "don't push me!," the other guitar player, whom I'll call Burns, would sneak up behind the singer, Cohen, and push him. The Mongs leaned towards black socks, and identified diddly-bop. Another popular Herricks band, the more skilled Coachmen, were favored by the sport rat majority. A few of the Coachmen went on to become professional musicians. On Long Island, you also had to acknowledge our own local heroes, the Young Rascals, which made every garage band in the region add Farfisa organ to their sound.

The blue-eyed soul band, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and the Pacific Northwest's Paul Revere & the Raiders, with "Just Like Me" and "Kicks," had more impact than the Beach Boys generally. Which may be one reason my favorite Beach Boys' album is "Wild Honey," their soul record.

Going back to the 1964-1965 period, I knew John, obsessed with "In My Room," through a group of what I thought were sport rats, who loved the Beach Boys and invited me to their weekend night beer parties. The singles from "Beach Boys Today" were often the soundtrack. I loved to drink, I discovered, especially when the brew du jour was Colt .45 malt liquor. Higher alcohol content than regular beer. Two would get me nicely buzzed, but three got me out of my head. I'd drink the third, stay at the party another half hour or so as it really kicked in, walked home, and usually made it just in time to puke. I felt accepted by some sport rats like I had crossed over the line between my musical diddly-bop friends and the beer chugging jocks. Which is where I was at in my old school.

At one such party, there was a disturbance on the street. It was Burns, my friend but also a big-mouthed bullshitter who played rhythm guitar player for the Mongs, whose lead singer Jeff Cohen had become my first songwriting partner. Jeff Cohen and I had written a song called "You Gotta Be Kidding." It was my lyrics. It was a protest song about wanting to grow my hair longer. I already knew no one could compete with Dylan, or P.F. Sloan's song, "Eve of Destruction," then a hit by gravel-voiced folk singer Barry McGuire. But I knew I was at least as smart as Sonny Bono, so I modeled "You Gotta Be Kidding" on Sonny's solo hit without Cher, "Laugh at Me." Our protest song became part of the Mongs repertory, and even made the

Ellen from Endwell

protest song series on Substack, though no recordings exist.

But Burns didn't want me hanging around the sport rat party. He was belligerent on beer himself, and marched to the party with some people trying to free me from the clutches of the sport rats. (The other friends were actually trying to hold Burns back from a severe butt kicking from the sport rats, nominally jocks, after all.) He insisted I leave. I said, Burns, I'm an invited guest, I like it here, and went back into the yard and rejoined the party. There was some pushing and shoving out in the street, and my heart swelled: They're fighting over me! I drank more beer, and the music cranked up: "Round-round-round-round I get around!"

Which is why I didn't get weird over "Pet Sounds," or all out of sorts when "Smile" didn't surface for decades, and Capitol released the supposedly inferior "Smiley Smile." I really liked that album: The Beach Boys were party music to me, and "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains," not to mention "Vegetables" and "Wind Chimes," easily made the transition from beer party to pot party.

Help me, Rhonda, this is a true story. Some time very shortly after high school graduation in 1967, the notion of sport rats and diddly-bops disappeared even from the Herricks lexicon, replaced by the more universal princesses, jocks, and stoners. I was long gone.

© Wayne Robins, 2025

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