After surfing on a recent Sunday morning, I nearly missed my old surf gang reunion.

“We already ate,” Alika Neves said gently as I rushed up with my big bowl of salad.

As they stared at me impassively, waiting to be recognized, the men of the Tonggs Gang reminded me of my grandfather, his frowning face wreathed by barbecue smoke as I’d arrive, dripping wet, well past dinnertime. I realized that we were older than my grandfather had been in 1967, when I became the sole girl surfer in the gang.

I hadn’t seen some of them in 30 years, but I somehow got their names right.

“Eat!” urged their wives, directing my husband, Don, and me toward a table groaning with handmade rice balls, grilled chicken, ribs and a salad that outclassed mine.

But everybody still had room for the watermelon we brought, so Warren Ono, a surgeon, cut it up.

Alika had planned the minireunion, emailing that we would meet “under a tree somewhere in the area of Kapiolani Park Bandstand.” He and Darla, his wife, would get there at 8 a.m. to save a picnic space, but the rest of us could come whenever we liked.

“Anyone bringing a board?” Warren emailed back, but no one answered.

AS IT turned out, we couldn’t even see the ocean from where we were.

Bill Chamberlain, who lives on Kauai but surfs Tonggs and Suis sometimes, bemoaned Oahu congestion. “Suis used to be empty, remember? When there were more than two to four people out besides us, we’d say it was too crowded, and we’d go in.”

The once silent Kerry Dickenson regaled us with memories of his adventures as a bus superintendent.

But apart from a little reminiscing, we seemed more interested in present time.

“I spend all day reading books. It’s heaven,” said Alika, a retired land manager who had majored in early medieval history.

Lois Milbouer had gotten her husband Brian Chang, also retired, to join a gym.

Asked whether he’s still crazy for cars, Dudley Uyehara shook his head. “Now I kite-surf,” he said.

Ricky Cassiday said he still surfed Old Man’s — on his stand-up paddleboard — lying down. Sorry, Bill and I said — that doesn’t count. “No one likes me!” Ricky wailed the way he used to in the old days, and Brian broke into a smile that erased the years.

It was our first Tonggs reunion without Donny Mailer, aka “the Organizer,” and his wife, Dee Jay; they now live on the mainland surrounded by grandkids. Donny was my first surf coach, and Dee Jay got me my first bikini. She lived in a Kahala house with a pool, and our friend, Franny Brown, lived on Diamond Head beach, but they preferred to stay at my modest, house in a neighborhood filled with boys.

WE USED to see nothing but water from our hangouts on the sea wall. On the Neves’ lanai, Alika read big books, unperturbed by the gang’s laughter and stunts such as jumping off the roof into the wash of high tide.

I loved to curl up with a novel in Harrison Thurston’s airy, glass-walled gazebo. Busy with his canoe and fishing nets, he let the gang occupy his yard, which we entered from the public right-of-way through his rusty gate. The front door of his gracious wooden house, long since demolished, faced the sea.

He liked that I was a reader. “Don’t walk the long way around,” he’d tell me. “Please, cut through my yard.” I’d smile and thank him, but of course I never did.

“Harrison always says what a well-brought-up kid I have,” my mother recounted with pride. When I surfed late, she’d come down and chat with Harrison and Mr. and Mrs. Neves while trying to spot me through her opera glasses.

The Neveses moved out 30 years ago; their house was replaced by a vacation rental. “You all are very dear to me and were also to my parents,” Alika wrote in one of his reunion emails to the gang.

After my grandfather died, Donny borrowed an outrigger canoe so we could scatter his ashes at Tonggs. Twenty years later we said goodbye to Harrison in the waves where his son, Jimmy Thurston, still surfs his canoe from time to time.

I wish I could be late for dinner again and see my grandfather’s glare turn into a smile. “Here,” he’d say, handing me a perfect piece of kalbi off the grill. But I sense his approval in the darkness as my husband welcomes me home.

“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. It appears every other Sunday. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.