One day out at my home break, Suicides, a surfer surprised me by asking if I’d read William Finnegan’s “Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life.” Yes, and it’s good, I said. “Get Diamond Head, Makaha, Mokes — even Tonggs, ah?” he’d heard. Yes, I said, and if a set hadn’t interrupted us, I would have added that although he doesn’t mention it in his book, Finnegan had surfed Suis, too.

I know this because he was a classmate of my husband’s at the University of California at Santa Cruz; they had lost touch for 15 years and then reconnected at a whiskey tasting in New York City, in one of those private clubs for alumni of elite East Coast schools.

This was in 1990, a couple of years before Finnegan’s first surf memoir installment, “Playing Doc’s Games,” appeared in the New Yorker. My husband told Finnegan he’d married a Hawaii girl who, like Finnegan during junior high, had lived and surfed at Diamond Head.

“She was a member of the Tonggs Gang,” my husband said.

“I was a member of the Tonggs Gang,” Finnegan said. “I never met her.”

“She mostly surfed another break called Suicides.”

“I surfed Suicides,” Finnegan said. Then he laughed and admitted there may have been girls, but he was too shy and, you know, freckled.

My husband, certain we’d remember one another by sight, arranged a meeting at a restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. No dice.

But when Finnegan’s book came out, photos of a tall, pale wisp of a freckled boy with a head of unruly hair did jog a memory of someone I’d glimpsed hovering in the shadows at the Winklers’ house on Coconut Avenue.

Tomi Winkler is immortalized in “Barbarian Days” as the kid from the Tonggs Gang who beat Finnegan in a surfing contest at the writer’s home break, Cliffs.

A skinny, knob-kneed goofy foot, Tomi was the best surfer among us. He died in a skiing accident at age 19.

An elite institution in its own way, the Tonggs Gang had three clubhouses: the Winklers’ house and the Nevis and Thurston homes at the water’s edge — all long since gone, replaced by vacation rentals.

The Tonggs Gang and Kaimuki Middle School might consider honoring Finnegan as an alumnus, now that his popular memoir has won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for biography. Not that either institution does much fundraising, but hey, it’s never too late.

The lineup, thanks to Hawaii law guaranteeing public access to the sea, is a great equalizer. It’s a place where a good student from a privileged background, as compared with that of the average local surfer, might win a modicum of acceptance but always feels a bit on the fringe or on the shoulder, if you like.

In his book you see Finnegan, a transplant from California, admiring the surfing and social camaraderie of local surfers while hanging back, not wanting to offend, biding his time, being polite but also competitive, pushing himself to prove himself on whatever waves he can snag.

It’s a style that’s served him well in his years of surfing safaris throughout the less developed world. His book will always be treasured by surfers and boomers because the vagabondage, dream chasing and outsiderhood of which Finnegan writes have been shared by nearly all of us to some degree. Now we see our children challenging the status quo in a far more dangerous world, yet one also in which many ethnic and social barriers have been eroded, at least among the young.

I’d like to think that might be our legacy — but it still needs work.

In the meantime, how cool is it that, well before it won a Pulitzer, surfers got excited about a seriously literary book?

And that 26 years ago, on the corner of Park and 35th, two graduates of a clubless West Coast college once stood and laughed at how old friends resurface in the lineup of life.

“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.