I’m a little younger than that, my dad used the term “nifty” though. He was born in 1914. The worn out word when I was in HS was “bitchin’”. There was one girl that it seemed was the only word in her vocabulary, and it used to drive me crazy. My mother wouldn’t let us use it (never had the urge to) because of the base word. We weren’t allowed to use “son of a gun” either, for the same reason, even though Joey Bishop was allowed to say it on TV when George Carlin was still being censored.
I grew up by the beach and surfers, so those were most of the popular terms around at the time. Surfin’ USA lists 4 of the towns that I lived in, in proper order.
As the song says, skateboarding was originally called sidewalk surfing. My older sister had a crush on the guy next door, and he was one of the first proficient skateboarders in town. He made his own. At an attempt for him to notice her, she took my skates, (the old kind that you had to attach to shoes and adjust with a skate key) nailed them to a board and had her custom skateboard. He was impressed that a girl would even try this. I wasn’t and my sister and I still have “discussions” about my “borrowed” skates.