From 2:41 - you’ve gotta love a surf film that features the ultimate quiver buster - a cafeteria tray…
http://www.surfersjournal.com/journal_entry/come-hell-or-high-water
This will come as no surprise, because as you all well know from the Swaylocks Historical Society, it’s pretty much all been done before.
A misfit dork from my high school long ago first came up with the idea of using cafeteria trays for surfing. Artie, Artie, Artie something or other. Can’t remember his name, but his quick wit and loud mouth got him kicked out of school a dozen times before he got a social promotion to the 12th grade. Of course, that was the old days when you sat out for a week and then they let you back in. I was not exactly his friend, but I hung close enough to know how it all happened.
Artie, (OK, now I’m not sure that was his name, but whatever) had gotten kicked out again and had some time on his hands. School had just started a month before and some of the new equipment was just showing up. Memograph machines, a table saw for shop, and some replacement desks, from what I could tell on the boxes. Among the boxes delivered to the loading dock were about 10,000 cafeteria trays sent by mistake. They packed pretty compact and the boxes said “100 count” but that apparently meant 100 stacks of 144. No one knew what to do with them all. Except Artie.
With no classes and too much time on his hands, Artie grabbed 4 boxes one afternoon when no one was looking, tossed them in his car and ran for it. It took a few days for the news to get out, but when I finally figured out where everyone was going after school, I have to say I was impressed. Artie had found a fairly steep hill about 3 blocks from the school and was charging kids 50 cents to rent a tray and slide down the paved street into a drainage canal filled with green slimy water that was just waiting to over flow into the storm drain and then to the beach. Some of the lighter kids were able to able to skim pretty far out into the water and were rewarded with some of the foulest smelling wet clothes you could imagine. I was one of them. My parents thought it was hilarious. No they didn’t actually.
Well, anyway, Artie on a dare, ended up mounting one of those trays on a pair of skates and pretty much found his place in history as the inventor of the skateboard. I know you are shaking your head, but there too many witnesses for this to be denied. No telling how long this would have gone on, but Artie had to show off with a makeshift ramp and when the ambulance backed over what we thought was the last of the trays, we figured it was over.
But to my point, when he got his arm out of the cast about 3 months later, he was back in school and getting bored. With the third case of trays still in his trunk and a new girlfriend to impress, he decided that riding big wooden boards and dragging them to and from the beach was too much work. Artie’s bright idea was to piece three of them together with nuts and bolts taken from shop class and take them to the beach for something he was calling kneeboarding. Shop was Artie’s only “A”. Might have been Artie’s only passing grade for all I know. But anyway, it turned out to be more than a passing fad and pretty soon knee surfing on those fiberglass spoon-looking things caught on. Others took it a bit further, but I don’t think anyone from my school disputes where the inspiration came from.
It’s good to see the Malloy boys getting back to roots.
BTW, Artie didn’t stay in school enough days to graduate, but he did go on to start up a boat company making long, skinny, fast race boats down in Miami. He went public with it then sold the company and lives like a king in Costa Rica.
Someone had a vividly imaginative childhood, which apparently continues to this day...