Synopsis - Chapter 15
January 1969 to August 1969 - Neptune Beach
I rode my Honda 350 Scrambler from Tucker to Neptune Beach in January. I'm pretty sure I got permission from my probation officer in Jacksonville to return. I registered and attended classes briefly at Florida Junior College. My heart wasn't in it and I withdrew passing after a month or so. I think I initially stayed with our family friends, the McManns, in Indian Woods at 1300 Big Tree Road. I think George was staying there too. Elda McMann helped me get a part time job pumping gas at Pat's Gulf station on University Boulevard, near Jacksonville University. It paid minimum wage, but Pat, his wife, and mechanic Chief, were all very nice people and it brought in some steady cash. Steve Cissel and I started a small business stripping down old long surfboards, reshaping and reglassing them. Steve shaped and I glassed. Chip McClurg made us some decals on onion skin paper in pencil. Our brand name was "Surfboards by the Association". The surfboards came out pretty small after we stripped and reshaped them. We turned out about 25 - 30 from winter to August, when I took flight for the West Coast. I sprayed slipcheck on the foam to make designs and hide the dings and discolorations. Short boards had just come into being the year before, and everyone was switching from long boards to short boards. The first short boards were 8'10" or so. Long boards started at 9'2" for smaller people and up to 10' for big guys.
Steve Cissel, Jim "Chip" McClurg and I made about 2 dozen boards from cutdowns in my Neptune Beach garage at Bay Street and the oceanfront in 1969. Chip(Chips) made our decals, The Association, using pencils and translucent paper. You brought us your longboard, I stripped it, Steve shaped it, and I glassed it. We bought resin by the gallon and cloth from a rental place somewhere in Jax, Arlington maybe.This was the very early days of short boards. We paid $175 a month for an upstairs 2 bedroom apartment, with a full frontal veranda/front porch and we thought it was expensive. I lived there with my brother George. I was biding time on probation to go back to California for good, and I split in August. The garage electricity came from the downstairs apartment. I felt bad about using her juice, but not that bad, as we were dirt poor at the time. There were previously some epic parties here given by the former tenants, two girls from Iowa, Maxine and Linda. Police were usually called. Maybe some of you attended those parties?
Jim (Chips) McClurg at Bay Street
George had a red Ford van that he used for his morning Times Union paper route. He later drove a 4 door bronze 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne or Bel Air. He bought it from a sailor. I borrowed it once to go get my motorcycle which had broken down in Valdosta. I don't remember why I went to Valdosta. I don't think I was supposed to leave the county without telling my probation officer. I loaded the bike in the trunk of the Chevy. It hung out the back, but mostly fit inside. That's how big trunks were in those days. Being the early hippie days at the beach, some of our friends stayed up all night being hippies and would follow George around on his paper route at 4 in the morning through Neptune Beach. George sometimes led a parade of 2 or more cars behind him. The Neptune Beach Police stopped them at first and raided hippie apartments looking for alcohol. It took the cops a while to catch on. I remember one apartment with a parachute draped from the ceiling. We put blinking Christmas lights inside cardboard boxes with designs cut in them. They would blink the designs on the walls and ceiling. Being poor, I once made a strobe light by fastening a piece of cardboard with a hole cut in the edge to a fan and putting it in a box in front of a light bulb. It actually worked pretty good. You could take laundry plastic and tie knots in it every 8 inches or so and hang it from something, light it on fire, and as it burned it would make cool zip-zip noises and make trails as it dropped. This was better done outside, although I remember doing it once in the living room in Atlanta over a pot of water. It stunk up the house pretty good, but luckily didn't catch anything on fire. George would sometimes oversleep and recruit me to help him with his route. I soon tired of this and told him one morning he was on his own. Later in the day he got mad at me for not helping him, and I told him I wasn't going to pick up his slack, I had things to do too, and I needed my sleep. We were living in an apartment on Bay Street and the ocean by then. Our friends Maxine and Linda had lived there once too. George and I started fighting in the front room, which was kind of an inside porch, running the width of the house. Our friend, Steve Joca, was there, and tried to get us to stop. I can hear him now, "Come on you guys, cut it out", pleading with us. Steve was a good guy and a gentle soul. He did some Golden Gloves boxing, but his heart wasn't in it. His dad, John, was a very good boxer. George and I went up and down the front porch 2 or 3 times. I got the better of him and we quit. That was the last fight I ever had with George, there were plenty before then.
I had a nice girlfriend, Jan Davis, who cared about me. One more nice girl I let get away. We went to an Iron Butterfly concert the week before I left. She was crying during the concert. I felt bad for her, but I was ready to start a new life.
We had some more toga parties and generally had a good time on Bay Street. It was knotty pine panelled, and west of the porch was a full length living room and kitchen, then two bedrooms with a bathroom connecting them. I remember taking LSD once and sitting on the commode staring at the cut glass doorknob for a long time. One of my lifeguard buddies attended a toga party where we had some Northside girls that we had met on the boardwalk. He went home and the girls spent the night. The girls were carless and needed a ride home in the morning. I called my lifeguard buddy to see if he could take them back to the Northside. I only had my bike and George was running his paper route or whatever, but he wasn't home. My buddy told me to tell them to take the bus home. I wasn't that heartless and badgered him until he let me borrow his Pontiac convertible. I took them home and kissed my date good bye in front of her house. We never saw them again. Those were the days. I remember being in bed with a girl one night and her Mother drove up and started honking the horn. Bummer.
I don't remember much else about this time and I only have a few pictures. I knew I was going to California when I got off probation on August 14th. Just before then I rode my motorcycle to Atlanta and shipped it from the S.K. Wellman warehouse there to the S.K. Wellman warehouse in Los Angeles. I partially disassembled it and strapped it to a pallet. I probably hitch hiked back to Jacksonville. On August 14, 1969, I bought a one way ticket to Los Angeles and flew the coop.
March 21, 2010
Pete's Bar - Mike Akers
I was forcibly ejected from Pete’s Bar in the fall of 1970 for fighting. It wasn’t much of a fight. It was more of a sort of ritualistic drunken exchange of pokes (one each) when there appeared out from the abyss two big hands which easily handled the two of us without having to make two trips. We sat on that tall curb outside and became lifelong friends over an indeterminate period of time of lugubrious exchange of disappearing wife stories. I do not recall his name and have never seen him since. Another self-affirming experience of youth.
April 16, 2024
