My story post 22

During the summer of 1967 I found a nice 3 stringer blank at the Morey-Pope shop and claimed it for a new board. Morey didn’t make any 3 stringer models at the time so I grabbed the blank and shaped myself a new stick.

The board shaped into a thinned out 9’2 with out a snubbed or wing nose. I had it glassed with a yellow tint and had the MP label… which I cut so it was only the 2 letters MP… put about in the middle of the board between the rail and the outside stringer. So it looked nothing like a Morey-Pope board. Man did it surf good, I really liked that board.

So then I shaped another board for my friend Peter and had it glassed red and yellow tints. It looked nothing like an MP either. Then I started talking to John Peck about going shorter and lighter and made him a Penetrator that was not quite standard issue.

The result of all this new stuff was a shop wide directive from Morey that in effect said if shop personnel wanted a new board they would have to go through the front sales room door and order a stock MP board. No one could go make them selves a board, you’d have to order one just like any other customer.

Even today I remember the sad feeling I had when that happened. I remember talking to Blinky about it and how disappointing it was. Blinky, by the way, was the guy that invented Slip Check. I was so excited about making new and different boards that would get you to different places on the wave and now… I felt like a kid that just got his balloon popped.

Blinky and I started talking… ‘what are we going to do, we want to make some boards that aren’t like MP’s… how we going to do that?’ Then the light came on. ‘Why don’t we go start our own shop?.... These guys aren’t going to hold us back… heck with them, lets go do our own thing.’

The embryonic birth of William Dennis.

D.R.