My story post 23
The beginning days of William Dennis for me were tough. It was the fall of ’67. I went from making pretty good money at MP to making very little overnight. I had also left the room I had been renting so really didn’t have a place to live.
For a time I stayed at Blinkie's place in the Marina area, but eventually left that scene for my van. Yeah! Like a homeless guy I lived in my VW bus for a short time. I don’t remember who the other guys were now, but three of us with our vans would round up at night at the point in Ventura and sleep. There was nothing there but dirt, and no people around, was not patrolled, so it worked.
Then I hooked up with two guys and we found ourselves a small place in mid town. Nice, halfway between the beach and Calens Rd. where the shop was. Though things looked promising with the new surfboard venture, because we had to redo some of the improvements we made to the industrial bay we got, I pretty much ran out of money. Had to sell my van to make ends meet. Started walking to the shop… maybe a couple miles or so… then didn’t have my share of the rent money for the place I had with the guys so ended up back living with my parents. It was a dark time that didn’t turn around until spring ’68.
Morey worked a deal early in ’68 with Bob Mctavish to start making the Mctavish tracker. I went looking for a shaping job and Morey put me back to work shaping. It was me and Richard Deese. As production ramped up into the season, between the two of us we shaped close to 100 boards a week. We used full templates for outlining with a router, hogged the blanks as fast as we could with our planers, used a grinder to sand them out before dialing in the rails and final screening.
It’s all a blur of foam dust now, but an interesting time no less. I found a place to rent right around the corner from the Front St. shop. Had a bicycle for transportation, and was just a short walk to the point for surf. Plus, my friend Peter worked in the MP sales room and had a car so we’d go off and surf wherever after work. It was work and surf, work and surf… with the weekends off to surf.
D.R.
3 comments:
DR,
I remember the Tracker quite well even though I never owned one. To me at the time, it was the state of the art as far as surfboards went, compared to an older G&S that I had cut down (actually butchered the nose from 9'4" to 8'6") to keep in vougue with the shortboard revolution. I really envied this guy that surfed our local beach who had one, a blue bottom, clear top Tracker that looked like it worked quite well. Here was a guy riding the board I had oogled over and over in the recent Surfer magazine. From that butchered G&S I stepped down drastically to a backyard 6'4" tear drop pintail that took me into places on waves that I had never been before. Happy Thanksgiving...
Derek
Hi Derek,
Yeah, I think the Tracker was a good board too. During that time there were some pretty strange and different boards floating around.
The Tracker itself went through a change during it’s short production life, which was not part of the original design plan. It was later in the season when the boards where getting shorter. New outline templates were being made and the sub 7 foot board outlines were made a fair amount narrower…. like an inch or more. It was an accident really, but was not corrected. So, depending on when someone bought one during the season would make a big difference in what the board was like.
D.R.
I actually own a Tracker. A pal brought it into the SB glass shop (Morningstar) after finding it under a pile of leaves in Isla Vista. In retrospect the design was a little bit forward thinking.
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