Riding one of those blue canvas air mattresses my mother would rent for 50 cents a day from a beach vendor in the Miami Beach wind chop. A couple years later on Wide World Of Sports I watched Fred Hemmings win a big contest at Sunset Beach (Also surfing were Buffalo Kealana and Rabbit Kekai). I HAD to do that!! Bought a 9'6" yellow Royal Hawaiin popout from the only surfer in my school a few weeks later. Whenever I could I'd take the Metro bus (with my 9'6") and after a transfer in Coral Gables I'd be at the dog track at South Beach. Next to the Great Lakes, Miami Beach probably is the least consistant spot in America, but I learned how despite it. I eventually got to know a guy that worked at the old Surfboard House shop next to the bagel shop and he let me store my board there and a little later let me trade the Royal Hawaiin for a decent used Surfboard House standard shape. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! I actually got pretty good. We'd live for winter and I remember as if yesterday my first "refracto" swell, course we didn't call it that back then. An almost point break tilt to the left off the end of the old south beach pier. The best surfer in the water was a guy named Larry Solomon and of course the infamous Murf the Surf. Met and became bud's with Lewis Graves on the bus one day. They were older and Lewis and I just got out of the way. Most weekends it was flat but you went out and flailed around anyway, had a coke and bagel in the morning and most Sunday's "Holy Joe" the Evangelical Preacher would spread his version of the "The Word" on the beach. I think he was actually pyschotic but maybe he was just filled with "The Lord". When one of the guys finally got old enough to drive we'd pitch in for the $3.00 worth of gas it took to go round trip to "Pierce", Ft. Pierce North Jetty. It was like going to the Maldives for us. No I-95, just US 1 North. When I was 16 I bought one of those surplus 3 wheel covered Post office Cushman delivery scooters. Put lots of miles going 40 mph up to "Pierce" with 2 buddies in the back box and jerry rigged racks on top. Finally flipped the damn thing going around Alhambra Circle in the Gables to fast. Ruined a Hansen 50/50 and Surfboards Hawaii Model "A" in the process (I'm still sorry about that Dennis and Frank) my board was in the middle and came out alive. MANY moons since then, but Miami Beach still has a place in my heart.

-------------------------

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness -
John Kenneth Galbraith

Edited: 02/15/2007 at 09:16 AM by eibla