TERRY’S STORIES // VOLUME I
WHEN THE BOARD CRACKED?!?
Born in Sacramento, Terry moves to Huntington Beach at the age of 13. Tall, athletic as he is the neighborhood boys quickly invite him to a sport that will become one of his favorite of all time, surfing. Without any real explanation except for paddling like hell to avoid losing your board, he jumps in and is addicted to surfing right from the start. The adrenaline of the ride, the ocean, the beach, as of the moment he catches his first wave, the beach becomes his primary home. Even though his mom thinks surfing is for losers and beach bums, he still manages to sneak out and catch more than a handful of waves before school.
And that’s how Terry roles during the 70s. Together with his crew, Arne, Greg, Randy and Burr, he surfs and hangs outside the local bar the Golden Bear, where they get not only introduced to the fine live tunes of B.B. King, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan to name a few, but also to local busboy Tommy. Not long after them meeting him, Tommy introduces them to weed, with which a whole new chapter of his life arrived at the age of 14.
A few weeks after the crew met Tommy, he asks if the boys are up for small gig to earn some extra cash. By saying “sure” little did they know that within a couple weeks they would be sitting in the back of a van on their way to Mexico. The deal was easy. The crew were to jump out of the van in Mexico, stack weed in their backpacks, walk up the mountain for about 2 hours and drop the bags east of San Diego and hike back. Its early 70s and at arrival in Mexico there were 40 pound burlap bags filled with prime weed stacked in a barn next to a deserted gas station. The trail the boys had to conquer during the night was swirling through the canyons, and the same trails used by coyotes to escort illegal workers into California. Terry thought it was all that exciting and the best part was that himself and the crew earned some decent cash.
A couple of months into this adventure Greg proposed a brilliant idea. Couldn’t they move way more product if they stacked the weed into a hollow surfboard? Surfboards at that time were like plastic egg shells, if they took out the foam and replaced it with weed they could easily put 10 pound in each board. So off they went with all their surfboards strapped on top of the car. One day halted by the police while trying to cross the border, T. nearly got busted. The fattest cop of them all leans in his arm on top of the boards and the entire crew stops breathing when they hear the boards crack. Boards should not make that sound, boards filled with foam do not make any noise at all. Luckily for them these cops didn’t know half a thing about surfing and boards and let them go without even searching the trunk. And off they went into the Californian sun with more weed then they ever transported before.
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