Story by Uncle Bill

In the same era of the late 1960’s when a Miami surfer rode over to the beach to surf for the day, they often found it flat or too small, so the day just ended as a sit out. As we had no cell phones or other instant information media at the time, we got creative with the good old Southern Bell land line telephone system.

At that time, it was costly by the minute to place a long-distance call. We found that long distance person to person was even more costly……..however……if the person you were calling was not there, the call ended and it was free………so……If we wanted to go up the coast for the day seeking a good wave we first made a person to person phone call to Buck’s Surf Shop in Deerfield Beach, if we didn’t get the answers we wanted there, we called Ron Jon in Canaveral.

The person-to-person question that was given to the surf shop was…….”Is Mr. Surf In?”……..the employee at the surf shop would answer…….”no, but he might be back in 3 to 4 hours”……thus you got a free surf report……..3 to 4 hours meant it was 3 to 4 feet………if the employee said Mr. Surf won’t be in today, it meant it was flat………etc…..etc……sometimes there would be a little trivia added such as……he had a rough night last night……..meaning the waves were rough and choppy.

This seemed to fade away by the early 1970’s for some reason…probably the surf shop owners got tired of answering all the inquiry calls.