Mike Davis Stories Big John
Big John
Big John Eichert and THE IKE
SURFBOARDS CREW
I was just a kid in junior high school when I stumbled
into the IKE Surfboard shop on Cota Street once I’d figured out a new and shorter way home if I’d had to stay after school and missed the bus. Detention was a common occurrence for a kid who just saw the funny side of everything. I’d been past there a few times before but the shop door was always closed and the dirty windows revealed little of what went on in there from outside until one day I passed and Steve Vukas’s woodie was parked out front. I knew Steve because he was a harbor guy and surfed Ledbetter a lot with Ronnie Cook’s older brother, Bill.
Seeing the shop open and actually knowing someone inside prompted my first tentative steps inside the tatty little shop front with the dust dulled windows and the loud machine noise and raucous laughter spilling out the door and stumbling over the bicycles laid carelessly across the door way onto the street.
Half expecting an intruder’s welcome into an inner sanctum of some kind; I was surprised to be instantly included in the banter that these guys fired back and forth.
“It’s just Pecker, the new kid from Oklahoma or somewhere,” (It was Kansas) Vukas explained in his chipmunkly voice and winking at me. They made me feel as at home as a kid with no knowledge of any of what they were doing there could. I was instantly intrigued by the wood shavings on John Eichert’s forearms and intoxicated by the smell of catalyzed resin that his younger brother Dave was applying to the bottom of a balsa board he was laminating.
I was absolutely enthralled with how the silver fiberglass went clear when the resin was applied. I saw my first rubber squeegee and wondered what was so bad about the smell that David had to wear the gas-mask and rubber gloves. Out the back George Greenough was grinding away on some fiberglass thing he was working on and I was so in awe of what I was seeing, I could’ve just died on the spot. It was the most incredible assembly of guys just having fun and doing something that, at the time, seemed as close to alchemy as I could’ve imagined. It was like the most incredible club house ever and it didn’t even look like being foreign or threatening!
Over the years those things would become common knowledge to me, but then, it was as close to magic as anything. These guys actually loved doing what they were doing and loved being where they were and who they were doing it with. It was like the center of a universe inhabited by the friendliest most fun-loving bunch of guys ever.
John Eichert, the guy with the beard, was the oldest brother and pretty cluey. I was amazed that he let me stand in the doorway to the first shaping bay I’d ever seen and watch him hew a board from a solid billet of balsa. (Billet is as close to anything that I could imagine at the time that would describe what would later be replaced by foam blanks.) In the following months I’d watch him select the balsa sticks and glue them up to form the billet that he’d then craft into a sleek torpedo for Hammond’s Reef or some exotic place up on the Ranch.
I was the ultimate newbie and just glad they didn’t haze me or run me off. John designed and shaped the boards. It got to be part or my regular routine to call in and see what was happening there and there was always something happening at that place. Sometimes I’d recognize the name on the order form as a kid from school or a guy from the beach and report its progress the next day at school or the beach. It was the kind of things we lived for when we were kids and it’s never lost its magic.
John used to kid us a lot and it was nice having a guy big-brothering us like that. He had a joke or something going on with everyone. His sense of humor made the whole place happen.
I eventually broke my ten foot Hobie, in the pier at Carpenteria in storm surf. I was heartbroken until, Norman and Richard Grant’s pop suggested we build me a new one.
“Where?” I asked.
John Eichert, the guy with the beard, was the oldest brother and pretty cluey. I was amazed that he let me stand in the doorway to the first shaping bay I’d ever seen and watch him hew a board from a solid billet of balsa. (Billet is as close to anything that I could imagine at the time that would describe what would later be replaced by foam blanks.) In the following months I’d watch him select the balsa sticks and glue them up to form the billet that he’d then craft into a sleek torpedo for Hammond’s Reef or some exotic place up on the Ranch.
I was the ultimate newbie and just glad they didn’t haze me or run me off. John designed and shaped the boards. It got to be part or my regular routine to call in and see what was happening there and there was always something happening at that place. Sometimes I’d recognize the name on the order form as a kid from school or a guy from the beach and report its progress the next day at school or the beach. It was the kind of things we lived for when we were kids and it’s never lost its magic.
John used to kid us a lot and it was nice having a guy big-brothering us like that. He had a joke or something going on with everyone. His sense of humor made the whole place happen.
I eventually broke my ten foot Hobie, in the pier at Carpenteria in storm surf. I was heartbroken until, Norman and Richard Grant’s pop suggested we build me a new one.
“Where?” I asked.
“We can build it in our garage,” Norman volunteered. After a calculation about how much it’d cost for materials and then building the racks to shape and glass it on, it came out far cheaper to build one than buy one so we did it.
The only reason I mention this at this time is: After we’d built a bunch of boards for the Mesa kids, John Eichert asked me if I’d come to work at his real factory as a clean up kid and fin-panel layer-upper because his younger brother Dave was too busy glassing and Kent Bittleston, Doc Bittleston’s son, never showed up because he was always going on surf trips with his dad.
It meant giving up my lawn jobs and paper route but still allowed me the time I spent down in the harbor being a gopher for the yachties who were working on their boats in the boat yard at Rod’s Marine. The knowledge of fiberglass I was picking up at IKE held me in good stead down there too.
Like a leaf in a storm drain I just went where it took me, and luckily for me where it took me was where I would’ve dreamed of being had I been able to imagine it. Being my first real experience in a surfboard factory situation and a more than a little in awe, made my take on some of what went on there a little hazy sometimes. Being a kid, and a little one at that, I learned to keep my mouth shut, lest I be masking-taped to a street light and left for the seagulls or frequently marauding Mexican gangs or the police. Everyone who came in the shop was way older than me so I learned to keep my mouth shut and learn and for the most part the older guys took me under their wings and taught me stuff.
One particular customer of Eichert’s that I recall was Bob Armijo. He was a Mexican kid,and a really funny guy. I don’t know if he ever got really good at surfing but he was always good fun to have around. a year or two older than me. A B.A. at the time was what some guys called ‘Bare Assing’ or ‘Mooning’ someone. Bob Armijo had the misfortune of having those initials and copped a fair ribbing from the older guys. You can imagine my pleasure when the spotlight would finally leave the kid they called Pecker and focused on anybody else.
Armijo loved it.
John Eichert, being the kind of guy he was, didn’t even bat
an eyelash when Bob asked him about the B.A. that he’d inscribed on the deck of his new board – “Bop Ass,” John grinned and later coined the phrase, ‘Bop-assed late take- off special’ – Which best described Bob Armijo’s propensity for the ridiculously late take-off. Looking back, I don’t think it was a death-wish as much as his desire to be in the most critical and therefore exciting place on a wave. Or it could’ve just been bad judgment, I don’t know. But whatever it was it put Bob in position for the most spectacular wipe-outs I’ve ever seen. Which John would always recall in great detail, especially the look on Bob’s face at the point of realizing that he was being pitched over the falls after thinking it’s just another late take-off, at the Friday afternoon bullshit sessions at the factory which would then lead to Bob retelling the tale from his point of view. I’d still be laughing when I’d ride my bike home for dinner. Thank God, some things about surfboard shops never change. I loved Friday afternoons in my surfboard factory too.
I’ll always owe John Eichert a huge debt of gratitude for taking the time to show me the good stuff and answer my dumb-assed kid questions. The knowledge and understanding that he imparted to this little kid at that particular time in my life set me up for a life of surfing. Being there when John and George were discussing different laws of physics and hydrodynamics and then giving me the chance to query them and have them give me physical examples of those theories was the basis for the craft that I spent my working-life pursuing.
I continued to ride IKE’s when he moved out to Goleta and opened up next to a cabinet maker. After my sophomore year in high school, things changed and because Rincon was in the opposite direction from Goleta – I found less and less excuses to go north. And then John built me a board that had a removable fin with a nylon pin that rattled and kept falling out all the time – It was a pain in the ass and Alan Hazard gave me a Hansen to try that he’d hated. I liked the Hansen at Stanley’s and California Street but hated it at Rincon and the Ranch or anyplace with a hard face where a thin rail and a straighter mid- ships is the only ticket. Then one day Renny paddled up to me at Rincon and said he’d started shaping my new board but had run out of gas. I was heart broken. I thought he’d mistaken me for someone else. A week later I bumped into Renny down at the harbor and he asked me why I hadn’t been in to pick up my new board. I could’ve cried, sure that he’d mistaken me for somebody else. When I finally got the nerve to say so, Renny just looked at me, “You’re Mike ‘Pecker’ Davis aren’t you?”
I nodded dumbly.
“Meet me at the shop then. I followed him to his new showroom on lower State Street where I found my first Yater Spoon standing in the rack with the other new boards. The label on the rail said, 9’10” Spoon – Mike ‘Pecker’ Davis. He hadn’t mistaken me for someone else and it was the beginning of a friendship that’s lasted for nearly fifty years.
If I hadn’t had the background with the IKE boys, I doubt I’d’ve ever learned enough to be one of Yater’s guys and for that I owe Big John Eichert big time but have felt a little bit guilty about ever since. I still reckon I owe John a big debt of gratitude.
When sailboarding started to happen, I was the go-to guy when it came to sailing stuff and sailboard design, but it was only because of my solid background in hydro- dynamics that I’d learned at the knees of John Eichert and George Greenough. Everything was so easy but it was only because of that background of methodical progression known as evolution. Over the years I’ve written magazine articles on fin design and I’ve always included John’s design and cited it as revolutionary.
The fact thatJohn was there first with that kind of thing says a lot more than meets the eye.
good many years.
Looking back, I’ve led a charmed life in a lot of ways
and understand that the fortuitous things that’ve come my way have left me with a huge responsibility to make sure that I’ve been what these men have been tome–To as many young guys with enquiring minds and adventurous spirits as Ican.I t’s why I believe that shaping boards is the noblest of professions and one that just may have already slipped by-the-by but for our memories of it.
I loved those guys at IKE’s. Paul Douglas was a particular favorite because he took the time to show me about glassing when he was the laminator there. I’d finish sweeping up and he’d allow me watch and ask questions.
This one’s for you John Eichert – We all owe you–But I especially owe you big time!
If you want to read more of Mike’s stories or entire books head to.
