On the Road with Jimmy Lewis :Standup Journal | Page 4

NICK RARIG Central Cal Coaster Tom 'Wart' Craig at Rock Garden.

At the wheel was Shane “Waterboy” Webb, a policeofficer-turned-surfer from Tennessee who spent most of the tour grinning ear to ear and pinching himself as he crossed off a lifetime bucket list of surf spots. Upon hearing that Shane’s nickname was Waterboy, Jimmy, sitting between us, broke into song: “Good Morning, Captain! Good Morning to You, Sir, hya haa haa ha haa haaaw….” And he wasn’t just humming. He was bellowing and yodeling. If you’ve never heard "Mule Skinner Blues" by the Fendermen, it’s a great way to start the day. I would set it as my alarm clock tone, but my wife would kill me before I woke. Jimmy’s rendition was prompted because of a line in the song where the mule skinner chastises the local water boy. As we later passed through the budding springtime cliffs of the Pacific Coast Highway, Jimmy sang Marlene Dietrich’s full-German version of “Where have all the Flowers Gone.”

Jimmy’s choice of music gives away his years. Jimmy started shaping surfboards here in California in 1968 when he was just a teen. He soon moved to Haiku, a Hawaiian village perched on a volcano in Maui, where he still shapes boards nearly every day. These days, he primarily shapes custom boards for friends and family— mostly old school longboards that are time machines of craftsmanship and style. You’ll know when he’s shaping those boards because the groovy tunes will be coming out of the shop. The Tom Craig, Central Cal Connection Back to the tour: We had only intended to pass through central California with a few brief stops. Our demo in Morro Bay, however, stretched into three nights and some great sessions, mostly because we met up with Tom Craig. Tom leads a motley crew of local paddlers who all love Jimmy’s boards. Tom’s surfing credentials are pedigreed back to his dad in the 1930s. Tom was on the Bing surf team and shared many waves with the likes of Donald Takayama, Dewey Webber, and

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Jimmy loves music—good music. Even his famous shark logo is infamously based on an old Frank Zappa song…but that’s another story altogether. Clearly,

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