From SurfOhio.com. This makes me smile.
” It turns out posting all those yellow and black posters in late winter’s icy blast was not for naught. Just before I placed the ad, the posters attracted the attention of a Post reporter who tracked me down through The Underwear. Apparently, word on the street of a surfing contest in Athens had created quite a buzz. Though the headline of the resulting article at first seemed a bit harsh – “Surfin Classic a Hoax to Sell T-shirts” – it did not matter. The interview with me and Ski was actually quite favorable, and resulted in a crush of customers at The Underwear. It didn’t hurt that the article just happened to run the very same day as my ad, nor that seemingly 75% of the student population of about 12,000 was headed to a warm beach for the break.
Thus, the very weekend classes let out, students literally queued up to purchase a SURF OHIO t-shirt on their way out of town. They lined up through the small basement shop and up its steps. With just 24 hours remaining before I too headed out up Route 33 for home in Columbus, Ski commissioned me to rush another 10 dozen SURF OHIOs through. Through some creative bartering with my dorm’s Resident Advisor that evening (my currency being beverages and a free t-shirt, as I recall), he tossed me the keys to a vacated room in Gamertsfelder Hall. There, I popped a box fan into the window facing outward, ran clothesline back and forth across the ceiling, fired up my radio and, using the two desks as my worktables, hand-screened tees until about three in the morning. I didn’t need the beverages, not with the fumes I was inhaling (as in mineral spirits, by the way).
With the navy ink barely dry enough to fold the shirts, and my ride home idling in wait up on Union Street, I dropped off the newly minted SURF OHIOs to Ski, picked up my cash, and fought my way back up the steps through a line of about 30 waiting customers snaking down into the shop. I well recall the enthusiasm theirs and mine. Though it was not quite exactly an ‘overnight’ success, it was quite sudden. I was now that “Surf Ohio guy”, and would remain so for a long, long time, though I had no idea for just how long, at that moment.
