Tag Archives: eighteen holes

Country Club

Country club: (n) a club offering various social activities

I grew up in a town of fifteen hundred people, and that’s fourteen hundred and ninety-nine if you deduct me.

It was small.

Yet it yearned to gain the respectability of another town ten miles away, which had just become a city, and by the way, in becoming a city funny wisdom on words that begin with a Cwas desperately trying to keep up with the metropolis ten miles south of it.

For you see, it’s not so much that the “grass is greener on the other side of the fence.” It’s just that often we’re envious that our neighbor has a fence.

My little town wanted to have a golf course. We didn’t need a golf course. There actually was a greater demand for a teen pregnancy center. But I digress.

Yet some investors from the medium-sized city in between came together with the small-town folk surrounding me and built a golf course on the only land available at the time—which was a hilly piece of property that ran right alongside a major road.

I will not get into the fact that the golf course was not exactly ready to host the Masters. But shortly after it was constructed, those who were playing golf realized that they didn’t have a country club on the grounds.

Where were you to go after slogging your way through eighteen holes, lying about your score, to sit with some friends and enjoy a cocktail while discussing the finer points of your pointless activity?

I was convinced there would never be a country club.

Matter of fact, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to be.

There were two reasons. The first was that our small town did not require a golf course, let alone a nineteenth-hole watering-area for the few golfers who could actually climb up and down the hills.

But the main reason I didn’t want us to have a country club was that I knew we didn’t have much money and it would be really shitty.

But it was voted in and it was built. It was just a little bit bigger than a Dairy Queen, and only contained four booths. It looked like one of those small-town diners that stays open because twenty-five people go to church with the owner.

It was embarrassing.

Matter of fact, after a while, people stopped calling it a country club and referred to it as “the place.”

“After we get done playing golf let’s go to the place.”

The name was so ambiguous that it fit our small-town country club just jim-dandy.


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Caddie

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Caddie: (n) a person who carries a golfer’s clubs

Mike was always trying to figure out ways to make money. He was a fifteen-year-old entrepreneur before anybody was prepared to spell or
pronounce the word.

He liked me.

Now, Mike weighed about 122 pounds. I also weighed 122 pounds–but stored 150 more as a backup. So Mike had a lot of stamina. I just had a lot.

Mike had the brilliant idea of going to the new golf course just outside our town and offering his service as a caddie to our limited supply of financially successful people. He did it for two or three weekends, and came back with… cash.

At fifteen years of age, I so infrequently saw money that it seemed almost mystical and certainly magical.

Mike convinced me that I should take my 270-plus pounds and go out with him the next weekend to caddie at the golf center. He explained that it was nothing more than going on a long walk. (I should have realized at that point that it had been many years since I had been on a long walk. My personal preference was a long drive.)

But I agreed and arrived at the gold course at 8:00 A. M. sharp to carry the bags for Mr. Fundergetz. Now, I’m sure that’s not his real name, but he said it with a German accent so quickly that the best I could ascertain was “Fundergetz.” Most of the morning I opted to call him “sir.”

I had not realized that golf courses were measured in yards–and this was before anyone had thought about using a golf cart. By the time I reached the third hole, carrying the bags and trying to keep up with Fundergetz, I was panting, sweating down the insides of my legs and so flushed in the face that he became concerned for me and asked me to sit down while he ran and got some ice for my forehead.

After a few moments of recuperation, I said, “I’m fine now, and it won’t be too much longer, right?”

At this point, Fundergetz explained to me that it was an eighteen-hole golf course and we were only one-sixth of the way through.

Noting the fear on my face, my trembling brow and a tear coming to the corner of my eye, he showed mercy on me, handed me two dollars and asked if I could make it back to the clubhouse on my own.

I was so humiliated.

Mike was so disappointed.

I was completely emasculated by the whole experience.

So when I arrived back at the clubhouse to complete my restoration, I got two hot dogs, a coke and a Baby Ruth candy bar.

It is amazing how good they made me feel.

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