Golf

I wrote this piece in something like 1998. The golf course I'm referring to is The Country Club of Barre. Barre is Barre, Vermont. The course is actually in the town of Plainfield, Vermont.

I really love golf. I love everything about it.
I love the way course looks--especially when it has just been mowed. Or at twilight, when the shadows lengthen, and the fairways curve away into the gathering darkness. Or in the morning, just before the fog lifts, and the grass is wet with morning dew. When the grass is wet with dew you can read the greens perfectly because the balls from the group ahead have left little trails curving toward the hole that are easy to see.
I love the equipment. I love my clubs. They are Wilson Staff Mid-Sized Irons with 4.0 Graphite Shafts. They are called “FireStiks” and the shafts are red. They are actually pretty and I’ve never thought of clubs as pretty. Well, maybe the old wooden drivers were pretty. But my clubs are pretty. I love their real leather grips. I love the way they feel in my hands. I love the way they swing. I love these irons. I also love my "woods." Titanium Great Big Berthas ... a driver and a four wood. They both have extra-long shafts and when I connect just right, the ball really flies. I love my clubs.
I love the golf junk I always carry in my pocket. A divot repairer from Michigan State University--my alma mater--with a ball marker that’s held in it by a magnet. A plastic divot repairer that really works good. A copper ball mark from the U.S.G.A. A plastic ball mark from AAA. And a bunch of tees. I carry these on the course and off the course--all year long.
I love the way the clubs sound when they swing and hit the ball--especially the woods. Swish--crack. And the ball flies away. I love the way the ball sounds when it falls into the cup. I love it when other players cry, “Fore” to warn the rest of us of an errant shot.
I love the ball washers that we have on the course--even ‘though the water in them really stinks because nobody ever changes it. I love the sprinkler heads that dot the fairways. They have the distances to the center of the green written on them. I love to watch the sprinklers work--especially those around the green that work together to send out water in great, spraying circles.
I love the mowers and the guys who drive them. Billy, our greens superintendent is a super kid. He has a degree in golf course management and interned at Augusta. He looks at the greens. He get down on his hands and knees and touches them. He smells them. I think he even tastes them. They have to be among the nicest greens in the world. When Billy drives the small mower you know there is no place in the world he would rather be.
I love the clothes I wear when I golf. Cotton pants when it’s cool. An off-white Irish knit sweater that is becoming frayed and worn. Long underwear when it’s cold. (We’ll play if the temperature is above 32°.) Cotton shorts and cotton shirts in the summer. I wear very low cut socks that come just to the top of my golf shoes. (I love my golf shoes, too.) My foot has a great tan line. So do my legs and arms. Without clothes on I’m pretty funny looking.
I love the back nine at Barre. Every single hole.
The tenth--a long, uphill par five. You need three good shots to get there and when you get there, here is a treacherous green protected by a great, yawing front trap. I’m usually happy to walk away with a six.
These next four are our “A-Men Corner.”
The eleventh--straight away par four, but you hit to a highly contoured and elevated green. A tough par. I’ll take five any day.
The twelfth--another long par four. The fairway slopes drastically to the left so don’t go left off the tee. You’ll be out of bonds. Another elevated green--more severely than the green at the eleventh. This green is “small” so it’s hard to stay on if you get up the hill. Take five and be happy.
The thirteenth. 160 yard uphill par three. All carry. You can’t see the green because it’s above you. Very deceiving hole. Lots of guys playing it for the first time try to use a seven or eight iron. They wind up very short. I usually hit a four wood! Don’t go left or right off the tee. Big trouble.
The fourteenth. Number 2 handicap hole. Long, long par four. Takes two great shots to get there. Trouble right and left off the tee. Be straight. Take a five.
The fifteenth. Uphill par five with a dog-leg left. Great hole. You have to be at the top of the hill off the tee or you will never get a par. Don’t go right on your second shot or you’ll be in the woods. Don’t go left either. Same thing.
This part of the course is very pretty. A great view of the Green Mountains. You can see all the way to Camel’s Hump--Vermont’s second highest mountain--about 40 miles away. Spectacular in the fall. Actually, spectacular any time of the year. When it's my time to leave this third rock from the sun, I want my ashes scattered up here someplace.
The sixteenth. Short par three. 112 yards. You look down onto the green from an elevated tee. Big, hungry traps all around the green. And the green is on the side of hill--rolling from back to front. Great golf hole.
The seventeenth. A par four that looks so easy it kills you. Easy driving hole with trouble only too far to the left or right. The green, however, is protected by a great trap on the front right and smaller traps along the left side. The second shot is a real challenge. One of my favorite holes.
The eighteenth. Great closing hole. Long par four. You need a good drive and a good second shot to be on the green. The green runs dramatically to the left. When the pin is at the top it’s tough to get near it.
I love the club house. I love my locker. I love the bar. I love the barmaids and the caterer. I love the pro and his assistant. I love the administrative assistant and the bagroom boys. I love my fellow members.
I love golf. I really do.
Here is a parody …
Oh, I must go out to Barre again
to the greens and the club house bar,
and all I ask is a long straight drive,
and--now and then--a par.

FaceBook Friends

I got fairly actively involved with FaceBook during the Fiddler run. As a result, I ended up with a lot of teen-aged "friends" as there were a number of them in the show. One of them is Westley. Westley (and that's really the way he spells his name) is a seventh grader. He played The Fiddler and moved in and out of scenes throughout the show, occasionally appearing "on the roof." He never spoke. He only fiddled. I thought he was quite effective.
Last night he put two neat quotes on FaceBook. One was from Rita Mae Brown. I'd never heard of her. She's an author of books for kids. Westley quoted her as saying, "The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you. " Pretty cute.
The other quote was from Dorothy Parker. "Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Romania." Also pretty cute.
It's been fun following these youngsters through their FaceBook posts. It keeps one young.

More Thoughts on GM

Michael Moore wrote a piece which was a scathing attack on GM management. He said that their practice of building cars that would fall apart in two year … planned obsolesence … was what got them into trouble. He wrote, "The company which invented planned obsolesence … the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years." He also talked about management fight against federal requirements for air quality, fuel economy, and safety regulations. I believe he's probably right on.

But, then he went on and said, "… (this) corporation (has) ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with." I'm not sure that it's fair to blame GM for those kinds of things. People are responsible for the decisions they make. They have to live with the consequences of their actions.

My daughter and I were discussing the Moore piece via e-mail and she told me of a friend she had in Lansing, Michigan whose husband worked the night shift for Oldsmobile and spent most of it in a bar on the clock. And, in that kind of an environment, those workers couldn't help but build cars that would fall apart in two years.

I just know that the whole thing is sad. Hell, I was walking out of my local Meijer's store yesterday and the parking lot was strewn with trash. Where did that come from? People throw away wrappers, used cans, sales receipts, the contents of car ashtrays without ever thinking about what it's going to look like. The streets and roads in southeast Michigan, especially along the expressways and in Detroit, are a real mess. It's symptomatic of a bigger problem that has something to do with people caring about something beyond themselves.

It's tiring.

Your Huddled Masses

I went to the main Dearborn post office today to apply for a Passport Card. That would be a great place to "people watch" … maybe. Half the people in there didn't seem to be able to speak English very well. One guy had a girl with him who was translating and helping him fill out the form. The post office passport guy was very nice. I said, "I'll bet you could tell some interesting stories." He just rolled eyes.

A bit later I heard him remark to another clerk, "Here come my daily cast of thousands." The lobby was beginning to fill with people who wanted to do business with him. There were veiled Muslim women. All you could see of them were their eyes. There were swarthy middle eastern men who babbled to each other in Ararbic. They all seemed to have difficulty with the "take a number" routine the post office passport guy was using to control the situation.

I wonder where all these people want to go. And why?

Today it was announced that GM is filing for bankruptcy. I want to know WHY this happened. Was it really a case of crummy management? When I was a school administrator some of my board members would tell me that I should run my schools more like American businesses were run. I don't think I would have managed my district into bankruptcy. But, HOW? How did GM get to the point where it went bankrupt? Somebody 'splain it to me, please.

And, the other top story of the day is the missing Air France air bus that apparently went down in the Atlantic during a flight from Rio de Janerio, Brazil to Paris. There were 228 people aboard.