Epistle 30 – The Masters

It’s Masters golf tournament time and as I marvel at the splendor of Augusta National from the athletic position of my Lay-Z-Boy, I can’t help but compare the similarities of this grand event with my own early golf career. It all began inauspiciously when I was 15 and my brother dragged me along for a round of golf with a couple of his cronies on a hot Saturday afternoon. They claimed that I was essential to complete their foursome, but their hidden agenda was to torture me beyond human endurance. For thirteen holes I thrashed through the weeds of a course lovingly known by the locals as Goat Hill, spraying an assortment of golf balls in all directions and cutting nasty smiley faces in them out of spite. (That was back when golf balls could actually be cut, revealing a mass of rubber bands wrapped around a tiny rubber ball.) The clubs loaned to me had names like Cleek, Mashie and Spoon, sounding more apt for lunch than golf and serving neither.

My brother and his sick friends kept silent about my play as long as I kept up. If I was too wayward, they politely suggested I take a 10 for the hole and join them on the next tee, assuming I could find it from whatever wasteland I was lost in. Undaunted, I trudged on through the heat, knowing that my first round of golf had to end sometime. And then the unimaginable happened. Deep within the abyss of the sports world, the golf gods smiled upon me. On the 14^th tee I hit a drive that actually landed in the fairway! Can you imagine that? The fairway, for God’s sake. Confidently, I strode up to my ball, basking in the glow of athletic achievement, and the envy of my fellow competitors. As though I actually knew what I was doing, I survey the scene, pulled out my Brassie, waggled it a few times for effect, and then gracefully launched the ball toward . . . ohmygod . . .the green! Yes, children, as impossible as it seems, it went toward the green. Not on it, but at it, and close enough to be deemed a success.

My chip onto the green was less than sterling, a scruffy looking shot that stubbornly came to a halt after about 6 feet of unattractive squirming, leaving me 10 more feet to the hole. Taking the advice of my companions, I marked my ball, spit on it and cleaned it on my pants, and then walked purposefully around the hole, pretending to notice every nuance in the green. Then, borrowing another tip from the greats, I closed one eye and held the putter in the air between my forefinger and my thumb, thereby allowing gravity to show me which way the putt would break. (Don’t ask me why.) Finally, without a clue, I hitched up my trousers like Arnold Palmer and confidently topped the ball with my putter in the general direction of the hole. For an eternity the ball rolled and hopped, turning this way and that, until finally . . . finally . . . it went in! I made par! I had reached the zenith of the golf world in only fourteen holes.

Preferring to go out on top rather than hang on long after my skills had diminished, I dropped my putter right there by the fourteenth green and marched off the course, the hysterical gallery parting like the Red Sea. An hour later, back in the clubhouse, my brother and his sweaty pals ordered a frosty pitcher of beer. Noticing my Coke was long gone, they generously insisted that we crown my laurels by filling my glass with beer, at which time the dragon-lady of the 19^th Hole Grill swooped in, demanding to see my ID. My fellow golfers claimed they didn’t even know me and I had brazenly taken their beer without their permission, at which point I was marched out to the parking lot by the earlobe.

Perhaps my early golf venue was not the magnificence of Augusta National, but I can still say I went out on top . . . until I took up the cursed sport again 15 years later.

We Will Win

Epistle 9 – Dancing

I’ll bet you children think big time media dancing was created by reality TV, like “Dancing With the Stars” or “So You Think You Can Dance”. Well, it wasn’t. It started with a bunch of teenagers from Philadelphia named Bob and Justine, Kenny and Arlene and Ed and Bunny.

Seems to me there was also a Fran in there somewhere, but I can’t remember who her partner was. Anyway, they wore sport jackets with skinny ties, skirts and dresses, and even two-toned shoes! And as cruel as that sounds, they still had the courage to appear after school on American Bandstand, (yes, another black and white broadcast!) hosted by Dick Clark, who looked younger than the dancers . . . forever.

Long before Dick was America’s biggest deejay, he was Dorian Gray. Of course, his secret to eternal youth was a deal with the Devil, but he sort of let us think it was because he rubbed gallons of Clearasil on his face on his face when he was young. While a nation full of pubescent teenagers were cursed with zits, Dick told us our lives would be perfect if we used Clearasil, maybe even grow up to look like him, which wasn’t a bad idea except for the doofus hairdo.

Anyway, millions of kids—at least those who could tear themselves away from Annette’s blooming hooters—watched the kids from Philly teach the world how to Stroll and Cha Cha. Once a year there was even a dance contest—what a brilliant idea! With numbers on their backs, they danced to Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On and Topsy, Part II. Each week some couples were eliminated, the tension building beyond human endurance.

Because in the 5^th grade I had been forced to walk all the way across the gym and humbly ask that my name be listed on some girl’s dance card, I swore off dancing forever and didn’t really care who won the American Bandstand annual contest.

But I did get to enjoy several skinny Italian teen idols lip-synching their way through their current hit. And Connie Francis dumping me because I had lipstick on my collar, which, of course, was never going to be true because of the half inch of Clearasil on my face. Or maybe it was the Wildroot Cream Oil that kept dripping off my head.

Watching kids from Philadelphia dance was greasy work.

We Will Win

Epistle 7 – Sputnik

I recently learned the remarkable fact that Sputnik, the Russian missile that was the first to orbit the earth, was launched on the same day as Leave It To Beaver. Surely that couldn’t be a coincidence. It must have been all part of the diabolical scheme by the Evil Empire, to “bury us”, as Nikita Khrushchev so delicately put it when he wasn’t pounding his shoe on a poor, unsuspecting UN table. What a classy guy.

Anyway, as the Russians were rocketing into space while we launched several mighty missiles into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida–or worse yet, just had them tip over without ever making it to the beach–the Boomers of America were taught that every other family except theirs behaved like the Cleavers or the Andersons in Father Knows Best. Ward Cleaver’s casual Friday attire was a sweater and a tie.

He smoked a pipe and gave sage advice on everything to his sons, Wally and the Beaver, while June Cleaver toiled away in the kitchen with a flouncy dress, high heels and a lacy apron that never got stained. Wally and the Beaver had neat rooms and actually communicated with each other despite their age difference. They even talked about life with their parents, for God’s sake! If that wasn’t a subversive Russian plot to destroy the fabric of the American family, I don’t know what is.

Well, none of that nonsense in my family, no sir. Children were meant to be seen and not heard, and the seeing part was kept to a bare minimum. If my mother had a flouncy dress, which I doubt, it was carefully stored away for Easter and Christmas, and my father smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes.

My brother was not put on this earth to help guide me through life like Wally did for the Beaver. He was put on this earth to torment me beyond human endurance. For the first several years, my brother and I slept in bunk beds, him on top and me on the bottom so he could accidentally step on me as he climbed up.

I suppose there are still doubters who fail to accept that our idyllic version of the American family was a worthy target for Communist propaganda. Okay, maybe the Beaver wasn’t a Cold War pawn. Maybe every other family really did live like that. Ozzie and Harriett and David and Ricky were the normal ones.

It’s a shame Khrushchev didn’t have more shoes.

We Will Win