Next up is Dad and Golf…Golfing was Dad’s lifelong passion…as kids, I am sure y’all did not realize how deep and wide Dad’s passion for Golfing really was…I am here to tell y’all that it was…
I started caddying for Dad in Lake Oswego…at the time, I was just tall enough to NOT have the golf bag drag on the ground as I shouldered it…to an 8 yo kid, it was heavy and bulky but I did it and was happy that I could do it because it meant that I could spend those hours with Dad…I remember being eager to learn the game and perform as a caddy should…golf is an interesting game with protocols and conventions that are not apparent to the casual bystander…I began learning so I could show Dad that I was learning the game and understanding it’s rules and protocols..caddies have their own rules to follow as they game progresses with a foursome…I can remember Dad explaining to his foursome buddies that if they did not mind, I was going to be his caddy…the other men in his foursome apparently did not have sons or if they did, the sons they had were not interested in caddying for their Dads or they were not mature enough to be able to be on the golf course with the adults…just speculating here but I was the only kid in Dad’s regular foursome who caddied…
It was only later in my career that I discovered that golf was where corporate cats like my Dad got things done, deals were made and the camaraderie developed on the course among these clients and friends…these relationships or networks as we called them today greased the wheels of corporate America, back then…maybe it is still true today…
I do have a funny story from my recent project at Plant Vogtle where I spent six years building the only two new nukes in North America, to date…by the way, both those new nukes just recently started producing power for Georgia and the power grid…so that is a good thang…anywhoo, one of the main big wheels on the Plant Vogtle site who incidentally actually hired me after a phone interview in March of 2009 came up to me one day soon after I got there and poked his head in area where I was sitting with everybody else and looked at me directly and said:
“Do you golf?”
I replied, deadpan, knowing the reaction I would get with:
”No, I caddy.”
My response was met with a deer in headlights blank stare while he processed what I just said…he then turned his head and walked back out of my area, shaking his head, still trying to process what I had just said…
anywhoo, another bonus for me as a kid, was lunch in the clubhouse after an early morning round of 18 holes with his regular foursome…after a round, the men would all change and meet in clubhouse dining room where we would eat…now, one of the features or specialties of this clubhouse kitchen was a dessert item, named “cheesecake”…now, to an 8 yo mind that item sounded gross so for years, I would order anything on the dessert menu but “cheesecake”…Dad would encourage me to just try the cheesecake, for once…finally, one day after lunch, I got brave enough to finally try cheesecake…and Boy Howdy, was it ever good!…I could not believe how good it was…it was fantastic and delicious and I could not get enough of it…the other men in Dad’s regular foursome joked with Dad about how this new food addition to my regular fare was going to make him go broke cos it was so expensive to order…
skip forward to living in Bronxville, NY
this is where and when Dad hit the jackpot in relation to playing golf each weekend…it turns out that there was a golf course and associated club named St. Andrews in a town nearby…Dad apparently met all the criteria for membership there, applied and got in…so that became my new course for caddying…
an excerpt from their website:
“In February 1888, a Scottish sportsman named John Reid and several of his friends took an armful of clubs, some gutta percha balls and hearts full of enthusiasm to a pasture in Yonkers for a friendly round of “Gowf”. There, in front of a gallery of bemused cows, they knocked the balls around an improvised three-hole course.
Before long, these golfing pioneers had commandeered their own “clubhouse”— an old apple tree from whose gnarled branches they hung their coats and obligatory flasks of fine scotch whiskey.
This was the birth of what was to become the oldest continuously operating golf club in the United States: The Saint Andrew’s Golf Club. Today’s members of Saint Andrew’s are a contemporary part of that “Apple Tree Gang,” one of the proudest, most unique fellowships in American golf.”
Gents, it is here at St. Andrews where I developed into a proper caddy and I was a good one…this is where I became a “double bagger caddy” meaning along with carrying Dad’s bag I was allowed to carry the bags of another cat from Dad’s regular foursome…this meant if Dad hit the ball from the tee and it ended up in the rough on the right hand side of the fairway and my other bagger golfer hit it into the left rough, depending on who hit it shorter than the other fella, I would attend to that golfer’s ball and give him the club he needed for the next shot and then race and run across the fairway to the next golfer where I would patiently wait while he chose a club for his next shot…this is how it would go for 18 holes…
and there were little protocols I would perform when both of my golfers reached the green, like holding the pin for each golfer if he was far enough away on the green…then as each golfer finally holed out, I would gather their putters and hand them the club each wanted to hit on the next hole which sometimes, they did not know until they got to the tee…and so on, rinse and repeat for each and every single hole on the course…if I recall correctly (which is problematic at my age sometimes), St. Andrew’s had rule at that time in the early 60s that all golfers who were members were compelled to carry their own bags…once Dad was accepted into the Club, I seem to recall that he had to go before the Board, to get them to make an exception for me to caddy but I could be wrong…in any event, I was always the only caddy allowed on the course…quite a privilege for a young whippersnapper at the time…I gained more knowledge there about the game and was respectful of it’s rules and protocols
one last excerpt from St. Andrew’s Golf Club website:
“The Saint Andrew’s membership roll has always reflected a diversity of American sportsmen, from the likes of legendary financier Andrew Carnegie and famed architect Stanford White to baseball commissioner Ford Frick, air ace Eddie Rickenbacker and former New York State Governor Malcolm Wilson.
In 1988, Saint Andrew’s was the venue for the celebration of the first 100 years of golf in America, an event that brought together many of the greatest names in the history of the game, including Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Kathy Whitworth, Nancy Lopez and Jack Nicklaus.”
It should be noted for the record, that Dad would take me to golf tournaments around in the area quite often esp. a course named Winged Foot…I enjoyed these outings tremendously and got to see in action many of the greatest golfers of all time competing including my favorite, Arnold Palmer…one last note about Dad and Golf…one year when he been moved to Houston/Spring/The Woodlands, Dad and Mal got tickets somehow to attend the The Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia…so arrangements were made where I would drive them both to the event from Cumming, deposit them both at the gate and then wait while they attended the tournament and pick them up and drive back to Cumming…in retrospect, this must have been on Dad’s “bucket list” for a long time so he finally got his wish and I was honored to be allowed to perform this task for him…
well, it is early morning on the 17th of July, 2024 and the world as we know it, is about to change in ways that are incalculable and are presently hidden from our view
on that note, I will quote Oat Willie who sez, “Onwards, thru the fog!”