Since the middle of December, everyone I know has been looking for deep, untracked powder snow. Now in the late spring, many of the same friends are looking for short, green grass with a microscopically small hole 300 or 400 yards away. For some dumb reason, the object is to put that little white ball at your feet into that tiny hole by hitting it as few times as possible with an stick with a piece of meticulously laminated stainless steel surrounding it with a funny looking lump on the end.
When I dug out my new golf shoes I realized that I had made a dumb mistake. I had stuffed my wet sox in my shoes from the last round of golf I played during the heavy rain storm in November and the moisture, mud and grass clippings had turned into a giant grey mass of stuff that made it impossible to even try and get the nearly new golf shoes on. This happened to me years ago, but I was able to dig out the moldy growth with my putter and somehow make my tee time at the local golf course, even though you don’t need a tee time. But, no such chance to do that this day and age because they are making putters so big they are no longer suitable as a mildew scoop because you cannot get them into the shoes. (My wife is groaning and shaking her head. She doesn’t understand men, even though most of her life she’s surrounded by them.)
Luckily, this was happening in my garage so I found an 18-inch screwdriver that I used to pry the goo and gunk out of my now-no-longer-new golf shoes.
Running late, I stopped by to pick up my occasional golf partner Ole. He lives down by the recycling center behind where you dump your worn out kitchen appliances for a fee of $25.
Ole lives down in the hollow because his grandfather used to have a hog farm and Ole inherited it when his Grandpa died. Ole immediately quit studying computer science and took up hog farming and golf. Ole makes the rounds of all of the restaurants on the island after they close for the night and collects leftover food to help feed his hogs. This last winter was long and cold with few tourists, so his hogs are pretty skinny this spring.
Ole is the only golfer I have ever played with who has a pair of calf-high rubber goulashes with genuine metal golf cleats on them. He found them one day in the recycling center and bought them for 65 cents on a rainy afternoon when he was the only customer that day. Only on this island would you find golf goulashes with cleats. Only on this island would you need them.
Ole is a good golfer and has eyes like a hawk. He keeps his eagle eyes on where I hit my ball because my eyes are getting bad after being open for 16 hours a day for more than 80 years. He is a little hard of hearing, so when I find his ball for him I have to use arm signals to let him know where it is. We are the odd couple of the local golf course.
Our first game this spring worked well for him. Half way down the second fairway, I waded through some water that came over the top of my nearly new, moldy golf shoes with some starter mud already in them. The water was really cold and as I sloshed my way toward the second hole, the water that was being squeezed out of the shoes contained a lot of the mold so it worked for me.
The cloud that had been hovering on nearby TurtlebackMountain suddenly dumped a torrential rain cloud on us as we drove the golf cart at maximum speed toward the clubhouse. In our haste, Ole drove us through a puddle of rain water that came up over the floorboards of the golf cart and we were stuck. Since he had the goulashes with the golf cleats on them, he became the designated golf cart pusher until we somehow got to higher ground. Without snow tires on the golf cart, we could not get it up the hill and back to the clubhouse, so we left the cart where it had gotten stuck for the third time that day.
The one-man staff that was running the golf course that day had forgotten we were on the course and had closed up and left for home to watch an NBA playoff game re-run.
Ole was able to make the most out of the day because he had suggested we take his truck to the golf course instead of my wife’s new station wagon. We stopped by a couple of his restaurants that were having wedding receptions and he was able to get several buckets of leftover food for his hogs.
On the wet drive home, I rationalized that the first game of golf in the spring is the same as the first day of skiing in the fall when you know that 2 inches of snow will not cover all of the 2½ inch rocks and you think that you can fix all of the scratches in your new skis just because you got to make some turns on the side of the hill.
Warren Miller is history’s most prolific and enduring ski filmmaker. Visit warrenmiller.net or visit his Facebook page at facebook.com/warrenmiller.
