Wednesday, September 26, 2018

The Way We Were Wednesday - Golf?


My father caddied as a teenager.  He could make a couple dollars on a Saturday morning, and he enjoyed the walk, and thought wanted to be like the people who played. His father told him, people like us don't play golf.  

When I was in the first grade, my family spent a winter in Phoenix Arizona.  There was a golf course down the street, and my father overcame his social fears and learned to play.  He enjoyed it, and played into his early 80's.  

My guess is I was between 8 and 10 when this picture was taken in the front yard of the small house on the farm, with a golf club in my hands. (The barn in the background burned down before I was 12 - I slept through that one.)  

The winter I was in the 8th grade, my family spent the winter in Spring Hill, Florida, the first of many winters out of the cold.  In January the overcrowded school system switched to double sessions.  I caught a school bus at 6:00AM, classes started at 7:00 AM and I was out at Noon.  My sister had the afternoon shift, she caught the bus at 11:00 AM, her classes started at noon, she got home about 7:00 PM.  With afternoons free, I learned to play golf that winter.  Spending 2 or 3 afternoons a week on the golf course with my father.  I even bought a set of used clubs.  When I moved from Florida, found the clubs in the corner of the garage, the cover hadn't been off since I had moved into that house, 9 years before.  I sold the clubs on the moving sale.  

Do you play golf? 

7 comments:

  1. No. I find it excruciatingly boring. But I love to walk golf courses.

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  2. "golf is a good walk spoiled"

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  3. Used to play a bit while in high school, and a few years beyond.

    :-)

    -Andy

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  4. You can play the world's most boring sport while staying awake, but sleep through a barn burning? Wow. My oldest son plays. We don't know where he got that gene. I've just found out that, at forty-one, he now sky dives and teaches a class on it! It's weird to see your child doing mid-life crisis stuff, especially one with the attention span of a gnat! Sorry, this comment got away from me. No I don't play golf :)

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    Replies
    1. You could let him take you sky diving! I am writing an article about balancing safety and autonomy and I am using an example of a person who wants to go skydiving, what are the essential elements of judgement to do that. (I have never understood the desire to jump out of a perfectly sound aircraft.)

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    2. Absolutely not! I trip over dust balls for crying in a bucket! I'd hear the George of the Jungle theme song as I crashed into a tree! Good luck with that article. Personally, I don't think judgment is involved. It's just people wanting to be buried using Sucrets boxes as coffins. Is there still such a thing as Sucrets?

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  5. no
    no desire either
    seems a silly game.

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