This was a bit more than I expected, and suddenly my hope was that more customers would tromp through the pea gravel, enter the shop, and interrupt us. But early afternoon on Thursdays was usually a slow time, and my range remained empty. “Yep, I did. I also avoided pressuring her about the kids issue, if that’s what you were going to ask next. I’ve been thinking about how I could go visit her on the campaign trail, but I can’t just up and leave my range, especially during the fall season when business is great.”
Hand on chin, Pauly assumed the posture of the deep thinking. Then he plucked a pair of golf balls from a plastic bucket I’d set out on the counter. For a moment he rolled the golf balls around in his palms, staring at them as if debating their significance in the grand scheme of things. “If I were you, Hack, I’d try to see her sooner than later. I mean, you’d be shocked at how far her mind has run ahead of yours. I’d wager that she’s already trying out your last name.”
Refusing to believe him, I shook my head and fiddled with the coins in my cash register. “No way.”
“Yes way. What’s her full name?”
“Molly Elizabeth Cusack.”
He put a finger to his lips, narrowed his eyes. Finally he set the two golf balls back into the plastic bucket. “I’d bet that she’s already stood in front of a mirror and whispered ‘Molly Elizabeth Hackett’ at least five times.”
Now it was my turn to play with the golf balls. “You’re scarin’ me, Pauly.”
He turned and looked out the glassed entrance. In the now busy parking lot, parents were dropping off kids and unloading golf bags from SUVs. “You have lessons to give?” he asked.
I nodded. “Junior high guys at four. Junior high girls at four forty-five.”
“Then we’ll discuss this at our next meeting. Meanwhile, Hack, look in the mirror tonight and repeat to yourself, ‘Molly Elizabeth Hackett, Molly Elizabeth Hackett!’”
His wide grin was out of nature for him, as was the sudden sense of humor. And yet, as Pauly Three Seeds strolled out my door with his newfangled putter, I didn’t know whether to feel encouraged or worried. Too many thoughts collided, and they came in pairs. Molly thoughts and golf thoughts, fatherhood thoughts and manhood thoughts. One more accompanied me out to the range, where five junior high boys were trying to hit golf balls while hopping on one leg.
Why doesn’t my range attract any normal people?
11
LESSON FOR TODAY
The game is played at many socioeconomic levels. Though amenities at the country club level may be far superior, polling data suggests that more spontaneous fun happens at the public level.
I did not expect the country music crowd. Early on Friday night, the Bubbas and the Mary Lous, their twangy songs and their pickup trucks, all gathered in my parking lot. The scene was yet another first for Hack’s: tobacco pouches stuffed into pockets; Hank Williams T-shirts tucked into jeans held up with enormous belt buckles; and golf shoes nastier than Merle Haggard’s spittoon.
More than twenty of them crowded into my pro shop and pressed against the counter. “Big ones,” said the largest Bubba. He pulled a wadded bill from his pocket and handed it to me.
I accepted his crumpled twenty and tucked it into the register. “You want to purchase large buckets of golf balls?”
“Big ones.” He then turned to his mass of silver-buckled groupies and said, “Ever’body wants big ones, right?”
Ever’body said, “Yep, ’at’s right.”
He motioned to them with his massive right arm. “Then gets yer cash up here and give it to this city slicker.”
They gots their cash up to me, and I gots each of them a large bucket of balls.
As they passed through my shop and out to the hitting mats, I noticed that nearly half of them had not bothered with wearing golf shoes at all; in fact, they had no reservations about practicing golf in cowboy boots.
They spread out among the mats, occupying all but eight. After a few minutes of watching them struggle, I walked outside behind the mats and asked if anyone wanted a free five-minute lesson—my attempt to build customer loyalty.
Their replies were all negative, though creative in a rural kind of way.
“Naw, reckon not.”
“’Ats a’ight.”
One bearded guy pointed his club at me and said, “This dawg already hunts.”
And then, way down on the thirty-first mat, the biggest Bubba took a mighty swing and shouted “Yeeee Hawww!” as a range ball launched into a slicing orbit.
They all seemed to be doing fine without me, so I returned to the shop. Waiting for me inside was a smaller and quite different group. Five youths in baggy jeans, gold chains, and New Balance sneakers.
“What a man gotta do to hit golf balls here?” their leader inquired.
“Large buckets are seven dollars,” I said. “Medium is five.”
In place of a verbal reply he nodded and turned his cap sideways. His four friends did likewise.
“No golf clubs, guys?” I asked, noticing that none of the five had a golf bag.
Their spokesman glanced around my shop at the merchandise. “Nah, ain’t none of us got clubs.”
I pointed to the bag of spare clubs I kept in the corner of my shop. “We have some extras we loan out. No problem . . .”
He went over and plucked a child-sized club from the bag but quickly rejected it. “Got any of those big-headed clubs?”
“You mean titanium drivers?”
“Yeah, drivers. We wanna blast some drivers.”
I informed them that the Bubbas and the Mary Lous had borrowed all but one of my spare titanium drivers. Yet the youth still purchased three large buckets of balls. Before they could get through the shop and push open the door to the range, however, my curiosity surfaced. “By the way, guys, are you college students or what?”
The shortest one tugged the bill of his cap down and said, “Naw man, we’re doctors. Doctors of cool.”
At the door all heads nodded. “MDs of hip-hop,” said the fifth doc.
I dug deep for customer relation skills. “That’s fine, guys. Good to have some doctors at my range.” I caught the skeptical glance of their leader. “By the way, what is your name . . . Doctor what?”
He turned and smiled at his friends. “I don’t go by no doctor name, man. They call me Tongue Depressuh.”
I reached across the counter and shook his hand. “Welcome to Hack’s, Mister Depressuh.”
He smiled, and the look in his eyes told me his name held meanings that were far beyond my understanding.
Out on the range, they gathered at the tenth mat, firing away in between a host of Bubbas, who swung the titanium drivers with such force that their T-shirts had pulled out from their jeans. The diversity of my range pleased me; this too was good for business.
My hope was that none of these customers would ask me to supply someone to drive around in the cart and insult them. Not that Cack couldn’t pull it off, mind you. Probably some lines about the youth’s gold jewelry coming from a Cracker Jack box. And then some reciprocal insults for the Bubbas, something to do with cow patties.
This was Cack’s day off, however, so all customers had the privilege of practicing without harassment.
Thirty minutes later Mrs. Dupree strolled in to my shop, this time without her one-brick dog. She donned red capri pants, a red golf shirt, and sunglasses much too big for her face. She didn’t have her golf clubs with her, so I figured this was a social call.
Mrs. Dupree had a habit of skipping pleasantries and just getting straight to the point. She thrust an international envelope over my cash register and waited for me to rise from my chair and accept it. “Read that, Chris. It touched my heart.”
“Who’s it from?”
“Ground troops in Iraq. I figured you may want to help.”
I propped my elbows on the counter and read the letter.
Dear Mrs. Dupree,
My platoon can’t thank you enough for the
three hundred golf balls you sent us back in June. Those, plus the clubs you sent, have kept our spirits up. We are still stuck in the desert awaiting orders, some four hundred miles from Baghdad. The days here are long, so for recreation we built a golf course in the desert. We buried coffee cans at 150-yard intervals and stuck tent poles in them and hung red do-rags on the poles for flags. We use our helmets as tee markers. The reason I am writing is to let you know that I scored my first ever hole-in-one yesterday. My shot hit the top of a dune, hung on the slope for a second, then rolled down the sand and into the coffee can. Fortunately, I did not have to buy beers for the other players because we have no beer.
Unfortunately, half of our platoon has never played golf, so we are already down to just fourteen golf balls from the original three hundred. By the time this letter gets to you, I am sure we will have lost these as well. Anyway, fourteen balls is not enough for a hundred thirty soldiers who somehow cannot learn to share. Could you please send another few hundred balls? And could you send orange ones? (They’re easier to find in the dunes.)
Many thanks,
Corporal Bryant,
Ground Maintenance
IRAQ
P.S. Our only casualty so far came two nights ago when Sergeant Harris thought the enemy was sneaking up. He fired three M-16 rounds through Corporal Gomez’s helmet. Luckily, Corporal Gomez was sound asleep in our tent, and his bullet-riddled helmet lay out on a sand dune, still in use as the tee marker for our seventh hole.
The letter struck a patriotic chord in me. I had never thought of such needs. I’d just assumed our overseas soldiers spent their entire days either fighting the enemy, planning how to fight the enemy, or eating bad food inside mess tents while talking about fighting the enemy.
I tapped my index finger on the letter and met Mrs. Dupree’s hopeful gaze. “The military requests orange golf balls?”
She picked up the letter and motioned to the requested item. “Yes. But I just left Wal-Mart and they’re all out of orange ones. So I bought orange magic markers instead. I figure you and I could stripe some golf balls orange. Wouldn’t that work?”
“Are they permanent markers?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes, you could put thick orange stripes on ’em. I guess you want me to donate a few hundred balls?”
Mrs. Dupree looked shocked. “Oh, not at all!” Then she pointed out the glass doors to her Mercedes. “I bought thirty dozen white ones. The Wal-Mart manager gave me a deal after I told him how our soldiers get bored sitting in that hot desert. Don’t you think we could stripe them today?”
“You mean right now? I’m not an army supply store, Mrs. Dupree.”
Mrs. Dupree moved around my counter to where she could see the range full of customers. She squinted into the afternoon sun and said, “You could ask for volunteers.”
“But I don’t want to disturb my customers. Look at them, they’re all swatting away, all of them happy. They wouldn’t want to get involved.”
Mrs. Dupree frowned the frown of a woman who did not know the meaning of no. She hitched her red capri pants a bit and came striding around my counter. “Does that intercom system work?”
“Works fine. Why?”
She moved past me, which was difficult in the tight space behind the counter. “Do you mind?”
“We can’t just—”
Next to the cash register she grabbed the mic and made her announcement to my customers. At the first squawk of the loudspeakers, country and hip-hop all paused from their swings to listen. “ANYONE WHO IS PATRIOTIC AND WISHES TO EARN A FREE BUCKET OF RANGE BALLS PLEASE PROCEED TO THE MAINTENANCE SHED. WE’LL BE SENDING GOLF BALLS TO GROUND TROOPS IN IRAQ.”
To my amazement, three Mary Lous, four Bubbas, and all five of the hip-hop youth set down their clubs and made their way to the shed.
Mrs. Dupree turned to me. “Say it with me, Chris. I was—”
“Wrong?”
“Of course you were.” She set the mic back in its stand, and we hurried out to her car to fetch the supplies.
Perhaps patriotism still united Americans. At the open garage door of the maintenance shed, I handed out boxes of white golf balls to each volunteer, while Mrs. Dupree distributed orange permanent markers. Down there on the concrete floor, Bubbas and Mary Lous sat beside Tongue Depressuh and friends, all of them with markers in hand, all of them concentrating on their task.
When we finished I jogged back to my shop and checked e-mail. I had three from equipment sales reps and one from Molly:
I only have a few seconds, Chris, but wanted to say hi! If I had to sum up the day in ’Bama in one sentence, it’d be: “Conservatives and liberals yelling half-truths into microphones.” How about your day?
—M
I replied in kind.
My day in one sentence? “Ebony and ivory, striping golf balls in perfect harmony.”
Talk soon,
—C
12
LESSON FOR TODAY
The game of golf and the game of life are expensive for their operators, and one is just as vulnerable to inflation as the other.
I did not own the land on which Hack’s subsisted. The real estate was leased from a local developer, a Mr. Vignatti. I paid him $1,950 per month to lease my part of his property. Next door to me sat twenty acres of plants and shrubs and daylilies, the product in trade of Roycroft Nurseries.
Charleston’s propensity for elaborate home gardens kept Mr. Roycroft in the big time. He, too, leased his land from Mr. Vignatti. I rarely got to visit with the balding Mr. Roycroft, except of course when a few stray range balls found their way over my perimeter netting and into his plants. He always returned the balls in a plastic bag—sometimes eight or ten balls, sometimes a few dozen. He’d leave the bags at my doorstep, and in appreciation I’d call and tell him to come hit a complimentary bucket.
Today Mr. Roycroft and I sat next to each other on the third floor of an office tower, occupying one side of a rectangular conference table as we faced our landlord, Mr. Vignatti.
Mr. V looked like an Italian mob boss, though the pink stationery in his briefcase and the yellow-framed family photos adorning his walls did nothing to further that image. The three of us met once per quarter, mostly to “talk about numbers.” Mr. Vignatti, of course, did the talking.
He opened a leather binder and drew out his record of lease payments. I knew my payments were punctual; I mailed them to him on the fifteenth of each month.
“Chris,” he said, “you have made all payments on time . . . and this is a good thing.”
Then he turned to Mr. Roycroft. “Mr. Roy, you too have made all payments on time, and this also is a good thing.”
Mr. Roycroft nodded and smiled but made no attempt to correct Mr. V’s calling him “Mr. Roy.” I did likewise. The two of us had been through this so many times that we knew not to make conversation unless it was necessary.
Mr. Vignatti pulled what looked like government papers from his leather binder. Already he was frowning at the top sheet. “I have new tax bills, gentlemen. And yes, of course there is increase. Every year . . . increase! Never decrease. The politicians always vote yes and yes for more property tax, never no.” He assumed the stern look of an agitated professor. “I tell you both, this country of ours will one day collapse from all the yes to tax increase.”
Again, Mr. Roycroft and I both nodded in agreement.
Mr. Vignatti preened his mustache, eyed us both. “And of course this will mean higher leases for you . . . which I suppose is a bad thing.”
Mr. Roycroft and I sat up straight at his utterance of “bad thing.”
Mr. V then directed his attention at me. “Chris, I am not so sure about the political golf ball whacking that you allow on my land. This could cause problems, no?”
I quickly shook my head. “No problems, Mr. Vignatti. You see, I’ve balanced it to where all sides have equal access.”
Expressionless, he rubbed his mustache a second time, then
a third. Then he sighed audibly. “This equal access . . . this is a good thing for your business, yes?”
I had the feeling that in Mr. Vignatti’s world, every event was either a good thing or a bad thing, but never a mediocre thing or an average thing or, even on a cloudy day, a gray thing.
Mr. Vignatti produced a calculator. “Chris,” he said, his index finger hovering over the buttons, “your average month before the politics was $7,800 in sales, is this correct?”
I felt a bit embarrassed that he was quoting the figures in front of Mr. Roycroft, who humbly stared at the floor, as if he knew this was not the best way to handle things.
“Yessir, that is correct.”
“And what will be your monthly estimate while the political types inhabit your business?”
“I’m estimating over nine, sir.”
“Over nine thousand . . .” He turned and winked at Mr. Roycroft. “This Chris is doing okay for himself, yes?”
“Appears so,” said Mr. Roycroft. He turned to me with a look of sympathy and shrugged, as if to say, “This is what we have to put up with for leasing from this guy.”
I could only shrug back and hope this meeting would end soon. I’d been through this more than twenty times in six years, and the protocol never changed, just the numbers and the number of times Mr. Vignatti ended his statements with an Italian “yes?” or “no?”
Mr. Vignatti then addressed Mr. Roycroft. “And you, Mr. Roy, your average month has been $10,700 for this year . . . this is correct, no?”
Mr. Roycroft blushed at the recitation of his revenue. I leaned toward him and gave him a gentle elbow in the ribs. “Congrats, you capitalistic stud.”
Mr. Vignatti overheard my comment and furrowed his brow. “What is the meaning of this . . . this ‘capitalistic stud’ business?” He looked very confused.
Mr. Roycroft had his hand over his mouth, trying not to laugh.
I met Mr. Vignatti’s worrisome gaze. “I just meant that Mr. Roycroft is good at selling plants, that he sells more plants than I sell golf balls.”
Mr. Vignatti eased back in his chair. A trace of a smile lifted the tips of his mustache. “You congratulate your neighbor. . . . This is a good thing, Chris. But the truth here is that Mr. Roycroft operates on forty percent more land.”
Par for the Course Page 10